Referendum-itis continues its steady pandemic throughout the UK body politic.  Alex Salmond, the sole person who makes his entire SNP party respectable, would like the UK to do the Bannockburn splits in 2014, though my fear would be that it would be as painful as the banana of the same movement.  The Coalition government in Westminster throws down the challenge of a yes or no plebiscite to be held no later than 2013. The chippy, nationalist nutjobs come out of the Holyrood woodwork to denounce any London interference, even though they need it to make an independence vote legally binding.  I recall one Newsnight debate where one prominent SNP politician said she was proud to be chippy!  Let us not forget under the leadership of John Swinney, their beloved party was dead in the water.  Salmond knows he has to achieve independence in his political lifetime or he may never see it in his actual lifespan and so he ignores the health problems that forced him to step down the first (so far only) time.

The Conservatives are set against Scottish independence as they want to preserve the union to live up to their former name of the Conservative and Unionist Party (also as a connection with Northern Ireland and its Presbyterians).  Labour fear the loss of Scottish Westminster seats would cripple future election efforts and are right to do so.  The Liberal Democrats are a bit of both.  Salmond would love to do the timewarp again to 1314, when Scottish independence was secured for four centuries at the Battle of Bannockburn and then fast-forwarding 700 years as budget cuts start to really bite (across the whole country but that doesn’t fit Salmond’s narrative).  All three major Westminster parties hope for a repeat for the Scottish Nationalists of the Battle of Flodden on its 500^th anniversary.

I must admit, Britain’s ridiculous, expensive macho posturing by maintaining a pointless nuclear ‘deterrent’ (that would never be used except in conjunction with the USA which has many times greater an arsenal and provides a nuclear umbrella to all of western Europe, except France) and therefore keeping open the Faslane nuclear naval base, means I have some sympathy were Scotland to break away.  There would also be the frisson of excitement as a new country fashioned its own path in the world.  I, however, always hark back in my mind to Timothy Garton Ash writing about the Czechoslovak ‘Velvet Divorce’, where he said that, after 1993, Prague and Bratislava were both culturally poorer and less interesting.  Given the great Scottish pollination in London and the English fascination with Edinburgh extending from Dr Johnson onwards, I well appreciate that sentiment.  My preference is for the United Kingdom to remain united and a stronger unit by standing together.  The latest polls north of the ‘border’ suggest most Scots are of the same opinion.