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[/audioplayer]I bet that until a few days ago you thought the referendum in Scotland was a mildly amusing sideshow. Perhaps you still do. Perhaps you are convinced that the ‘silent majority’ that Better Together are so sure will step up to the plate at the last minute really exist. Perhaps you think that the reasons many people are giving for voting ‘yes’ are so vague that voters will change their mind on the day. Or even if they don’t you might think it is all an irrelevance.
Perhaps you know about the Faroe Islanders’ referendum for independence from Denmark back in 1946 and assume something similar will happen here on a ‘yes’ vote. Then the vote was stunningly close: 50.73 per cent of people voted yes, and 49.27 per cent voted no. The Faroe Islands declared independence but then almost immediately decided they didn’t fancy it much. They had the declaration annulled, and voted in a pro-Denmark government. Today the Faroe Islands have home rule or what Scotland would call devo max. But regardless of where you stand on all this, it might be time to start taking Scotland seriously.
The bookies are far from convinced that there will be a ‘yes’ vote (they put it at a likelihood of about 30 per cent), but the polls now suggest the odds are getting on for 50/50. So assuming no immediate annulment (fair, I think) is there any reason why anyone outside Scotland should care? In the long run maybe not. But in the short run it isn’t so simple.
Those in doubt need only look at what has happened to sterling since the market started to notice the momentum behind ‘yes’.
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