The demand for independence just happens, for historical reasons, to be the form in which Scots are expressing a need that is felt around the developed world: the urgent necessity of a new politics of democratic accountability. The pleasure of witnessing this democracy in action is tempered by a nagging question: why is it not like this all the time? It is not, as the Scots have proved, because people are apathetic. It is because they don’t have, in day-to-day politics, a sense that they can control things. What really matters now is whether after the referendum, Scots return, like the rest of us, to a state of frustrated powerlessness, or can sustain the democratic energy that has been unleashed. If that’s to happen, neither a mini-Westminster in Edinburgh nor a lightly modified Britain will be much use. If the referendum is to be the start of something big, it must also be, for international democracy, the start of something new.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 17:07:57 +0000
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