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[/audioplayer]This is really happening. The Scots could vote to end the greatest, most successful union in human history next week. Westminster has, at last, woken up to this threat and what it would mean for the United Kingdom as a whole. The result has been panic, frenetic activity and a promise to turn Scotland into part of a quasi-federal state. Such has been the speed of this offer that no one quite knows what it means for the rest of the United Kingdom.
But keeping Scotland in the Union is the order of the moment. Everything else is mere detail. The party leaders and their camp followers are even just about holding off from engaging in a pre-emptive blame game; and there is plenty of blame to go round. How did we come to this? How did we end up with our great nation on the verge of breaking up? There are several culprits. But, oddly, nationalism isn’t in the front rank.
Those out canvassing don’t report encountering more blood-and-soil types than before. Instead, they say that what is driving people to ‘yes’ is a variant of the anti-politics mood that is roiling politics across the UK. The separatists have succeeded in mobilising the scorned and the scunnered in a way that insurgent parties are trying to do south of the border too. One cabinet minister warns that Westminster wouldn’t fare any better in a referendum in England than it is in Scotland.
Those who feel left behind by the post-industrial economic order are the Scottish counterparts of the voters being wooed by Ukip in England. Everywhere, those who feel they have no stake in the current system are turning away from conventional politics.
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