The efforts of the No machine appear to be “turning to dust”, says Dan Hodges on his Daily Telegraph blog. With just a week to go before the referendum, a surge of support in favour of an independent Scotland is underway.
This is largely Labour’s fault. It may seem unfair to “drop the burden of safeguarding 300 years of political union” on Ed Miliband, but Labour was always going to bear most of the responsibility for winning a referendum of four million voters who collectively voted for just one Tory MP at the last general election.
One of the main reasons for its failure is that Labour has been so persistently negative about life in Cameron’s Britain – a “cruel land” where only bankers and Russian oligarchs can “afford a simple Cornish pasty” – while simultaneously failing to put forward any convincing solutions. Why would Scots want to be a part of that?
But support for independence is also a reflection of a more general, and growing, backlash against the “political and financial establishments”, says Allister Heath in The Daily Telegraph.
Many voters aren’t interested in the facts about Scotland’s “collapsing oil production… or the black hole at the heart of Salmond’s plan for the public finances”. They hate the UK’s political and financial establishment and want to be rid of them.
This is dangerous, because a Yes vote would act as an “extraordinary catalyst” for secessionist movements with “explosive” consequences for the “economy, financial markets, business, political elites and all of us”.
There is a chance that many people “will turn to economically illiterate anti-capitalists, wrecking entire economies in the process”.
The referendum is a test case for the theory that economic stagnation and the “massive unpopularity of national politicians” create a threat to Western democracy, says Buttonwood in The Economist.
The desire for independence is born of the same disillusionment that is fuelling support for parties such as Ukip across Europe.
People feel powerless. In our globalised world, government finances are at the mercy of investors on Wall Street and economic decisions have to be made in consultation with the EU or IMF; jobs are at the mercy of international corporations.
People want local control. But in practice, making power truly local may be impossible, given that so many issues facing us – terrorism, climate change – are cross-border and require international cooperation.
The result is that “national politicians are caught in the middle”: they are powerless to influence global trends, but they have to pretend they have answers to get elected. The problem is that if they do win, on the false promise that “we can stop the world and get off”, it “may not be so easy to get them out again”.
‘Sometimes, politics takes your breath away’
David Cameron’s future could hang on the outcome of next week’s Scottish referendum, despite his insistence that he would “emphatically” not resign if there is a Yes vote, says George Parker in the FT.
Some Tory MPs think his credibility would be irretrievably damaged if, as head of a party whose full name is the Conservative and Unionist Party, he “presided over the disintegration of the UK”. Disgruntled backbenchers, a number of whom believe he made a mistake in agreeing to the referendum, could force a leadership challenge.
The Tories would probably force Cameron’s resignation in the event of a Yes vote, potentially “crippling” the coalition and “triggering further turmoil in the financial markets”, says Allister Heath in The Daily Telegraph.
At the same time, the Tory party, which has just one seat in Scotland, will become much more powerful in the rest of the UK, while Labour, which has 41 Scottish MPs, will be “dramatically weakened”.
A Yes vote might allow Boris Johnson, Sajid Javid, “or another new generation with broader appeal” to take over. Ukip would “gain heavily”; a referendum on EU membership would become “much more likely” and a “rest-of-the-UK departure from the EU almost certain”.
There is also now a question mark hanging over the date of the general election, set for May 2015. Alex Salmond’s target date for formal separation is March 2016. If Labour wins a majority in 2015, it would be running a zombie government, which would probably lose that majority less than a year later.
It has been suggested that the election should be delayed, but this is unlikely, says Sam Coates in The Times. Labour is hostile and the House of Lords retains an absolute veto on legislation that would extend the life of a parliament.
“Big decisions would be tricky without a new government.” Scots would therefore elect new MPs in 2015 whose terms would expire in 2016.
What happens then? asks John Rentoul in The Independent on Sunday. Assuming Miliband wins in 2015, as soon as Scotland became independent Labour would lose its Scottish MPs and Miliband would cease to be prime minister.
Presumably he would call a general election. But Salmond’s March 2016 deadline is fanciful, given how complex negotiations will be. Meanwhile, Miliband, far from “inaugurating an era of low gas bills and Swedish welfare”, would be remembered for taking us back into Iraq and supervising the terms of independence. “Sometimes, politics takes your breath away.”