Britain’s Next Prime Minister Has Probably Already Lost Scotland

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- When it opened in 1998, the National Museum of Scotland captured the mood at large in the U.K. Those were the heady early days of the Blair government, Cool Britannia was in vogue, and transferring powers from London to the kingdom’s constituent nations was a policy imperative. It was the year of the Good Friday Agreement, which brought peace to Northern Ireland; in Scotland, voters had just chosen—in what was then a rare referendum—to reinstate a Scottish Parliament after almost 300 years.

With the U.K. in political turmoil and much of England hellbent on pursuing a split from the European Union that Scotland voted against, the museum is again in tune with the age. Only now, the exhibits displaying Scotland’s birth as a sovereign European nation and its oversize influence abroad seem more like a call to arms than a statement of British diversity. It’s hard to filter out the current strains tearing at the fabric of the U.K. when viewing galleries documenting Scotland’s early efforts to assert a distinct identity, the role of Scots in shaping Canada, Australia, and the U.S., or the numerous Scottish pioneers who helped create the modern world.

Statehood is again on the agenda in Edinburgh as Brexit raises uncomfortable questions about the very union that defines the U.K. The political divide underscored by the Brexit vote was only reinforced by last month’s elections for the European Parliament. As candidates to become the next British prime minister vow to pull out of the EU on Oct. 31 with or without a deal, Scots are confronted with a stark choice: Should they stick with the English and their version of nationalism, or roll the independence dice again?

Nowhere illustrates the dilemma better than the capital. A compact city of some half a million people, Edinburgh was decisive in swaying a previous referendum against independence in 2014. That vote was agreed to by then-Prime Minister David Cameron in a bid to quell separatist sentiment for a generation or more. Two years later, 74% of Edinburgh voters opposed Brexit, the highest margin for “Remain” of any U.K. city. That preference for the status quo looks increasingly untenable for a place with such long-standing European connections and a financial-services industry that stands to suffer post-Brexit.

The north-south divide is visible in the words “second referendum.” In England they signal a rerun of the Brexit vote; in Scotland the meaning is to take another shot at breaking away from the rest of the U.K. The Scottish government, run by the pro-independence Scottish National Party for the past 12 years, reckons it’s just a matter of time before its U.K. counterpart in London has no choice but to sanction another vote. A spokesman for the administration in Edinburgh says the U.K. policy of blocking a repeat of the 2014 referendum will simply prove to be democratically unsustainable.

“There’s a definite shift in independence support,” says Simon Pia, a former communications director for the Labour Party in the Scottish Parliament who was involved in the campaign for a “No” vote in 2014. Now a lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University, he’s since switched to the “Yes” camp, largely as a result of what he sees as a growing political and cultural gulf between Scotland and its southern neighbor. While English politics is divided along Brexit lines, the parties in Scotland cleave along pro- or anti-independence lines. Pia says his students now are overwhelmingly for independence, but not necessarily pro-SNP. To them, moving from a devolved Scottish administration to independence is a natural progression, one likely to be accelerated by the election of a pro-Brexit Conservative leader like Boris Johnson, who is yet “more of an alienation” to Scots.

Whether you believe Scotland can afford to go it alone or not—and argument rages on the point—there’s already plenty to differentiate the nation and its 5.4 million inhabitants from the rest of the country. Three Scottish banks are allowed to print their own uniquely designed pound notes (much to the bemusement of London shopkeepers); the country has its own legal system, a separate education program, and television channels, one of them in Gaelic. The government keeps university tuition free for Scots, and medicine prescriptions are funded. In England, you pay.

North of the border, the spending cuts that have been a hallmark of the U.K. since the financial crisis and fueled the populist revolt that delivered the Brexit vote have been resisted. After Scotland won more financial powers as a concession by London to try to kill off the independence debate, higher-rate taxpayers there have to pony up more than their English and Welsh counterparts to support public services. The SNP government has made efforts to forge a narrative of an inclusive social democratic nationalism, where foreigners are welcome to share in Scotland’s journey—and staff the vital tourism and hospitality industry—in sharp contrast to the U.K. Conservative government’s push to curb immigration.

The upshot is a political map of Scotland in which not one region voted for Brexit. In the elections for the European Parliament, the SNP placed first in each district, even if the proportional system meant it didn’t win all the seats. “Increasingly, Scotland and the U.K. are on different political paths,” First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who heads the SNP, said in a speech to the European Policy Center in Brussels on June 11. “We have to confront whether the better response to that is to have the ability to be independent and shape our own future.”

Whereas Wales was subjugated by Edward I of England in the 13th century, becoming a principality, Scotland remained a sovereign nation until the negotiated union with England of 1707, a deal backed by the nobility that was greeted with riots on the streets of Scotland’s cities. Despite the subsequent three centuries of Great Britain and empire, it takes only a short stroll in central Edinburgh to discover the vestiges of Scottish nationhood and a proud European heritage.

