Engaging in British politics over the past few months has, for so many, been an exercise in containing disappointment. Brexiteers are angry the UK didn’t leave the EU on March 29 as planned. Remainers are furious that the government is still theoretically committed to doing so, perhaps without an exit deal. Corbyn fans are outraged about their idol’s truly appalling approval ratings and Labour’s poor performances in local and European elections. Conservatives and liberals are terrified that, despite this, a man who has defended and befriended terrorist groups and anti-Semitic racists could very plausibly become Prime Minister.
Yet, for me at any rate, none of this matched the emotional impact of a YouGov poll published last month which covered Tory attitudes to the union. The survey found that, among Conservative members, 63 percent thought Scotland leaving the United Kingdom is an acceptable price to ensure Brexit takes place. Asked if Northern Ireland leaving is an acceptable price, the figure was only a little lower, at 59 percent.
Should this continue the Conservative and Unionist Party is surely on a collision course with the Trade Descriptions Act. This isn’t to say Tory members are turning against the union, they would also be prepared to see “significant damage to the UK economy” or the destruction of their own party to ensure Brexit takes place, but clearly the Union clearly isn’t top of their list of priorities.
This, in my view, is an epoch defining mistake. Unionists have spent much of the past few years arguing the case for the United Kingdom with Scottish nationalists, and it seems we must now do so with English quasi-unionists. If this is the case then so be it. The argument for the British Union is phenomenally strong, and we should never be afraid to make it nor to take our country for granted.
Britain has, by just about any objective measure, been one of the most astonishing and influential political entities in human history. Ranked by what I think are the three key criteria for any nation, whether it is able to consistently provide internal security, economic prosperity and external defence to its people, it has been a quite remarkable success. That stability allowed British men and women to leave a decisive mark on just about every portion of the planet, for both good and ill.
I appreciate that seriously discussing national defence causes eyes to roll in certain quarters, but it’s a conversation we need to have. World politics over the next three decades are unlikely to have the same relative stability as the past three, the era of Pax Americana and liberal-democratic triumph. The rapid rise of China, with its authoritarian nationalist model, offers a clear challenge to the Western ideal at both a political and ideological level.
There are worrying signs that liberal democracy is beginning to be questioned even in parts of its European and North American heartlands. A Le Pen Government in France for example, or Trump’s decision to act on one of his periodic anti-NATO impulses, would leave the western alliance deeply vulnerable. Add in emerging questions, about increasingly powerful artificial intelligence and whether humans should be allowed to alter their biological makeup as the technology becomes available, and its clear the liberal democratic model is going to face intense challenges. Even Francis Fukuyama has been forced to concede that history might not, after all, be coming to an end.
In such a world it is surely best and safest for the British nations to stick together. Scotland contains just over 8 percent of the UK’s population and a little over 32 percent of its landmass. Its exit from the UK would have a significant effect on both the actual and potential strength of the British armed forces, even before we get to the question of nuclear weapons bases. It would also give both Scotland and the UK a land border with a foreign power.
The latter point may sound silly, as both would surely maintain liberal-democratic forms of Government, but it could have an effect. In the Second World War, for example, Irish neutrality denied the Royal Navy access to ports that would have been very useful during the Battle of the Atlantic. Scottish neutrality in any potential conflict with Russia, not an unforeseeable scenario, would surely have the same impact.
Should one of the UK’s constituent nations break away, the chances of another following would increase. Britain is a powerful brand with over 300 years of shared history behind it. Shatter this, as would happen if Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, or England left the union, and there would be much less holding the rest together.
Scotland’s departure, for example, would surely intensify the Northern Irish question, especially as many Unionists are of Scottish descent. If Scotland and Northern Ireland left I’d expect more serious questioning of Wales’ membership of what remains of the union. The whole project could unravel, Yugoslavia like, though with the violence probably restricted to Northern Ireland.
Scotland’s exit in particular would, I suspect, have an impact on the status of the remainder of the UK disproportionate to its population size. The UK would lose about a third of its landmass overnight, as well as much of the incredibly powerful British brand. It would mark the end of Britain as one of the truly significant world powers. Certain other countries would surely use the opportunity to question, for example, whether what’s left of the UK deserves to retain its permanent seat on the UN security council. The likes of India, Japan and Germany would be watching with interest.
For this article I’ve focused on the security advantages of the British union but the economic case is just as strong. Scotland’s trade with the rest of the UK is worth nearly four times its trade with all the other EU member states combined. Given the choice of remaining in a centuries old full political and economic union, or a decades old partial one, the selection ought to be clear. To emphasise the latter, as Nicola Sturgeon, while claiming to be internationalist is to descend into self-parody.
Of course there are few stronger human impulses than tribalism, and questions of national identity can easily trump other considerations. At the moment, in the United Kingdom, we have a country which is highly successful. It has provided its people with relative safety and prosperity for centuries. Unlike just about every other European power it has not in the modern era been invaded, nor racked by revolution or civil war. But just because logic dictates the UK ought to survive doesn’t mean it will. Those of us who believe Britain deserves to continue as a political unit, and fear the consequences if it doesn’t, are going to have to fight like hell to preserve it.
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