Scotland rejects independence
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
As a Scot who voted "Yes" I must admit I am disappointed with this result - but also not in the least surprised, this is pretty consistent with the polls.
However, thinking about it a bit more (even if it is 6am) - I'm actually pretty pleased with both the turnout and that 45% of people voted "Yes" - a few years ago that would have seemed crazy.
In some ways this reminds me of the devolution referendum of 1979 - while the result then was also a "No" it raised the topic as a realistic alternative so when there was another devolution referendum a generation later it passed easily so now we do have an independent Scottish Government which has a fair amount of power within Scotland (although no powers over things like foreign affairs and defence).
I suspect that, just as in '79, the UK is in for a lot of political upheaval over the next decade and I suspect that now that independence has been introduced as something to be seriously considered that in a generation or so it might also look more sensible than it did at first.
My immediate concern is that I hope that everyone can put the differences introduced by the campaign behind them.
It's inevitable that the referendum will occur again (probably under a Tory majority government) and with those said pensioners not around; you'll get the result you wanted.
I read something along those lines somewhere else as well saying in 10/20 years all the old folks will be gone and they yes will win, but hasn't history shown us that idealistic young just turn to realistic oldies with time?
"The referendum resulted in a 51.6% support for the proposal, but with a turnout of 64%, this represented only 32.9% of the registered electorate, short of the required 40%. The Act was therefore repealed."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_devolution_referendum,...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_independence_referendu...
"The referendum resulted in a 51.6% support for the proposal, but with a turnout of 64%, this represented only 32.9% of the registered electorate, short of the required 40%. The Act was therefore repealed."
This I knew but I'd never heard that...
"the SNP carried out a survey of the electoral register in the Edinburgh Central constituency. This appeared to show that the register was so out of date that even in an area where major support for a 'yes' vote might be expected, achievement of 40% of the electorate was virtually unattainable."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_devolution_referendum...
So the plan is to ask again and again and again until yes wins, isn't it?
To be honest, that doesn't seem fair.
I don't know what you mean by "it would not scale". How would it not scale? Every ~2-6 years, voters in many countries around the world are invited to peacefully overthrow their governments. The debates surrounding those votes commonly become existential, and debates about independence for some regions are common, if not constant.
It sounds like you're saying you don't want to have the debate. But it's simply not up to you. If lots of other people want to have it (say, 45% of the electorate, in this case), what gives you the right to say "it's not fair"?
When did it become unfair to have debates and votes?
That's disingenous. That works because there are precise game rules that allows it to happen. Changing the rules and the play field so often is a different story.
When did it become unfair to have debates and votes?
When they finally succeed, there won't be a chance to come back.
Changing what rules, exactly? Does this mean you'd be happy if Westminster just passed legislation saying every 10 years there would be a referendum under the same terms?
> When they finally succeed, there won't be a chance to come back.
Who is this grand overseer of the world that gets to decide two democratic countries are not allowed to decide to unite?
And you'll note that there was good reason for this: Scotland has gone from barely supporting devolution to getting it, to substantial increases in votes for a party whose goal is independence, to 45% voting for full independence, in a matter of 25 years.
It's then a fairly good chance that the views on independence may change substantially over the next 20-25 years too. In either direction.
Does that seem fair?
General evolutionary trends for human kind had been towards uniting. We started out as small tribes then evolving to city-size kingdoms and now to huge unions like China, Canada and USA. Big countries do well simply because there far far more resources at their disposal, they are more resilient to disasters and overall utilization of resources is much more balanced. Small countries have little chance of ever matching growth and momentum of large countries. Sure, Norway and Finland can be relatively "well off" by exploiting their natural resources but they simply aren't going to be country who goes to Mars or invents next big things. By law of numbers, number of engineers and scientists in small country will always be small and thus their ability to take on big projects always limited.
This trend towards increasing unification you point out is also a mixed bag. Large unitarian states have tended to be rather aggressivly expansionist empires throughout history. There is a critical balance to be struck between local autonomy and global integration, and this is where notions of Federalism tend to arise.
Many of today's territorial definitions are accidents of history with little regard for self-determination, yet locked into the Westphalian status quo. A global evolution towards higher economic integration, democratic peace, and frankly the nuclear preclusion of conventional warfare between developed nations, all conspire to form a new international security environment in which minor local territorial rearrangements no longer threaten profound effects on the chess boards of great powers. It then becomes possible to peacefully renegotiate some of this status quo.
