There’s something fundamentally dishonest about the debate in England over the future of the United Kingdom. Opposition politicians are happy to pander to English resentment at the way Scotland has been able to scrap prescription charges and university tuition fees. Egged on by the tabloids, both the Tories and the Lib Dems have attacked the so-called Barnett formula, which guarantees public spending per capita is always higher in Scotland, and re-opened the debate over the West Lothian question, asking why Scottish MPs should be allowed to vote on measures affecting England when English MPs aren’t allowed to vote on Scottish measures.
But when pushed for a solution to these issues, both the Tories and the Lib Dems come up with weaselly constitutional fudges. David Cameron this week lent his support to a proposal for a grand parliamentary committee of English MPs to vote on English measures. Others have called for a full-blown English parliament. But all those putting forward these ideas must realise they are virtually unworkable in practice. It would be far better if they simply said what they must surely know is true: that after 300 years, the union no longer makes sense and that it would be better for both sides if it was dissolved – the sooner the better. The union looks increasingly like one of those old-fashioned conglomerates that the business world has spent the last 20 years dismantling. For a long time, both England and Scotland did well out of the merger. Scotland got access to the much larger English and colonial markets, fuelling a remarkable Scottish boom in the 18th and 19th centuries. Meanwhile England reaped the benefit of an intrepid and resourceful people who helped forge, administer and defend its empire.
True, both sides have always complained about one another. English jibes about Scots spongers pre-date the union itself, while many Scots remain bitter about the Highland Clearances. Still, the union endured because both sides prospered.
That’s no longer true. Most shareholders in this enterprise can see the union is no longer delivering value. The Scottish Nationalists are in power north of the border and a recent poll showed a majority of English now support Scottish independence. Scottish voters wonder why their country posted growth of just 1.9% a year between 2000 and 2006, while their smaller, more dynamic neighbours, including Ireland, Iceland and Norway, now boast among the highest per capita incomes in the world. Meanwhile, the English can’t understand why so much of their tax revenues are being taken from places like London, where it is desperately needed for spending on vital infrastructure, and diverted to Scotland, where it is squandered on a bloated public sector.
If the UK was a business, Scotland would be spun off, put under new management, restructured and forced to stand on its own two feet. That is now possible thanks to high oil prices. Without North Sea oil revenues, Scotland is an economic basket-case. Although the government does not publish precise numbers, the Office for National Statistics reckons that in 2005 public spending accounted for more than 50% of GDP and that Scottish tax receipts contributed just 75% of this figure, leaving a putative budget deficit of a whopping 13% of GDP, or £13bn. But add in North Sea oil revenues – the SNP claim that more than 90% of UK North Sea oil reserves fall inside Scottish waters – and the deficit falls to around 3%.
Scottish opponents of independence argue that oil will not necessarily remain this high for long, and that UK oil production is falling steadily. That means that within a few years, Scotland would face either tough choices on tax and spending or eventual bankruptcy. But that is surely a reason to move quickly, rather than not at all – and for the English to try to get shot of Scotland as soon as possible. Scotland has a brief window of opportunity in which it must decide whether it wants to take responsibility for its own prosperity, using the cushion of high oil prices to make the difficult choices necessary to emulate Ireland and Norway or to settle for several more generations as a client state of the English.
The baffling question is why English politicians don’t point this out. The Labour party, dominated by Scots and dependent on Scottish MPs to deliver its policies, has a clear interest in preserving the union. But the Tories have no such worries, with only one MP north of the border. Perhaps what is holding Cameron back is the fear that, stripped of the union, England’s status would be diminished, that an English prime minister would no longer be able to strut around alongside US presidents on the global stage. If so, that may be the best argument yet in favour of scrapping the union. Britain has paid a high price over the last decade for grandstanding politicians willing to commit troops to battle but not the resources to support them. If English politicians were forced to confront the realities of our weakened position and devote more time to urgent domestic challenges, perhaps there would be an independence dividend for England too.
Simon Nixon is executive editor of Breakingviews