The answer may be staring you in the face. Such might be
the best feedback the rest of the world could give the Scots as they discern
whether their region should break off from the state of Britain. How do the English
feel about the Scots? The answer is presumably relevant, as who wants to remain
where they are not liked? On this matter, the Scots could do worse than read
between the lines of a poll done roughly a month before the referendum on what
the English think should be Scotland’s relation to Britain if the region leaves
and if it stays.[1]
"It is striking how tough people in England are on
Scotland whatever the referendum outcome," Jeffery said. The message
appears to be, 'Vote yes, by all means, but if you do, you're on your
own.'" In the poll, two in three respondents in England said they would
not want Scotland to use the British pound even though the Queen would continue
as the head of state (i.e., Scotland would be in the British Commonwealth of
nations--a partial residual of the British Empire). Only 1 in 4 were in favor
of Britain helping an independent Scotland negotiate its accession as a
state alongside Britain in the European Union and membership in NATO.[2]
If the residents in the Scottish region vote against breaking
off from the state, English voters would overwhelmingly be in favor of giving
the region more autonomy from the state government. Lest this seem too good to
be true, those voters "also want to cut funding to Scotland and prevent
Scottish members of the British Parliament from voting on issues concerning
only England." The message here, according to Jeffery, one of the study's
authors, is: "By all means have more devolution, but you can't then have a
role at Westminster you do now, and don't expect any funding to flow northwards
from England."[3]
Either way, the not so subtle message for the Scots is
that they are hardly welcome. Such tension between two groups that both
self-identify as a people in one state is doubtlessly counter-protective from
the perspective of the state itself; two separate states in the E.U. would be
more optimal, for the E.U. federal system permits both homogeneous political
subunits, or states, and a diverse empire-scale polity—hence the advantages of
both. A state of two contending peoples, proverbially at each other’s throats,
is thus far from optimal for the federal system, not to mention the state
itself. Put another way, arguing that the UK is just such a political
arrangement that works best with such a basic contentious difference in terms
of group-identification treats the E.U. state as if it were like the E.U. (or
U.S.) itself, rather than a state thereof. A state in the E.U. cannot logically
be equivalent to the E.U., or then a subunit would be commensurate to that to
which it is a subunit.
For the Scots, the simple message is that it is not good
to remain in close quarters with a people who want the worst rather than the
best for you. Reading between the lines, the English want you out. I submit
that this factor ought not be a trivial one as the Scots deliberate on whether
their region should break off from the E.U. state to become a new, relatively
homogeneous one, and thus more conducive to both Britain and Scotland as states, and to the
E.U. as well.
