My most recent video focussing on this election campaign, is out this morning. In it, I ask why it is that the English-based parties are ignoring the issue of independence for three of the four countries that make up the UK during this election campaign as if that is a matter of inconsequence when, in truth, the whole nature of this supposed country is open to question? Could they be cooperating in a conspiracy of silence?
The audio version is:
The transcript is:
In this election, the big issue that's being ignored in England is independence for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
It's as if people in England think that somehow or other these are just regions of their country. Which is England.
They're not.
They're separate countries.
This is a United kingdom.
Now that ‘kingdom' does actually refer to the uniting of the Scottish and English thrones. But let's be quite clear about it. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. are not the same as England. Each of them has, in their own varying ways, massive cultural traditions.
Scotland and Northern Ireland have very distinctly different legal systems to the rest of the UK.
They produce their own banknotes.
They have separate and independent education systems, as does Wales.
So this idea that there is somehow a regional or devolution policy that will be acceptable to these countries to pacify the people of England who would like to keep control of them - it's quite absurd, because that is not true.
Now, I fully accept that Northern Ireland has not as yet expressed the will to leave the United Kingdom.
In Wales, only around 30 per cent of people seem to support independence, but in Scotland, despite the problems that the SNP has had - and they undoubtedly have had their fair share over the last year or so - support for independence has remained strong at around 50 per cent of the population. Evidence is that when there was last a vote for independence, that support increased significantly during the campaign.
So, there is a very strong part of opinion in all these places that London is not the place from which they wish to be ruled.
And yet if you ask people in England, what do they think about this it's always, “Well, they're part of the country. Give them devolution, make them regional authorities, a bit like make Yorkshire independent.”
Let me just use that example because Yorkshire does have a population which is, well, actually bigger than that of Wales, if I remember correctly, and most certainly a lot bigger than that of Northern Ireland, and not that different from the population of Scotland.
Yorkshire is, however, not a country. It's a county. It's fundamentally different. And I know that the people of Yorkshire think it's God's chosen county, but it isn't. Nowhere on earth is God's chosen, and nor has Yorkshire got any strong legal, educational, economic, or other association based on history that gives it an identity that recognizes that it is a country, unlike Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
So, there is no comparison between regional policy and the policy that is required for these places.
We need a grown-up debate in England on this issue, because people in England need to understand that their right to, in my opinion, colonise Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, has to come to an end.
The history of empire is over. These places might have been willing participants in empire in their day, but they are no longer. So why is it that we keep this concept, when in practice there are four countries that make up the United Kingdom, and three of them are not convinced of their future within it?
England, take note. It's time to face a future on your own. And what's wrong with that?
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Politicians are not really talking about the biggest issue of all – climate-ecological breakdown – are they?
There’s a very peculiar UK ‘public-media sphere’ in which ‘realpolitik’ substitutes for realism – but which would burst on contact with true reality.
Politicians are avoiding the issue of independence because it a) is inevitable, and b) will drive the final nail into the coffin of Westminster’s global influence and power. The population is not yet ready to accept that a small island off the northern coast of Europe is no more globally significant than Singapore or New Zealand.
Of course this is only inevitable because our politicians are so weak and ineffectual. Give Scotland, Wales and Norther Ireland power in Westminster exactly equal to England’s and we might have a Union that could survive, but that will never happen.
NI isn’t a country. At inception it’s a gerrymandered legacy colony imposed on the Irish people at gunpoint after centuries of ethnic cleansing and colonial oppression.
The Irish people relinquished their claim on it in return for all concerned (governments and people) conceding contingent rather than integral status in the UK.
Please stop calling it a country. It isn’t one. It’s a stolen part of another one.
The days of the English dictating to the majority of the people in NI, let alone the island as a whole, are over. There’s no more need to save the union of unequals than there was to save the Empire or slavery.
It is recognised as a country
And that matters in the real world with which I engage
NI is recognised by whom as a country?
Even UK government talks about it as a province (of Ireland I assume). BBC style guide (and that of some other national newspapers) also states that talking about NI as a country is to be avoided.
While unionist community in NI usually does talk about NI as a country, nationalist (which is now a relative majority community) doesn’t – and talks about the North or 6 counties etc.
Don’t want to be a pedant as it is a very worthy article that quite a few politicians should read, but – this might be misunderstood as well: “Now that ‘kingdom’ does actually refer to the uniting of the Scottish and English thrones. ” UK actually refers to the 1821 union of Kingdom of GB and Kingdom of Ireland (of which all but 6 counties left later on and this Ireland was changed to Northern Ireland in 1927). Do you mean just that Kingdom of GB refers to the uniting of English and Scottish thrones.
Is this an exercise in missing the point?
Well put, Richard.
I’m tired of my country being colonised by England. Like dozens of other countries around the world which have taken their freedom, I want my country to be independent once more.
Nothing wrong in that. England would want it too if it was colonised. It would be casting off the coloniser with all speed wouldn’t it.
when it comes to political fashions, style of capitalism and foreign policy, it some times seems we are a colony of the United States. Quite a willing one on much of the right wing.
That the whole UK election debate has been puerile, if not anodyne, is well captured by Behr
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/elections/general-election-2024/66580/britain-election-campaign-peurile-starmer-sunak
I don’t doubt that the Euro elections are equally blindfolded.
The two largest pachyderms trying to kick down the doors and take their place on the UK’s sofas are undoubtedly Brexit and the whole free market dogma that drove it, but even more – the climate and ecological crisis.
