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)
11 comentarios:
¡Qué raro que se sacudan el muerto de encima! Si aquí en DGA son todos los órganos hiperproductivos y no hacen más que venga a acaparar cosas, metiéndose en berengenales aunque sea forzando la letra de la ey para dar cabida a su espíritu, removiendo presupuestos donde no los hay, echando horas sin apenas diez minutos de descanso para un café...
¿Por qué no se busca patrocinador entre los agentes sociales?
Titular de El País, hace unos días:
La contratación temporal pública supera ya la tasa del sector privado.
El 25,4% de los trabajadores de la Administración son interinos
¿No valoran el interés de la propuesta?
Creo que la calidad en el empleo del sector público ha de introducirse en los acuerdos del diálogo social entre el Gobierno de Aragón y empresarios y sindicatos.
¿Tampoco la administración electrónica se incluye en la agenda del diálogo social o la labor del cesa?
Parece que el Gobierno de Aragón fija un horizonte para el 2011, según comunicado oficial:
Los ciudadanos, empresas y organismos que quieran dirigirse a las administraciones públicas aragonesas tendrán, a partir de 2011, la posibilidad de acceder a sus servicios sin necesidad de desplazarse a ninguna oficina gracias a la puesta en marcha del Plan de Administración Electrónica del Gobierno de Aragón.
El Gobierno de Aragón ha puesto en marcha este plan con el objetivo de adaptarse a la normativa Europea de acceso electrónico. La inversión global de este proyecto rondará los 16 millones de euros, y en el 2011 se espera que la mayoría de las herramientas estén ya en funcionamiento como la firma electrónica o la factura que permitirá pagar a través de Internet.
El continuo proceso de modernización de las administraciones para facilitar el acceso a la información y acelerar los siempre molestos papeleos administrativos es la misión fundamental de este plan. Pero para garantizar el cumplimiento de estos objetivos es necesaria la colaboración de los entes locales en la identificación y diseño de las herramientas y servicios.
¿Existe un observatorio de la administración electrónica?
En la Administración General del Estado se prevé un defensor del usuario electrónico, ¿Y en la aragonesa quién ejercerá esa labor de supervisión de quejas de los usuarios?
¿Cuesta hacer cosas con este calor de agosto en la ciudad?
¿Balones fuera?
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