I expect that this isn't the last we've heard from scotland, and that the future of globalization with witness an increase in both unification towards an integrated whole as well as greater subdivision and recombination within and among local spheres.
Another lesson from biology: it wasn't the continued absorption of all genetic material into increasing enlargement of single cellular life that brought us to where we are today, but rather the clever federalism of diversified multicellular life that sparked a revolution.
Organization Yes No Number*
---------------------------------------
Opinium 0.479 0.521 1087
ICM 0.477 0.523 1010
Panelbase 0.474 0.526 954
Survation 0.473 0.527 910
YouGov 0.474 0.526 3043
Ipsos Mori 0.474 0.526 951
---------------------------------------
TOTAL 0.475 0.525 7955
* excluding undecided voters
s.e. = sqrt(0.475 * 0.525 / 7955) = 0.006
So the polls were significantly underestimating the proportion of "no" voters out there. A similar effect was seen in the Quebec independence referendum, where the polls actually predicted a slight advantage for "yes" but the final result was a decisive victory for "no".
If you poll everyone eligible to vote, you get left-wing results. If you poll registered voters, it pulls a bit right. If you poll voters that match a reasonable "likely voter" model, you'll get results that are even further right and tend to be closer to the reality of votes actually cast.
Does this dichotomy exist in the UK and/or Scotland specifically, and if so, do pollsters there try to correct for it?
This event is a one-off. No cycles, no iterations, leaving a model which is essentially a best-guess.
Amongst those that do, they weight responses differently.
Some will only report those who are 10/10, 9/10 and 8/10 likely to vote in their topline figures.
Some will multiply the likeliness with the voting intention, so that a 10/10 likely voter would count as a whole vote, a 9/10 likely voter as 9/10ths of a vote and so on.
The UK Polling Report[0] - run by the guy in charge of YouGov, if I recall correctly - is a very useful site for explaining UK polling oddities!
The proportion of undecided voters in these polls was about 7.1%.
I don't think it's surprising that people are more risk-averse on polling day, when their vote actually matters.
- "No" is fundamentally negative, people don't like to be negative - Supporting the Conservative party is seen as violently offensive anywhere north Sheffield. People that do are less likely to give their opinion in public.
Given the lack of precedence, these are factors they couldn't adjust for.
The tide is now with change as for the Union to continue change must happen. A lot of the high yes vote was not because people 100% believed Scotland should be independent but more they wanted change to the system (and I do believe a Scottish Parliment offered a better system), it did come with a lot of risk and a possible lose / lose for the people of the UK as a whole.
It opens up the question of representation for people of the regions of England, Northern Ireland and Wales. I think a lot of momentum has been gathered for something a kin to federal government in the UK and is something I would very much welcome.
In essence that is in a lot of ways what that Nationalists wanted... to keep the currency union and have essentially the same terms of attachment to the EU.
I voted no on the day after a long time believing in a yes, the tide of politcal change swayed me that we may ultimately be better in a UK that had the momentum with change to our representation. The no campaign however ran an abysmal campaign and it pained me to end up siding with them, and that was in more in spite of what they had to say.
Being part of the UK benefits Scotland's internal trade immensely and to think terms would have remained the same with the rUK who would have become a foreign nation at that point was naive. I think a Union with the UK has much the same arguments as staying in the EU with respect to trade, contracts and funding. It is just English nationalism and Scottish nationalism have picked differing sides.
The only way it could work would be to abolish England entirely and break it up into regions.
The issues Scotland has are felt throughout the UK, and Scotland therefore has a lot in common as far as wanting powers as do regions of England out with the immediate surroundings of London. This in essence is why this result could be better for the regions of England.
It's less of a problem for the Germans because they are comparatively more invested in europe, for example using the currency.
If you want to keep sending an England team, keep sending an England team. Big deal.
As I noted in a different comment: The current situation of an England team is an historical oddity: England, Scotland and Wales are considered constituent countries of the UK. Only a handful of countries worldwide have constituent countries, and the exact details of in what context they are treated as countries vary greatly.
But if the UK was turned federal, there's no reason why the new federal entities would be considered countries any more than e.g. the states of Germany are, even though in the case of the states of Germany, many of the states still closely match countries with a long history as independent states.
Historically, Germany is quite different to the UK for obvious reasons. I also suspect Scotland , Wales etc would be more likely to table flip when dealing with a UK parliament than say Saxony would.
