England doesn’t deserve a vote on Scottish independence

Many who consider themselves ‘English nationalists’ appear to be using the prospect of a referendum on Scottish independence as a platform to argue the case for an English parliament, and are calling for English people to be given the right to decide whether the Union should continue. The idea that all citizens of the United Kingdom should vote on a major constitutional issue that affects two parts of the Union makes a degree of sense, at least to those with a Unionist mentality. However, it does raise certain practical problems; what about the north of Ireland and Wales, for instance? Should the inhabitants of the north of Ireland, which according to the UK government is as much part of the United Kingdom as England and Scotland, be given the right to decide whether Scotland remains united to England? It would be ironic if the inhabitants of the six counties were allowed to vote on Scottish independence when they have never been permitted a referendum of their own on remaining part of the UK.

This is a practical objection to England’s involvement in a referendum on Scotland’s future. In principle, however, England has no right to determine the future of Scotland. Although the Act of Union was passed by both the English and Scottish Parliaments in 1707, to claim that the Union was anything other than the annexation of Scotland by England is a distortion of history. Union with England was supported, at the time, by only a small minority – a Presbyterian governing class similar to the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland. England and Scotland did not come together by mutual consent, and they should not part by mutual consent; to give the dominant partner in an assymetrical constitutional relationship the power to block the dissolution of the union would be fatal to Scotland and England’s future relationship. I have no doubt that the majority of English voters would vote in favour of the Union, as there is a deep-seated fear among English voters and unease about what the dissolution of the Union means for their post-imperial national identity. ‘English nationalists’, albeit vocal, are decidedly in a minority.

The constitutional questions concerning the referendum bring to the fore the underlying problem in the United Kingdom – England’s assymetrical relationship with the other nations. Government rhetoric may speak of the nations as equal but they all exist in a relationship of subjection to England, where power is centralised and concentrated, and some are more subject than others. Scotland, which almost enjoys judicial independence (pace subjection to the Supreme Court) is freer than Wales or the north of Ireland, for instance. This constitutional assymetry is ignored by ‘English nationalists’ who romantically view the UK as a family of equal nations rather than as the subjection of two nations, and six counties of a third, to England.

The government’s scare-tactics in the campaign against Scottish independence have continued over the past week, with the Tories attempting each time to emphasise how different, not to say alien, an independent Scotland will be. It is important for nationalists to counter this rhetoric by highlighting the normality of independence as the natural culmination of an ongoing process of devolution and, indeed, the restoration of constitutional equilibrium to Great Britain. Of course Scotland will not leave the EU and of course Scotland will remain in a monetary union with England, at least for as long as Scotland wants. For this is ultimately what the parties in Westminster are unable to stomach – the thought that Scotland should be given equality with England and the freedom to make its own decisions.

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