By Rich Kozlovich
Recently Antonia Colibasanu published what I think was a very well done article on a site to which I encourage all to subscribe, Geopolitical Futures, entitled, Scotland's complicated Quest for Independence. I've not linked it because it's a subscription article. However, while this is a complicated issue, Colibasanu breaks this down into three components I will share with you:
- The first is unionism. Since the late 18th century,
unionists have argued that Scotland is better off in a union with
England than on its own. They supported the merger of the United
Kingdom’s constituent parts – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern
Ireland – and the establishment of a unitary parliament at Westminster.
Among them all, they're the only ones who know exactly what they want. Everything to stay the same. Now it gets a bit more convoluted, as does the reasoning. We'll come back to that.
- The second concept is devolution, also referred to as “home rule.” It
emerged in Scotland in the late 19th century, when the Scottish Liberal
Party adopted the demands of the Irish home rule movement. Under a
devolved system, the U.K.’s constituent parts would be given authority
over certain areas of governance. In Scotland, devolution has enjoyed
wide public support since the 1960s, when calls for more autonomy grew.
- The third concept is independence – i.e., the creation of a separate
Scottish state. Its rise coincided with the fall of the British Empire.
So long as the empire remained intact, Scotland was able to preserve its
unique identity and traditions. It didn’t fear being overtaken by
England because the empire was big and global enough to allow room for
multiple entities, each of which was distinct from the others. With the
empire’s collapse, however, Scotland feared that the interests of
England, which had a substantially larger population, would dominate the
union.
"The bill to
ban assault weapons is thousands of
pages. There's no way I could
define an assault weapon in 35 seconds.”
He couldn't have defined it if he had 135 seconds, or 1135 seconds, in fact those thousands of pages make it indefinable, or, unendingly re-definable to fit whatever narrative they're pushing.
I’ve followed this Scotland issue for some time and written about it. First, I stopped trusting polls decades ago and
stopped believing in polls in a general way entirely 25 years go, even when
they agree with my positions. My view is
simple. Don’t tell me what people are
saying, show me the crowds and what people are doing. If the polls are inharmonious with that foundational concept, I ignore them because they're probably fake. There's a reason why political movements go to the expense of having their own in house pollsters.
A few years ago I likened this Scotland situation to the
Quebec independence movement. In 1980
polls showed overwhelming support for independence from Canada, and unless
memory fails me the polls showed 90% in favor of independence. The vote went substantially in the other
direction. They lost by almost
60%. While the 95 vote was much closer, both "countries" have many of the same issues.
- First, neither of them speak English. In Quebec it’s a
second language and so many Scots speak such a heavily accented version many in the rest of the English speaking world can't understand them.
- Secondly, neither can exist economically and militarily
on their own. They both need a “host”
country.
- Third, in no way can they define what they mean by any of
the positions they’re taking.
- Fourth, they both have big egos and bad attitudes, neither
of which can pay the bills, but can cause unending dissent.
- Fifth, they’re both delusional
in their belief of their importance.
- Sixth, they're both suffering from
socialist cultural paradigms.
- Seventh, they both
think they can have independence and still have someone else pay for it.
Well, I think both England and Canada are making the same mistake. Instead of giving them the choice to stay or to go, they
should ask the rest of the nation whether or not to kick them out. Since both of them are enormous pains in the butt, kicking them out would probably end up being a net positive for both England and Canada.
