On Thursday September 18 the Scottish people voted ‘No’ to independence, 55% to 45%. In doing so the United Kingdom still holds together.
For many the breaking of the union which has lasted for over 300 years and has been hugely beneficial to these islands would have been an enormous sadness.
Huge questions
But the whole exercise of the referendum in Scotland has raised huge questions. Firstly, why was such a momentous step as the break up of our country to be taken on a mere majority? Surely any sensible person knows that to take huge decisions based on a majority of just one or two percent of a vote (which could have been the case) is to risk tremendous hurt and anger. If a country is more or less evenly divided then it needs to think again if it wants to maintain its unity. And in these days of the prevalence of media influence, small majorities can be much more easily manufactured through manipulation than something more substantial.
But secondly, the panic last-minute offer of further devolution to Scotland by Westminster, ‘devo max’, which seems to have saved the day, raises the question of whether or not this is fair for the rest of the United Kingdom. Why should the Scots be treated differently from, say, the Welsh or the Cornish people or the people of Merseyside?
Seeing the problem, the Liberal leader Nick Clegg has jumped on the bandwagon and declared that he is in favour of further devolution across the different regions of England and Wales. But do we understand where this might lead? Who will determine the boundaries of such regions and on what criteria? Are we ready, for example, for an area of Britain with a Muslim majority and a Muslim identity to determine their own laws and taxes? If not, then why not? This referendum may well have let a genie out of the bottle which cannot be recaptured. We will have to wait and see.
