Scotland voted No on independence.
The prime minister wants to move fast to show that the three main UK party leaders will live up to their commitments made during the referendum campaign to deliver what the former prime minister Gordon Brown called home rule within the UK.
Ministers believe it is important to move quickly to avoid a repeat of the 1980 referendum in Québec. The triumphalist behaviour of Ontario fuelled the separatist cause that nearly succeeded in a second referendum in 1995.
So don’t rub it in their noses. Lots of affectionate hugs, no faces rubbed in the No vote. And no mean photoshops!
I’m just glad that NATO didn’t have to threaten the Scots for doing something as illegal as Crimea did — you know, trying to have a vote about what to do and everything. Of course Russia had an inappropriate amount of influence in the Crimea vote, not like England did, what with BOE threatening to take all their money and go home…
“Ted [Heath] says mustn’t gloat, wrong to gloat, mustn’t do it, no, no, no.
Well, I can tell you, I’m gloating like hell.”
-William Whitelaw,
@1 The difference being, of course, that the prime minister of the UK granted permission for the referendum. So the two situations are not really analogous.
There is also the absence of another nation ready to absorb Scotland 😉
It’s funny for me. I’m always in favor of self-determination, assuming it’s not devolving right down to Republic of Fred level. Catalonia? Go for it. Tibet? Should be a nation ten times over. Diego Garcia? Sure. But for some reason I was hoping the vote would turn out “no.” I guess some sentimental attachment to the idea of “United Kingdom”?
But a big downside is that now I can’t have a ringside seat to cheer on the nationalization of oil companies’ Scottish holdings.
How times change, the British political elites used too sneer at ‘ramshackle’ federations, now they’re all in favor of devolution. I hope that the Scots manage to extract a written constitution from the UK government–otherwise what Westminster promises, Westminster can take away.