Like most distant international observers, at first I regarded this referendum as something of a sham. Early indications were that the 'No' vote would win by the best part of 20 percentage points and that the Scots would soon get back to complaining about the weather and their lack of success on the football turf. My reaction to the latest poll, which has the 'Yes' vote one point ahead, initially was shocked disappointment. Britain is the country in which I have lived the most years of my life after New Zealand and I have a immense fondness for the place. But on consideration, another part of me concludes that 'Great' Britain died a long time ago and the dismembering of the corpse is overdue.
Britain today is a country that ignores mass child abuse in the name of tolerance. It is a country where you can be arrested for quoting its greatest prime minister. And it is a country that chose to launch the Olympic Games with a celebration of a moribund public health system in which people are much less likely to survive cancer than in other countries. In other words, it is not a country its citizens should be particularly proud of. However, does that justify the Scots seceding?
Britain today is a country that ignores mass child abuse in the name of tolerance. It is a country where you can be arrested for quoting its greatest prime minister. And it is a country that chose to launch the Olympic Games with a celebration of a moribund public health system in which people are much less likely to survive cancer than in other countries. In other words, it is not a country its citizens should be particularly proud of. However, does that justify the Scots seceding?
The problem for the Scots is that the things they want to preserve by becoming independent are the things that have caused Britain to decline from its former glory. They want more National Health System, more welfare and more government interference in their social and economic lives. They think they are a more caring society than the rest of Britain and they want even more of it. The problem for the Scots is that England, or more specifically the Southeast of England, pays the bill and they delude themselves that North Sea oil will continue to pay for their already over-extended Socialist economy. Nothing could be further from the truth. North Sea oil is already starting to run out and without it the Scottish economy will look more like that of Greece or Portugal.
But in my view the worst thing about a Yes vote in the referendum is that it is a point of no return. Britain seemed like a lost cause once before - in the 1970s - but Maggie Thatcher dragged it kicking and screaming back into a position of world political and economic leadership. I have liked to think that the decline since Thatcher was just one more good prime minister away from being reversed. A Yes vote will lock in that decline and Britain will never be Great again. Personally I feel that is a very great shame.
But in my view the worst thing about a Yes vote in the referendum is that it is a point of no return. Britain seemed like a lost cause once before - in the 1970s - but Maggie Thatcher dragged it kicking and screaming back into a position of world political and economic leadership. I have liked to think that the decline since Thatcher was just one more good prime minister away from being reversed. A Yes vote will lock in that decline and Britain will never be Great again. Personally I feel that is a very great shame.
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