Growing up, I had absolutely no problems comprehending that my county (cumbria) was part of a region (the north-west), which is why we got Manchester's news on the TV. That region was then part of a country, and a few countries made up our nation.
We already have these tiers of identity. We already have borough seats, county seats, city seats, etc. If we federalized the UK along the same sort of regional identities the BBC does, I don't believe we'd suddenly lose any county/country/national identity.
(Perhaps not exactly the same boundaries, but I can't help looking at their map and thinking - yeah, that's a good start)
David Cameron's goal from this referendum was to win and close down any suggestion of real reform. There's significant danger that just a few weeks of chatter about it remain.
Part of the problem is that London is a bit in the same situation as the old "every road leads to Rome" saying, and amongst many types of businesses in London, anything but Zone 1 or maybe zone 2 is never even considered when deciding where to set up offices as a result.
So even a lot of London suburbs remain underdeveloped and ignored compared to what their population size would justify because we have the behemoth next door sucking everything in.
With the new-ish London rail projects that are increasingly aimed at cutting through central London, as well as the new orbital overground projects (one completed, another one further out in planning stages AFAIK) there'd be lots of opportunities to break the stranglehold of central London by making more of the smaller centres at the edges of London more attractive by making them more accessible.
I hope we'll see more projects like that - making bypassing (central) London easier both on a local level but also nationally.
I think that will actually have far greater long term impact on the UK than devolving more powers to regions (though I'm all for that as well).
The problem is that fixing this would be a long game: To get maximal effect you'd need to upgrade many routes to handle more frequent, faster trains, and increase train frequencies on many of those routes at potentially significant short term losses and commit to continue running them for a decade or more before there'd be much chance in changing peoples decisions about where to place their companies and where to live and work.
The EU also works quite well for small nations.
I think you'd find that on the contrary a lot of EU states are terrified of any steps that would legitimise more demands for devolution because they have their own independence movements to deal with.
And if anything, if the UK vote in important EU organs were split, it'd greatly increase UK influence on many matters in all the situations where interests are aligned, because most EU organs does not have representation proportional to population size, and many have requirements for super-majorities or even unanimous decisions on many things. That too would make many of the other large EU countries push back against any attempts to bypass a federal government.
[for those interested, the weighting is done by assigning 1 point per person in a region, and 1.8 points per square kilometer of area and using that to redistribute the seats in parliament across the regions, and is adjusted every 8 years; the 1.8 is/was tweaked to fit political realities at the time - I don't think there's any deeper thinking behind that specific factor]
Norway's electoral system, based on proportionality first, has a very good reputation. Indeed, it scores highest (9.93/10) in the Democracy Index 2012 compared to UK in 16th (8.21/10) and USA in 21st (8.11/10)
Actually, I'd say the bigger problem is that with no attempt towards proportionality, very many people end up with only their last choice of representation in at least some bodies of government -- that is, they are represented, in at least one body of government and possibly at all levels of government, exclusively by people who they view (and who view them) as enemies.
Even though the majority is for No, ~1.6m voted for radical change. This was not a "nationalist" movement. It was a movement of ideas (the breadth of the campaign has been astounding). A majority of the ~2m that voted No did not vote for the status quo: they just thought the risks too great.
On the contrary, the media insisted for weeks the referendum was "too close to call", citing endless polls that generally favored the 'no' vote, but were close to 50-50. Obviously people vote more conservatively when it matters.
Meanwhile, the bookmakers, who actually had skin in the game, knew a 'yes' vote was unlikely, and reflected that in their odds.
(I don't know either way, not being paying much attention to the press, though BBC Scotland has seemed quite balanced)
They were biased because they consistently took a negative stance towards the potential ramifications (not chance of outcome) of independence.
The possibility of Scotland voting for independence had that in spades; nobody really knew what it would entail.
Thus the media persisted in presenting it as a realistic, likely prospect, even when it was quite apparent (as per bookmakers odds) that a 'yes' vote was very unlikely.
If the media, who overwhelmingly supported No were reporting it as "too close to call" then either a) they felt that was the most effective way to bring about the result they desired, or b) they are idiots who don't understand the basics of the things they report on. Probably a little of both.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2755858/BBC-s-Nick-R...
That is, in fact, strictly what the article says, but not how people are encouraged to interpret it.
