The 300th anniversary this week of the Act of Union between England and Scotland has been a depressingly defensive event rather than a festival of celebration. In the Daily Telegraph, Gordon Brown — that indefatigable champion of ‘Britishness’ — warned against the ‘Balkanisation of Britain’. The Scottish National Party is poised to form the largest party in the Scottish Parliament after the May elections, and is promising a referendum on the future of the Union. The psychological reflex of the English — 61 per cent of them, according to a BBC Newsnight poll — is to demand an English Parliament.
In some ways this is a strange time for Scottish nationalists to be flexing their muscles. Britain has a Scottish-born Prime Minister, all but certain to be succeeded by another, and a government stuffed with Scots in senior posts. Meanwhile, devolution has given the Scots a measure of autonomy without financial responsibility: a pleasant compromise, you would think, for a nation that would pay a grievous financial price for full independence.
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