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By Simon Heffer
Last updated at 12:00 AM on 14th January 2012
Throughout this week’s byzantine debate about a referendum on Scottish independence, one voice has been missing — that of the people of England.
I’d like to know what these 51 million souls think about the question. After all, they represent the other — and by far the major — partner in the Union that the Scottish National Party seeks to dissolve.
As in some marriages, divorces happen when one side walks out.
However, I don’t understand why it is assumed that, in this particular marriage, that side would necessarily be Scotland.
Whatever one’s feelings about whether the Union should survive, it is democratically offensive to imagine the English do not have a right to be consulted.
Heading in different directions? David Cameron and Alex Salmond
Yet, in the various statements made by English politicians this week, the pretence has been that all the initiative and motivation to vote over the future of the Union lie with the Scots.
They certainly do not. Worse, one other subject is being avoided.
I refer, of course, to money.
Trying to establish exactly how much the English subsidise Scotland is slightly harder than chewing razor blades. But a subsidy there definitely is. And its very existence is the most compelling reason why England, and England’s elected representatives, must not stay silent over the possibility of Scottish independence.
The last Labour Government conceded that the subsidy paid by England was £22bn in 2007. But that was before its final years in office when it embarked on an irresponsible binge in public spending that was so corrosive to the British economy.
Last year the Treasury said the level of public spending per head in Scotland was £1,624 higher than in England. In addition, the current debt to the British taxpayer for bailing out the Royal Bank of Scotland is £26bn. I could go on.
However, the Scottish Nationalists will have none of this. What about their oil, they argue, and the contribution it makes to the revenue?
Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond claims that 81 per cent of North Sea oil is in Scottish waters and in total will generate £54 billion in the six years to 2016/7.
But there is a dispute about what ‘Scottish waters’ in the North Sea actually are.
Do they begin along a line of latitude from Berwick-on-Tweed? Or does the maritime boundary continue to run north-eastwards, in the same direction into the sea as the land one? International maritime law suggests it is the latter, meaning that many more square miles of sea would be English.
There are many other questions. For example, given that many of the oilfields are around the Shetlands, is Mr Salmond sure that Shetlanders wish to be part of his independent Scotland? Or would they like to be independent themselves, or a dependency of England, or even of Norway?
As for wider financial issues, if the Union were to end, Mr Salmond wants a share of all Britain’s assets.
Scotland has 5.2 million people, or around 8 per cent of the population of the Kingdom. So, logically, it would be entitled to 8 per cent of British assets. Think, for example, of all those valuable embassies abroad.
Perhaps, in the event of separation, it should.
However, Scotland brought nothing into the marriage in 1707, when the Act of Union was passed, precisely because it had become bankrupt after a disastrous colonial venture in Darien in Central America.
A detailed calculation of the cumulative cost of 305 years of subsidy to the Scots might be a little cruel. But taking the 8 per cent figure of Britain’s assets, if a future independent Scotland were to take its fair share of the UK national debt — currently £1.1 trillion, excluding bank bail-outs – that would amount to £88 billion.
It might be better for Mr Salmond to suggest we call it quits, rather than push his luck. His government’s own statisticians disclosed that, in 2009-10, Scotland ran a £14.9 billion deficit on top of its subsidy, or a staggering 13.4 per cent of its GDP.
It is no wonder, in the light of these awkward economic facts, that the most popular option for Scottish Nationalists is the so-called ‘devo max’ proposal, which sounds like one of those overpriced energy drinks. It is certainly overpriced, and it is intended as a compromise under which Scotland would have more power devolved to itself, while remaining in the United Kingdom — in other words, on the English payroll.
Some of us always feared that Scottish devolution would end up as a means of setting up a parliament in Edinburgh whose main job it was to extract English taxpayers’ money from Westminster.
‘Devo max’ would give the Scots a blank cheque once more. It is simply unacceptable and unfair to England.
Mr Salmond can have as many referendums as he likes, ask Scottish voters whatever questions he thinks fit, and orchestrate everything to exploit the heightened sense of nationalism he hopes will result from celebrations of great anniversaries in his country’s calendar, such as Bannockburn in 1314 — or the Bay City Rollers’ first Number One in 1975.
But he must pay for all this and its consequences out of the Scots’ own pockets, and not send the bill to London.
Meanwhile, it is time that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom stood up for the interests of everyone in this Kingdom.
If Scotland is going to be granted a referendum on whether or not it stays in the Union, could someone please explain why England can’t have one, too? Or do the rights of majorities count for nothing?
Personally, I am convinced that Scotland would be making a catastrophic mistake if it left the Union. It would flounder as an independent country with its own economy.
It could not expect hand-outs from English taxpayers, and the old slogan of ‘Scotland independent in Europe’ is now comical considering the state of the eurozone economy. The EU would have no money to bail it out either.
Another huge question: would an independent Scotland join the euro, and risk ending up like a cold-weather version of Greece? I know Edinburgh is supposed to be the ‘Athens of the North’, but that would be ridiculous.
Another great danger would be that as an independent Edinburgh government drove up tax rates to try to remain solvent, people would flood south over the border to relocate their businesses and their domiciles for tax purposes, and in many cases just to shop in England where prices would be lower.
Anyone who doubts such an outcome ought to consider how shopkeepers in Northern Ireland near the border with the Republic have flourished during Ireland’s economic nightmare.
North Sea oil will also eventually run out, and there are concerns about the future of the Scottish financial services sector which has been badly wounded since RBS nearly went under.
No wonder ‘devo max’ is so popular. It would provide the illusion of independence while the English —the national equivalent of the ‘bank of mum and dad’ — continued to pick up the bill.
I have always considered one of the great mistakes in England’s history was the rejection of Gladstone’s first Home Rule Bill for Ireland in 1886.
The legacy of that decision was a century and a quarter of bloodshed and misery, and the estrangement from Britain of a people with whom we have much historically and culturally in common.
Of course, if the Scots are rash enough to decide to go it alone, the English cannot — and must not —coerce them to stay.
But the English must, in all fairness, be allowed to make their own decision, too, about the future of the Union. Westminster-based politicians must explain to the majority in the Kingdom why it would benefit England for the status quo to be maintained.
David Cameron has been made to look foolish by Mr Salmond. Yet, since Scotland needs England more than England needs Scotland, Mr Cameron has all the weapons in this battle. It is time he stopped being pushed around, and deployed them.
Yesterday's Darling
Alistair Darling is apparently leading the movement to stop the Scots voting for independence. Labour desperately wants to save the Union, not least so that ambitious Scots politicians such as him can continue to get lucrative jobs in London. Mr Darling is also being spoken of as a possible replacement for Ed Miliband, on the grounds that he has ‘credibility’.
Where does this ‘credibility’ come from? Isn’t this the same man who, as Chancellor between 2007 and 2010, presided over the spending binge that almost destroyed the British economy?
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