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)
5 comentarios:
Extraños son los caminos de esta Asociación! Cómo hemos acabado en Murcia?
¡Viva Cartagena!
Veremos cómo acaba la aventura murciana de la Asociación.
Esto se dice en el preámbulo de la Ley gallega de normalización lingüística de 1983:
El proceso histórico centralista acentuado con el paso de los siglos, ha tenido para Galicia dos consecuencias profundamente negativas: anular la posibilidad de constituir instituciones propias e impedir el desarrollo de nuestra cultura genuina cuando la imprenta iba a promover el gran despegue de las culturas modernas.
Sometido a esta despersonalización política y a esta marginación cultural, el pueblo gallego padeció una progresiva depauperación interna que ya en el siglo XVIII fue denunciada por los ilustrados y que, desde mediados del XIX, fue constantemente combatida por todos los gallegos conscientes de la necesidad de evitar la desintegración de nuestra personalidad.
La Constitución de 1978, al reconocer nuestros derechos autonómicos como nacionalidad histórica, hizo posible la puesta en marcha de un esfuerzo constructivo encaminado a la plena recuperación de nuestra personalidad colectiva y de su potencialidad creadora.
Uno de los factores fundamentales de esa recuperación es la lengua, por ser el núcleo vital de nuestra identidad. La lengua es la mayor y más original creación colectiva de los gallegos, es la verdadera fuerza espiritual que le da unidad interna a nuestra comunidad. Nos une con el pasado de nuestro pueblo, porque de él la recibimos como patrimonio vivo, y nos unirá con su futuro, porque la recibirá de nosotros como legado de identidad común. Y en la Galicia del presente sirve de vínculo esencial entre los gallegos afincados en la tierra nativa y los gallegos emigrados por el mundo.
La presente Ley, de acuerdo con lo establecido en el artículo 3 de la Constitución y en el 5 del Estatuto de Autonomía, garantiza la igualdad del gallego y del castellano como lenguas oficiales de Galicia y asegura la normalización del gallego como lengua propia de nuestro pueblo.
"Núcleo vital de nuestra identidad"
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