This single event spurred the whole BBC protest, and brought widespread attention to actually quite a lot of small, arguably subtle but definitely existent, biases in the reporting.
"But Michael Gove, the chief whip, made clear that greater protections would have to be offered to protect the interest of English, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs”
Notice he says its the MPs interests that need protecyes!, not who they represent.
The tricky part, technologically, is finding a design that preserves all the qualities you might want in a voting system whilst still having the new features. For example being able to delegate your vote by topic in a treelike structure is attractive, but this is somehow opposed to the notion of a secret ballot.
Can votes be re-delegated? Is this process transparent? For example if I collect a large number of "tech" votes , what is to stop me from selling them all to Microsoft?
I'd always imagined that the way you voted is visible only to your delegees. Thus buying votes at scale doesn't work because to verify someone voted the way they said they would, you need another voter to delegate to them. You gain visibility into one vote but it costs you one vote, so there's no benefit to be had by attempting to purchase. Of course you can try and purchase the votes of trusted figures to whom many people have delegated their vote, but this is no different to the existing system where you could try and bribe MPs.
It made me wonder what purpose further dividing of the world serves other than to introduce nationalism and protect primitive identities promoted by the politicians and media.
We're all humans. Do we need another line between groups of us?
Actually, one of the reasons I voted "Yes" is because I'm in favour of the EU - I'd far rather have been part of an independent Scotland that wanted to be part of the EU (even if there might have been a bit of a fuss about getting back in) rather than a part of the UK that seems destined to leave.
I don't think you should see UK exit from the EU as a dead cert. That debate has hardly even begun. Of course right now it's being driven by the Euroskeptics because a referendum date hasn't even been set and they're the ones agitating for it. But as this referendum shows, sentiment can change a lot in the runup to a vote.
There are lots of people who do not want to see the UK leave the EU, although I guess most of them would be in favour of a rebalancing of powers. Those people will presumably/hopefully learn lessons from the iScotland campaign and base the "no to leaving" campaign on positivity rather than simply listing all the problems the UK would face on its own. If the no campaign can seize the positive moral ground AND it has lots of economic arguments on its side, it should force the yes side into simply being negative about the EU and well, Salmond has shown everyone the power of positivity (even over reason).
The UK had the legal right to ask the EU what the status of an independent Scotland would be within the EU.
It's my belief that the EU would not eject 5 million citizens unless they asked to leave.
The UK government did not ask the question. I suggest this is because they have the same belief, and didn't want there to be clarity in the answer.
I don't think they'd refuse Scotland outright. But I do think there'd be a lot of "so you want to remain in the EU? well, what are you going to bring to the table?" discussions, with major pressure for accepting Schengen and accepting the Euro, and otherwise giving up most of the concessions the UK have.
Citizenship and self-determination are absolute fundamentals of the EU. I understand why there is pressure - particularly from Spain - to obfuscate this, but I very much doubt that the EU would be constitutionally able or willing to force a new country to jump through the hoops of rejoining.
in the modern world even a small state comes with a "magical" powers not available to any other, even if it is much bigger, group of people or organization. Thus a Yes or No for independence means "do we want to wield such powers" or "do we want somebody wielding such powers upon us".
I'm an expat Ukrainian, for example, and what I've seen since the Maidan events last year, was an explosion of hostility from all my friends, who considered themselves Russian or of Russian heritage. Somehow the idea, that my home country could decide for itself, without constantly praising the benevolent, though kleptocratic overlords, that Kremlin considers themselves to be, was offensive to my Russian friends.
That made it very clear to me, what deep, cultural gaps might exist between people, even if they seemingly get along well most of the time.
The Kremlin overlords got opportunistically into the game when new Ukraine government started assault on basic rights of Russian minority, like language. That has got angry a lot of Russians everywhere, even the ones who daydreams about Putin slipping on a banana peel. I ultimately formed my opinion when i saw (on western news sources) Ukrainian government forces (majority are volunteers from Western Ukraine - a lot of ancient hate toward East/Russia) shelling civilian cities - that clearly shown what new Kiev government thinks about the people and the region (i hate to say it, yet i'm starting to think that by taking over Crimea (i personally was really against it at the time), Putin, as a side-effect, saved people there from the fate of people in Donetsk/Luhansk).
