Thursday 18th September

Down here I mean.  In Scotland, always a more politically committed nation, it has invigorated the whole country.  But even though it has been all over the news, the papers full of it and special programmes on telly; there is a remarkable couldn’t care less attitude amongst most people in England.  Well, of course in one way they are right; if today the Scots vote for independence nothing will change on Friday.   But it will be the end of a three hundred year experiment, that may actually have been the trigger for the whole British Empire and our predominance in the World.  If we had carried on fighting each other rather than settle our differences then it is quite possible that the supremacy we achieved, largely by being able to concentrate on conquering far flung lands would have not been anything like so spectacular.  Countries in Europe were still fighting each other, whereas we were a unified nation, one of the first.

But the repercussions could be quite immense if the Scots go their own way.  There might be changes which nobody had imagined.  Devolution is now on the agenda of the LibDems and Labour, and will also be promised in some form or other by the Tories.  It could mean far more power trickling down to the Regions, with the “UK” becoming far more of a Federal State, within an even more Federal Europe.  Because of course with smaller and more powerful Regions the need for a strong centralized Foreign and Defence entity becomes even more important.   My guess is that not much will happen before the general election, but then the blame game will start in earnest .  A Coalition of sorts seems more than likely and big constitutional changes will happen.

It could even be that the Scottish experiment begins to excite real political involvement here in England.  We can but hope.