We have had just a very small vision of what is to come with El Niño in 2023, though its fading and the La Nina phase in the Southern Oscillation cycle may mean there is a short respite from last year’s period of monthly records being exceeded every few weeks. Any lull will be very brief.
Thwaite Glacier research – bellwether of Antarctic warming – shows unanticipated acceleration of its slide into the Antarctic Ocean.
There is no consensus on what tipping point has been approached or reached and the timescales for the everyday impacts are still speculation, but they will be extreme globally, and frighteningly rapid once exceeded.
That the Northern Hemisphere nations, including the UK, are basically still urinating into the wind is obvious.
We know what needs to be done. There is no need to wait for new technologies.
We know it can drive economic development for the next 50 years..
We can afford the required investments.
Yet we seem like rabbits in the headlights, unable to take the action that is needed.
Why is so little happening, and why is the mainstream political elite basically ignoring the bleedin’ obvious. ? Why is there so little sense of urgency ?
I think there are several obvious answers, none particularly surprising:-
1) Gramscian hegemony in capitalist growth economics, which is in absolute la-la land regarding externalities, and especially in corporate groupthink and technocratic self interest that perpetuates that power without genuine responsibilty.
2) Inertia across the entire institutional architecture of industrial urbanised society;
3) A societal elite of the oligarchs and its technocracy which thinks it can avoid the impacts of climate change at a personal level, regardless of how the wider population is affected. This is gated ‘community’ thinking;
4) Pisspoor politicians. They are mostly scientifically and managerially illiterate. A PPE from Oxford or LSE might require 3 A*s, but the content is irrelevant to the kind of systems management approach that we need now;
5) Lack of vision. There are too many specialists and too few generalists who can make the connections between events, and identify remediating actions – or even see the links, say, between floods in Doncaster and a decade of budget cuts in the Environment Agency, let alone communicate these;
6) Seemingly competing and incompatible concerns with an enduring lack of momentum for resolution at the supra-national level between Northern and Southern Hemisphere nations – so developed industrial societies and those African, South American and Asian nations raped as colonies for their human and physical resources. That mindset persists. Guterres has got it right.
How these flaws might be resolved is anybody’s guess, but I’d just note that species tend to become extinct when they are unable to adapt to environmental changes that present existential threats over geologic time.
The absurdity of the Anthropocene extinction would be that Man might be the first species on the planet which creates the circumstances in compressed timescales for massive environmental change that leads to its own demise.
And for many it runs into the ‘How are you going to pay for xyz’ and potential shortfalls from existing budgets etc, core vs periphery, urban vs rural, much better economic/industrial policy is a prerequisite!
A very good article, Richard and I thank you on behalf of the people of the three colonial countries that have struggled for equality within this ‘union’. I do have a wee problem with one of your points though.
Scotland didn’t enter the union as ‘willing participants’. The people weren’t given a choice, there was no Referendum on it, no discussion or debate. The English navy blockaded Scottish ports, the English army was on the border ready to invade should Scotland resist, and several Peers of the Scottish parliament were bribed into signing the Treaty or forfeit their lands in England. Now which rich peer is going to stand for that? Anyway… facts are that Scots rioted in the streets of the cities & made it VERY clear that they did not want a union with England. They knew full well there would be nothing ‘equal’ about it. And the peers, fearing for their lives, were forced to retreat into a cellar in Parliament House to sign it. 96 petitions were submitted to the Estates (Convention of the Estates, which in Scottish politics of the time represented the sovereignty of the people with a higher standing than the Scottish Parliament.) concerning the treaty, and not one was in favour of the union. The Scots have NEVER had a say in this 320 year old union and thus the idea it is a ‘voluntary’ union is quite simply not true. That description was given to the UN by Westminster, to explain the anomaly of the country of England ruling over the country of Scotland. But that was a piece of flim flam. In a ‘voluntary’ union, we would have the right to decide to leave. Apparently that isn’t the case; that we need ‘permission’ from Westminster. (We don’t, of course, but that’s another story.). And not having the most important power – a VETO, to determine what WM policies Scots will agree to, how can Scotland be anything other than a colony?
In truth, Scotland has always been a Colony, invaded and taken over as England took over all its other territories around the world. But – like many other former English territories, ie Canada, Australia, India etc., it is time for Scotland to leave and rebuild as an independent country, making choices & decisions for it’s own future. And I see no reason why each of the three other countries should not do the same.
Thank you for putting this issue ‘out there’ and daring to bring the whole question of independence for ALL countries of the island of Gt Britain, into the debate. It REALLY IS time to discuss the whole issue with those who are affected most by the terms of the union – the people. And not just politicians who are paid more than handsomely by Westminster for keeping the elephant in the room as quiet as possible.
Accepted – but these things have to be short
Sorry….
No apologies necessary – I understand. And you’re right… hard to go into some subjects that require detailed explanations, on a blog. But I thought I’d just put that ‘out there’ for those who seriously thought Scotland was a willing partner, back in 1707; that that state was what we chose, what we voted for and thus what we should accept & shut up about. When in essence, we didn’t get a say.
But thank you so much for your understanding of what many people, in many of the three (or four, depending on your point of view, ie what is a country) countries are now looking for. And for daring to address the elephant in the room. It’s time to properly address this question because the fact is – it isn’t going to go away.
Thank you again for such a good vlog. You’re my constant source of reference. LOL!
Thanks. Appreciated.