I’ve found myself sitting on the fence on the subject
really. I was born, raised and live in
Liverpool, a city once described as “In
England but not of it”, of mixed Irish, Scottish and English blood. Within 15
miles of Liverpool city centre I can be faced with road signs in a “foreign
language” as I cross into Wales. I spend most of my holiday time almost equidistant
from all of the aforementioned countries in the middle of the Irish Sea on the
Isle of Man, which just to confuse the issue isn’t part of the “Union” at all
(be that Kingdom or European).
I would consider myself to be Liverpudlian first and
foremost. Stereotypical English traits
are somewhat alien to me, I feel more at home with the Celtic traditions of
Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man than I do with warm beer and maidens
playing cricket on the village green or whatever the term used by John Major
was.
My initial instinct was to support Scottish independence,
but then it dawned on me that it was like watching your parents agree to
divorce but realising that you’d be left living with the one that you didn’t
actually get along with that much. So I
became more attracted to the idea of devolution, where the parents would have
separate bedrooms, but at least mealtimes would continue to be bearable.
There has been a lot of nonsense spouted about what might or
might not happen with independence. What
would happen to the currency, to border crossings, to the army, even the Elgin
Marbles. Acres of newsprint has been
wasted trying to answer these and other questions with supposition and speculation, completing ignoring the fact
that the United Kingdom has been here before when Ireland left. We don’t need to speculate about what might
happen, when we can just look at what did happen.
I can still walk, drive or take the train between the UK
(Northern Ireland part thereof) and Ireland without having to produce a
passport; for many of the years since independence I could still pay for a pint
in the bars of republican County Louth with a note adorned with a picture of
the Queen. The Union broke apart then and the world kept on spinning. The same would happen again.
Wherever you live in the United Kingdom, be it the nations
of Scotland or Wales; be it the historic lands of Cornwall or Northumberland;
be it the great cities of Liverpool or Newcastle; there is a problem, and that problem is
Westminster. Westminster has become an ivory tower inhabited
by men, and it is mostly men, who have spent their entire careers in what I
call the “SW1 bubble”, within a stone’s throw of the Houses of Parliament, who
surround themselves with likeminded colleagues and researchers. They think they know best, their friends nod
their heads in agreement, and before you can say “localism” Her Majesty’s
Secretary of State is dictating when your rubbish bin should be emptied.
At the last election the Conservatives produced a poster
“Are you thinking what we’re thinking”, when the question should have been
asked the other way around. The
politicians should be thinking what WE are thinking. But they are not and the latest poll from
Scotland, shows they are not, hence the current panic from Better Together as
it has suddenly dawned on them that the people want something different.
You can see why our former colonies around the world looked
at London, thousands of miles away and thought “those people have no idea who
we are or who we want to be; we can do better ourselves”. The distances might be shorter but people
around the United Kingdom look at London with the same thoughts now.
Westminster needs to let go, let the people in our nations,
regions and cities make their own decisions, some of them may be bad decisions,
but they’ll be theirs.
Whichever way the people of Scotland vote next week, it will
be their decision, and therefore it will be the right decision.