From a story at the
Washington Post:
Appealing to the force of tartan pride, the Scottish National Party won surprise control of the regional Parliament last year, which thrust the separatist fantasy of hearing “Scots Wha Hae” on the bagpipes as the national anthem into the realm of distinct possibility. The British government, boxed into a precarious corner, has opened formal negotiations with the Scots to set a date for an independence referendum...
Scotland’s independence crusade is emerging as the greatest threat to the cohesion of the United Kingdom since Ireland achieved independence — a three-decade process that culminated in 1949, when Ireland left the Commonwealth.
Scotland won the right to a “devolved” Parliament in the late 1990s and has sweeping powers over, for example, its judicial system and government spending. But full independence would give the SNP the authority to fulfill a wide array of pledges, including expelling the British nuclear fleet from Scottish waters, withdrawing from NATO and unwinding Scottish regiments from Britain’s military forces overseas...
The push here is being watched with nervous eyes across Europe, particularly in countries that have long struggled with powerful separatist movements, such as Spain and Belgium...
[The nationalists] argue that an independent Scotland would be the world’s sixth-richest nation as measured by income per person. With an economy larger than Denmark’s and a population of 5 million, they maintain, an independent Scotland would be a tartan utopia always able to afford the kinds of progressive perks already enjoyed by the Scots but not the English — including free university education, prescription drugs and home health care for the elderly.
I bet this will be the key to the decision-making:
That dream, however, is based on one big calculation: North Sea oil. Most agree that a majority of energy reserves in Scottish waters would need to be ceded by the British to make independence viable. But with analysts predicting the North Sea could be depleted by the 2030s, even a predominant share of that revenue might buy the Scots only a few decades to come up with an economically sustainable plan.
I would welcome commentary from readers across the pond.
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق