TOWARDS INDEPENDENCE


governance arrangements. Experience from elsewhere suggests that a variety of treaties and bilateral agreements would be necessary, supported by less formal day-to-day co-ordination and communication between officials.


All such shared arrangements would of course


international markets – to underwrite the costly universal public services delivered in Scotland today, as well as those promised as part of the independence vision. The Scottish Government’s White Paper presents an embedded form of independence, with a variety of proposals for close co-operation with the rest of the UK. The Scottish government remains firm in its commitment to press for a formal currency union with the rest of the UK, in which Scotland’s government would effectively become a shareholder in the ownership and governance of the Bank of England. In broadcasting, according to the vision portrayed, a Scottish Broadcasting Corporation would


“ The UK government and


the UK parties have already ruled out a currency union


participate in a joint venture with the British Broadcasting Corporation, ensuring access to existing BBC services and programmes. The White Paper underlines a commitment


”


to maintaining the British Isles Common Travel Area (currently operational between the UK and the Republic of Ireland) to facilitate cross-border travel and avoid the need for internal border posts. There are many more institutions where the Scottish government wants continuity and shared service delivery. Many of these are functional, low-profile institutions, like the Office of Rail Regulation, the Civil Aviation Authority and the Green Investment Bank. The National Lottery and the Big Lottery Fund would also continue as now, and the UK research councils – an issue dear to the heart of many academics – would be shared and co-funded. Managing institutions and services on a cross-


border basis would require some mechanism for joint decision-making, oversight and governance. Yet the White Paper says very little about such


24 SOCIETY NOW SPRING 2014


Scotland is a distinctive nation with a right to determine its own future


be subject to negotiation with the UK government if Scots vote Yes in September. The White paper presents Scottish-rUK institutional co-ordination as the common sense approach, and in the interests of both an independent Scotland and the rest of the UK. This is somewhat presumptuous, optimistic and perhaps a little naïve. The Scottish government may legitimately claim to be in a position to determine what is in Scotland’s best interests, but it can’t define the interests of the rest of the UK. The UK government and the UK parties have already ruled out a currency union, with heavy hints that other cross-border arrangements may be unpalatable, impractical or impermissible under EU law. If there is a Yes vote, political pragmatism may point towards a more accommodative approach, but competing political pressures and perceptions of national interests will play a part. The referendum debate is in large part about whose vision of independence one believes would transpire after a Yes vote: The soft vision of independence set out in the White Paper, which would dissolve the parliamentary union between Scotland and the rest of the UK, but see Scotland embedded in a range of other economic, defence, social and cultural unions in the British Isles and Europe; or a starker vision of independence as separation, where Scotland ‘walks away’ from the rest of the UK, with all the financial, political and security risks that is thought to entail. A common critique of the Scottish


Government’s vision is that it is not offering ‘true independence’. But no country is truly independent in today’s world, unaffected and unconstrained by the decisions of others even if, for small states, the degree of interdependence is often greater than for larger states. The Scottish Government’s vision – not unlike the visions put forth by other leading nationalist parties in Europe – explicitly acknowledges the constraints on decision-making autonomy such embedded independence would bring. Their argument is rather that independence would mean the power to choose which partnerships would work for Scotland. It remains to be seen whether rUK would prove to be a willing partner. n


i


Dr Nicola McEwen is Associate Director of the ESRC Scottish Centre on Constitutional Change and ESRC Senior Scotland Fellow


Email N.McEwen@ed.ac.uk Twitter @McEwen_Nicola Web www.sps.ed.ac.uk/staff/politics/mcewen_nicola


The Future of the UK and Scotland Web www.futureukandscotland.ac.uk Twitter @UKScotland


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