Both Scotland and the greater Boston area can remain part of their respective larger countries

by philg

A Scottish friend told me about the vote by Scotland to stay in the UK. I said “I think that the greater Boston area, which includes the southern New Hampshire suburbs, and thereby has about the same population as Scotland (4.7 versus 5.2 million), might also stay as part of a larger nation and not take up its own seat at the United Nations, set up its own military force headquartered at the Burlington Mall, establish embassies around the world, etc.” He did not appreciate the comparison…

6 thoughts on “Both Scotland and the greater Boston area can remain part of their respective larger countries”

  1. It was never clear to me why secession in the less than 100 yr. old US was cause for civil war, but the 400 yr. old Scotch-English union could just be dissolved by vote of the Scottish alone and that would be fine.

    The next problem is that the Scots are represented both in the UK parliament and in their own, but the English have no separate parliament. The UK has never had a Federal system (really, as you point out, it’s too small to need one) but I guess it will be getting one soon.

    I’ve always felt that these nationalist movements are driven by local elites – had he succeeded, Salmond would have gotten to be the leader of his own country, gotten his own presidential jet, etc. It’s not clear to me what the average Scottish schmo would have gotten out of this, other than higher taxes.

  2. The main Scottish grievance is that during Thatcher’s rule and a decade after that, the UK government was transferring to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a year in oil revenues from (mostly Scottish) North Sea oilfields, at the same time government policy was to to deprecate industry (strongly represented in Scotland) in favor of financial services (mostly centered in London). Oil production has fallen since, and it’s unclear how realistic the nationalists’ case was (Alex Salmond, the nationalist Scottish First Minister, is a former oil economist).

    Imagine what Alaskans’ reaction would be if the Obama government decided that it would impose carbon caps crippling to their main industry, ban pipelines, and take the oil revenues to fund green-tech industries in California or defense contractors in DC.

    Keep in mind also that Scotland was an independent nation for over a millennium, with a, shall we say contentious relationship with its much bigger southern neighbor, and still has its own distinct legal system separate from the English one.

  3. Scottish rustbelt industries were going away with or without English intervention. Accounting for where money goes is not as simple as saying that London stole the oil money – a huge proportion of the Scottish population lives on government assistance. Twice as much is spent each year on welfare and pension payments as is raised in the North Sea. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9551538/Iain-Duncan-Smith-Independent-Scotland-could-not-afford-welfare-bill.html

    I think a lot of the conflict is, in American terms red/blue – the Scottish electorate and politicians lean more left (Labour) than the UK as a whole. We might have the same secessionist impulses now in the US except that the blue states are spread out along the coasts and northern border and not contiguous. Red America could ban abortion and cut back on the welfare state, blue America would have national health care, more mass transit, etc.

  5. He probably didn’t appreciate the comparison because it is a complete non-sequitur. Scotland has (had) a long history as an independent nation, it’s own legal system, quite different traditions etc, as well as long-harboured suspicion of the “auld enemy” to the south – cemented under Thatcher as another commentator pointed out.
    What would be the rationale for a similar-sized population area with none of the above distinctions to form a separate country? Would the greater Boston area’s vote have been so close?
    In short, you completely missed the point of the independence debate & referendum.

  6. Scotland has (had) a long history as an independent nation, it’s own legal system, quite different traditions etc, as well as long-harboured suspicion of the “auld enemy” to the south ….

    And yet no one spoke of Scottish independence for 300 years until England veered right and Scotland veered left in the last 40 years or so. The SNP was a fringe party until the ’70s when Scottish leftist began drooling at the prospect of getting their hands on all that North Sea oil money. This has zero to do with what happened to William Wallace in 1305 and everything to do with who gets the power to tax and spend in 2015.

    By the way, since we have a federal system, the good people of Massachusetts have had their own legislature and their own statutes for 376 years.

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