Maidan was anti-oligarh, anti-corruption uprising which was skillfully channeled (by the regime of corrupt oligarhs to payback the debt to nationalist forces who supported them and to divert the attention from the fact that the oligarhs got even more power in Ukraine after Maidan - starting with the new Ukraine president, Poroshenko) into ethnic conflict with Russian minority assigned the role of the scape-goat.
1. The idea, that the basic rights of Russians and the Russian speaking minority are somehow violated in Ukraine right now is false. The only attempt by the government to do anything language-wise, was to instante Ukrainian as the only official language, meaning, that it would be the language of all the __public offices__, like the mayor's office or schools. This is the same as in the vast majority of countries. For example, there is a large Russian minority in Germany, but the official language is still German, but nobody is complaining about that, for some reason. You certainly don't see the Russian foreign ministry harassing their largest (and overpriced) energy market due to some "trivial" issues, like their minorities.
Secondly, having partaken in some local "Maidans", I can say, that I've seen as much Russians there as Ukrainians. Although the Kremlin (as well as some very dodgy parties in Ukraine) are hell-bent of framing this as an ethnic conflict, it is not.
2. I think it is wrong to think, that any war, especially such as in the East of Ukraine right now, can be fought without damaging civilan sites. The deathcount now is somewhere around 3 thousand people, most of them military personell and about 1/3 of that civilians. For comparison, the death toll of civilians only in Russia, during the second Chechen campaign was 200k people. Does that mean that the Russian government hates their citizens in Chechnya?
Furthermore, there is a lot of humanitarian effort in Ukraine, governmental and private, to help the people in that region. A lot of people have fled: some to Russia and a lot to western Ukraine and Kiev. But the reporting on that is quite thin outside of Ukraine.
That's it. Back to talking about Scotland and the UK.
>Furthermore, there is a lot of humanitarian effort in Ukraine, governmental and private, to help the people in that region.
Kiev government's refusal to pay pensions to old and disabled people in Donetsk/Luhansk - such a low blow. "Humanitarian effort", yep... (http://www.62.ua/news/621938 - site of Ukraine nationalists in Donetsk)
The website you've linked is the website of Donetsk city and not of Ukrainian nationalists. You are chosing your facts indeed.
the way it was happening before September. If you read the story - it was just a political decision to stop paying. It happened right after the decision about "special status" and public declarations of Kiev politicians about "no money to separatists".
Now, those local administrations are controled by criminal groups. If they were OK with violating the country's law and constitution, why wouldn't they be OK with skimming or even taking the pensions?
I'm not saying, that this decision is fair. Nor am I saying, that the civilians in Ukraine's east are treated fairly. But it must be clear, that the fault is solely with those idiots with machine guns and heavy weaponry spounting nonsense about "Novorossia". None of the crap the Donbass people are going through was in place, when the new government formed. It is only when the Russians sponsered criminals started enforcing their own rules the shit hit the fan.
Furthermore, the article says, that the pensions will be payed on government controlled territory. You must agree, that "paying pensions in a safe environment without any fighting" and "not paying" are different things.
I've seen quite the opposite. A lot of people here have openly said we'd love to work and trade closely with England - we just want our policies to reflect our differing political leanings.
The line already exists - it's there in the left of center, socialist culture we have in Scotland. Unfortunately as Westminster slowly drifts further right, we find ourselves (Scots) even less well represented.
I have, however, seen a real anti-Scottish sentiment from a very small proportion of English press and media. I know that's absolutely not representative of the English population, but it was disturbing nonetheless.
There are horrible people on both sides. Let's not let that color our opinions.
> For the no campaign there was relief: a spate of
> authoritative polls in the final days of the campaign had
> said the vote was on a knife edge, bringing Yes Scotland
> within touching distance of victory after a dramatic surge
> in support.
Many more people were betting "yes" than "no" (see oddschecker). This tended to skew the market towards a higher "yes" probability. At least one high-street bookie said the same thing. They said that they had their books setup effectively gave them a bet on "no".
This means the betting markets were optimistic on "yes". "Yes" was never that likely.
It was suggested that very large bets were placed on No, skewing the odds, perhaps because City of London workers had significant sentiment for No.
As adults, we often romanticize our childhoods, because well .. they are by and large romantic. The experience of discovering the world and yourself is the centerpiece of youth, and it's important that we have that perspective reflected in our democracies.
Does it? I would always assume that, but I'd shy away from claiming it without proof.
So we were already a sort of a "country within a country" anyway.
edit: Oh, it seems it's a Scottish term for Rest-of-UK. TIL.