Like the battle of Waterloo, the battle for Scotland was a damn close-run thing. The effects of Thursday’s no vote are enormous – though not as massive as the consequences of a yes would have been.
The vote against independence means, above all, that the 307-year Union survives. It therefore means that the UK remains a G7 economic power and a member of the UN security council. It means Scotland will get more devolution. It means David Cameron will not be forced out. It means any Ed Miliband-led government elected next May has the chance to serve a full term, not find itself without a majority in 2016, when the Scots would have left. It means the pollsters got it right, Madrid will sleep a little more easily, and it means the banks will open on Friday morning as usual.
But the battlefield is still full of resonant lessons. The win, though close, was decisive. It looks like a 54%-46% or thereabouts. That’s not as good as it looked like being a couple of months ago. But it’s a lot more decisive than the recent polls had hinted. Second, it was women who saved the union. In the polls, men were decisively in favour of yes. The yes campaign was in some sense a guy thing. Men wanted to make a break with the Scotland they inhabit. Women didn’t. Third, this was to a significant degree a class vote too. Richer Scotland stuck with the union — so no did very well in a lot of traditonal SNP areas. Poorer Scotland, Labour Scotland, slipped towards yes, handing Glasgow, Dundee and North Lanarkshire to the independence camp. Gordon Brown stopped the slippage from becoming a rout, perhaps, but the questions for Labour — and for left politics more broadly — are profound.
For Scots, the no vote means relief for some, despair for others, both on the grand scale. For those who dreamed that a yes vote would take Scots on a journey to a land of milk, oil and honey, the mood this morning will be grim. Something that thousands of Scots wanted to be wonderful or merely just to witness has disappeared. The anticlimax will be cruel and crushing. For others, the majority, there will be thankfulness above all but uneasiness too. Thursday’s vote exposed a Scotland divided down the middle and against itself. Healing that hurt will not be easy or quick. It’s time to put away all flags.
The immediate political question now suddenly moves to London. Gordon Brown promised last week that work will start on Friday on drawing up the terms of a new devolution settlement. That may be a promise too far after the red-eyed adrenalin-pumping exhaustion of the past few days. But the deal needs to be on the table by the end of next month. It will not be easy to reconcile all the interests – Scots, English, Welsh, Northern Irish and local. But it is an epochal opportunity. The plan, like the banks, is too big to fail.
Alex Salmond and the SNP are not going anywhere. They will still govern Scotland until 2016. There will be speculation about Salmond’s position, and the SNP will need to decide whether to run in 2016 on a second referendum pledge. More immediately, the SNP will have to decide whether to go all-out win to more Westminster seats in the 2015 general election, in order to hold the next government’s feet to the fire over the promised devo-max settlement. Independence campaigners will feel gutted this morning. But they came within a whisker of ending the United Kingdom on Thursday. One day, perhaps soon, they will surely be back.
(Artículo de Martin Kettle, publicado en "The Guardian" el 19 de septiembre de 2014)
7 comentarios:
Magnífica iniciativa. Ahora hay que ver qué dicen sus señorías, pero creo que los argumentos han quedado muy claramente expresados.
Es posible que el reiterado ejercicio del derecho de petición a la Cámara, por parte de personas que se didican profesionalmente al servicio del interés general, permita descubrir a los Diputados una nueva dimensión de la Administración Pública y acaso puedan darse cuenta de lo desatendida que la han tenido durante muchos años, probablemente al no valorar el papel que juega en todo Estado de Derecho. Aún están a tiempo de cambiar y esta legislatura, gracias entre otras cosas a las constantes iniciativas de esa Asociación, puede ser el momento de enmendar tanto olvido institucional.
¿se piensa seguir con las encuestas de opinión?
Felicito a la asociación tanto por sus constantes iniciativas como por su estrategia, por elevar el tiro y pasar del Gobierno al Parlamento, incentivando con ello el debate político entre los diferentes grupos.
Es cierta la clamorosa falta de iniciativa del gobierno aragonés en estas materias, como si el gobierno de madrid perteneciese a otro planeta, pero más bien parece algo común a todas las instituciones aragonesas, pues no conozco que el ayuntamiento de zaragoza con su magnífico alcalde al frente se haya destacado por ninguna medida en este sentido. En suma que la tendencia a la baja es predicable de todas las administraciones aragonesas, aunque la dga bien podría liderar este tipo de medidas.
Imagino que los señores diputados no van a salir de su asombro al ver que los apáticos funcionarios han empezado a darles trabajo en una materia que hasta ahora parecía totalmente pacífica o, más bien, inerte. No centremos el debate en las empresas públicas y olvidemos lo esencial, que es la Administración Pública como garante de unos buenos servicios públicos para los ciudadanos.
O ¿cree el Gobierno que lo que los aragoneses necesitan son casinos y pistas de esquí?
Me encanta el artículo de Pepe Bada en el Periódico de Aragón: ¿no es Gran Scala una especie de becerro de oro que nos quiere vender el Gobierno de Aragón?
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