I am still of the view Scots could have been satisfied by federalism. Its what the vast majority of Scots have said they want. But David Cameron made it a condition of the UK signing the Edinburgh Agreement in 2012 that there would be a binary referendum splitting the Scottish consensus into boxes labelled independence or the status quo. Even then, most Scots were still minded to vote No. So what happened? Well, in a nutshell, George Osborne happened. The shock announcement in February that Westminster would rule out any currency union after independence - not even think about it, not even discuss it - was a key moment in the disintegration of the old Union. That was the moment many Scots realised that the Union they thought was a partnership of nations was not a partnership at all. London was claiming exclusive rights to the common currency of the UK. It was as if the whole history of the Union had suddenly been rewritten as an afterthought to the British imperialism.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 14:13:56 +0000
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