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)
12 comentarios:
¿Qué tiene que ver eso con un Estado de Derecho?
La ley se aplica e inaplica al antojo de cada cual.
Me contaron que en un tribunal todos los miembros, todos, eran de UGT. ¿Puede ser posible esa falta de objetividad?
Lo peor, es que quiebran las garantías del principio de igualdad.
Pero tampoco al tema se le da más importancia.
Nos imaginamos si pasase algo parecido en una mesa electoral.
¿No se temería por la limpieza del procesos?
No seamos incautos.
La democracia se caracteriza por el régimen de garantías y controles.
Es el control el que genera la confianza.
Lo contrario conduce, indefectiblemente, al abuso de confianza.
Muchos desean que se les baje el sueldo a los funcionarios. Me parece que esta opinión conecta con el mismo error que late en el fondo de muchas conciencias: el funcionario es sólo un vago chupatintas. Así es fácil culpabilizarlo, hacerlo pagar más. Pero el funcionario, quien muchas veces es eso, también es otras cosas. Los funcionarios son los bomberos que apagarían tu casa, los policías que detienen delincuentes; son funcionarios los enfermeros que te cuidan en el hospital, los médicos que curan a tus hijos, los que te operan; son funcionarios los jueces que defienden la Justicia, los maestros y profesores que forman a tus hijos y se ocupan de ellos durante muchas horas al día, etc. Todos ésos son, y ésos son sus servicios. Dentro de esa honrosa dedicación no debe estar la de ceder su dinero. ¿Acaso los constructores y banqueros que se forraban cedían entonces su dinero a los funcionarios? Pues claro que no. Los funcionarios declaran todo, Hacienda los tiene cogidos, no cobran en B. De sus numerosas cotizaciones se les paga el subsidio de desempleo a muchos de los parados de la empresa privada. Si estudiamos los salarios de los funcionarios en los últimos años, la mayoría de las veces tienen una subida inferior al IPC. Y hay algunos funcionarios vagos o poco profesionales, sí, al igual que economistas, carpinteros o electricistas. Buenos y malos profesionales los hay en todas partes, y los funcionarios no son los peores.
IDOIA ARBILLAGA.
LA RAZON.
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