From the National Museum it’s just a two-minute walk to the Royal Mile, which starts at Edinburgh’s commanding hilltop castle. In its vicinity, you’ll find a statue of David Hume, the 18th century philosopher and historian who was among the leaders in Scotland of the Enlightenment. While a part of the union, Edinburgh was a center of the creative flowering that swept Europe, noted for the diversity of its disciplines, from Adam Smith’s treatises on economics to James Hutton’s pioneering work on geology. Voltaire said that “we look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilization.” France has an expanded cultural and diplomatic center off the Royal Mile, while the majority of EU countries have established consular representation, most recently Hungary. Direct flights connect Edinburgh to at least 20 of the EU’s 28 capitals.

Farther down the road stands St Giles’ Cathedral, a reminder that Scotland retains its own national church—it’s not the Church of England here—and behind it on Parliament Square, site of the old legislature, is the Faculty of Advocates, evidence of the distinct Scots legal system. Then there’s the towering sandstone headquarters of what was the Bank of Scotland, founded in 1695, a year after the Bank of England in London.

At the foot of the Royal Mile is the Palace of Holyroodhouse, once the home of James VI, the son of Mary Queen of Scots who succeeded where she’d failed and assumed the English throne as James I. It’s now Queen Elizabeth’s residence when in Edinburgh. Opposite is the Scottish Parliament building, designed by the late Catalan architect Enric Miralles, where Italian panini are on sale alongside Scottish cheese and ham toasties, and a latte macchiato can be enjoyed with a chocolate-and-marshmallow Tunnock’s teacake.

Scotland’s institutional divergences were, if not quite encouraged, permitted to survive as the price of union. To independence supporters, they look ever more like the foundation stones of what would be Europe’s newest state. Even some people in the financial industry—dominated by Standard Life Aberdeen and other companies rooted in the 19th century and once a mainstay of unionism—are having doubts. John Young, 52, an actuary who’s worked in insurance and banking for most of his career, including a 15-year stint at Royal Bank of Scotland during the boom and bust years, might be said to personify Edinburgh. Politically, he was a Conservative supporter since his time at Oxford in the 1980s, and canvassed for the “Better Together” campaign against independence in 2014. Then came Brexit. He voted for the SNP in the European elections to protest against leaving the EU. He says he’d vote for independence given the chance if the next Conservative leader pursues a Brexit that cuts Britain adrift and continues to pander to what he sees as England’s lurch to the political right. “The end point is that the English nationalism that’s growing will force Scotland out of the union,” he says.

There is, of course, an irony in the constitutional fallout from England’s rediscovered nationalism, as espoused by Brexit hard-liners such as Johnson and most of the other candidates for Tory leader. While they agonize over the so-called backstop preventing a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland—a device they see as trapping the U.K. in a loveless embrace with the EU—they pay little heed in public to Scotland’s fate in a post-Brexit Britain. Only Rory Stewart, whose father was Scottish, has gone out of his way to make a compelling case for the union, saying that Scots independence “wouldn’t mean war, or anarchy, but it would be a tragedy.” He’s a long shot for the job.

For all the public conversions of “No” campaigners to the cause of independence, perhaps surprisingly, polls have yet to show any surge in support for quitting the U.K. Opinion remains roughly split down the middle. The SNP is meanwhile criticized for a poor record of delivery in the policy areas over which it has control, most notably on high school education. Opponents of full autonomy say the SNP’s spending policies depend on the transfer of money that comes with being part of the U.K.

Despite lessons learned from 2014, questions about the $225 billion economy—especially the future for Scotland’s high level of state involvement, its public debt, and the currency—remain the Achilles’ heel of the independence movement. The North Sea oil industry, the cash cow that would effectively fund the breakaway, is a shadow of what it was even five years ago. The country’s fate as an EU member is unclear, with constitutional experts divided on the barriers to Scotland’s readmission to a club from which—as part of the U.K.—it faces forcible ejection. The Conservatives in Scotland, led by Ruth Davidson, outperformed in the 2017 general election that cost Theresa May her parliamentary majority by framing the ballot as a vote against another independence referendum. Nor is there any clarity on how a second vote could even come about, since most candidates to replace May reject legislating for one, saying the matter is settled.

And yet these seem like secondary considerations given the chaos of Brexit. There are no shortage of scenarios leading to what Scots call “Indyref2.” Sturgeon’s government is already preparing legislation for another vote. She’s suggested it might be held next year, though the SNP may prefer to run in the 2021 Scottish elections explicitly on the question of independence. Until then, in the eyes of the Scottish government, any of those bidding to become prime minister would suit its purposes, boosting the case for autonomy. “Fundamentally, whatever your view on independence, the point of consensus should be for the Scottish people to decide that—and circumstances have changed pretty dramatically since 2014,” Sturgeon said in Brussels. “The people of Scotland have to have a choice before it’s too late to stop the damage of Brexit being done.”

In the National Museum of Scotland, an information panel outlining the origins of the 1707 Act of Union offers a word of caution against any rush to constitutional change, whether Brexit or Scottish independence. Many backers of the union then, “expected Scotland to gain immediately from access to England’s great trading empire,’’ it reads. “They were to be disappointed.” It would take many years, until later in the 18th century in fact, for the Scottish economy to take off.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Howard Chua-Eoan at hchuaeoan@bloomberg.net

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