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:
¿Se le ha escrito al actual titular para agradecerle el trato dispensado a la Asociación?
Bien está reconocer públicamente la actitud y disposición mantenidas por el actual titula del Justicia de Aragón hacia esta Asociación, sobre todo cuando contrasta tanto con la adoptada por el Gobierno de Aragón o por el Presidente de las Cortes de Aragón, por ejemplo.
Ahora hay que estar vigilantes con el proceso de elección del nuevo titular, para no dejar que el poder actúe una vez más con riterios estrictamente de interés de partido, como sucedió recientemente con la renovación del Consejo General del Poder Judicial.
¿Qué es lo que no dice el estatuto sobre la institución que se hubiese deseado que dijera? ¿Lo podría decir la ley reguladora del justicia, aunque no se haya puesto en el estatuto? ¿Se puede solicitar la inclusión de tales contenidos? ¿Por qué no se hace una campaña seria sobre eso y se hace un análisis comparado con las atribuciones de instituciones similares en otras comunidades autónomas, por ejemplo?
Como dijo el primer titular de la institución, todos los ciudadanos deberíamos ser justicias de aragón, con una labor cotidiana de defensa de los derechos y de cumplimiento de los deberes de ciudadanía. Son utopías al alcance de todos.
He leído en la prensa de hoy alguna referencia a la Asociación. Signo de que está viva, activa y dispuesta a seguir con su necesaria labor de control.
Las instituciones de control han de ser mucho más vigilantes y exigentes de lo que son en la actualidad y no permitir el creciente deterioro que se experimenta en el funcionamiento de la administración pública como resultado de la vulneración de las normas de organización y de funcionamiento más básicas.
¿Quién vela si no por el respeto de las normas de la función pública?
Parece que la renovación del justicia saliente se da por hecho. ¿Es positivo que alguien desempeñe un cargo institucional durante quince años? Sólo es una pregunta, no tengo opinión consolidada sobre el tema, pero me suena a cuento tanta estabilidad institucional como predica el entorno de Marcelino Iglesias.
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