Scotland will vote “No” in next week’s referendum. But I wish it were otherwise. Here are some reasons why I urge the Scots to vote “yes” to independence.
1. David Cameron will lose his job as prime minister. Not only will this be extremely satisfying when it finally happens but it will also provide weeks of excellent sport as he strives, desperately, to ignore the clamour from his backbenchers (and half his frontbenchers) demanding that he does the decent thing and resign. (Decent thing? Lui?)
2. Ed Miliband will also lose his job as Labour party leader. The Conservatives are barely a presence in Scotland which is why much of the electioneering for the “No” campaign has been carried out, very badly, by Labour. Were their campaign to fail – as it deserves – then heads would have to roll. Miliband is a liability to Labour: here would be their perfect opportunity to get shot of him.
3. Scotland’s economy is the bastard love child of a Ponzi scheme and Venezuela under Hugo Chavez. Till now, the Scots have been cushioned from this by dint of the fact that their socialistic economy – and the vast welfare zone otherwise known as Glasgow – has been propped up by English taxpayers. It’s about time we stopped treating the Scots like children and told them the truth: Father Christmas doesn’t exist.
4. Scots First Minister Alex Salmond has vowed that by 2020, 100 per cent of Scotland’s electricity will be “renewable.” It will be good to see him test this plan to destruction, especially on those many days when the wind isn’t blowing. And also on those many other days when the wind is blowing so hard that wind farm operators are paid government subsidies to turn off their bat-chomping, golden-eagle-slicing eco crucifixes. Presumably, if Scotland is independent, those subsidies will no longer provided by the English taxpayer.
5. It’s over, anyway. Better a clean break now than any more of this humiliation and grovelling. In the last few days, we’ve seen the Westminster class – led by an unusually abject Cameron – doing the equivalent of a desperate husband promising his wife the earth, if only she’ll call off the divorce. “I’ll do all the dishes AND I’ll hang up all the laundry AND I’ll pay for an extra couple of days cleaning AND you can have a new kitchen AND you have my full blessing if ever you want to sleep with George Clooney/and/or/any other film stars of your choice AND I’ll never leave the toilet seat up AND I’ll give up golf….” Speak for yourself, Dave. The rest of us have had quite enough of the whiney bitch and her endless unreasonable demands..
6. We’ll be like Texas and California. England (Texas) will have the satisfaction of watching the economy of Scotland (California) tanking under the weight of its massive welfare burden and its green energy commitments. Whenever some Labour or Lib Dem loon in the new English parliament proposes a socialistic measure, he will be howled down by the cry of: “And be more like Scotland? Over my dead body…”
7. No means yes, anyway. As Brendan O’Neill cogently argues, the last minute panic by the “Better Together” campaign has led to the promise of so many devolved powers – aka Devo Max – that Scotland will, to all intents and purposes, be an independent nation anyway. The only difference – not so bad from Scotland’s point of view but pretty depressing if you’re English – is that England will go on picking up the tab.
8. Most of Scotland’s matchlessly beautiful landscape has been ruined by wind farms. But not all of it – not yet. When Scotland adopts the Lev – or whatever its new, post-independence currency will be – it will be the ideal place to go for very cheap golf and walking holidays.
9. Alex Salmond is a serial liar. Some of the lies he has told on the election trail – such as his boasts about the vast oil and gas reserves which will keep the Scots economy afloat or his claim that the NHS (devolved to Scotland since 1999) could be privatised if Scotland votes “No” – deserve to explode in his face. But this will only happen if Scotland votes “yes.”
10. And I say all this not because I think the fracturing of the Union is a good or desirable thing. It will be a disaster for Scotland and a terrible loss for the rest of Britain. (The people I feel particularly sorry for are all the Scots who know what a disaster it will be and who wish they weren’t being dragged over the cliff by their First Lemming Salmond). But Scotland’s independence movement is a genie that cannot be put back into the bottle. All a “No” vote next week will do is make the “Yes” campaigners more embittered, more chippy, more bolshie, more determined than ever to secure Scottish independence in the future. So a “yes” vote is really just the least worst of all the options. It won’t make things better. But at least it will put us all out of our misery.