If Scotland votes Yes my wife would be entitled to a new passport. Although it’s two decades since she’s lived there, I suspect she’d take one and I would be married to a foreign citizen. A trip to see her family would still be a long way but would now involve crossing an international boundary.
In this small way my life would change but, less obviously and far more substantively, other things would happen too. The political system that governs my country and the resources at its disposal will change. In some indirect but important fashion this will influence my health care, my job, my commute and my kids’ education.
But I don’t know how things will change and whether they will for better or worse. The UK economy might plummet at the hands of international monetary forces. But it probably won’t. Wales should get to renegotiate the Barnett formula that has underfunded its public services for more than three decades. But that will be the low on the priorities of a London government trying to figure out how to disentangle two nations that have been one state for more than 300 years.
Indeed, amidst the political fallout and bickering, it may be that Wales and its needs doesn’t get heard at all. It would be nice to think that the London government suddenly gave Wales and Northern Ireland more attention and more resources in order to keep us in the family but I suspect that won’t happen because too much of the English electorate doesn’t care about having us.
My gut instinct is that Scottish independence will leave Wales worse off but I don’t know that. Nor does anyone else and the certainty with which some Welsh nationalists are declaring a Yes vote will be good for us is no more than a hopeful guess. It’s not that I fear the economy being damaged; it’s more I fear Welsh politicians spending the next two decades gazing at their constitutional navals rather than working at fixing the inequalities and poverty on their doorsteps.
That should leave me wanting a No vote but the speed with which the Westminster elite is starting to wake up to the consequences of its introspection and London-centricism is far too welcome to want it to go away. Indeed, it’s actually funny seeing panic setting in amongst politicians who have been too smug for their own and our good. A Yes vote would give them a kicking they would never be the same again after.
I suspect it’s such feelings that are driving the Scottish Yes vote forward. The arguments on the economics of it all are so complex and so uncertain that neither side can actually win that fight. As long as the No camp keep on patronising the Scots and insulting their sense of nationhood (“we’re too wee to stand alone…”) then people will keep switching to the Yes side. They know it’s an economic risk but there’s enough sense in the Yes arguments to make it worth taking, especially when it means sticking two fingers up to a political elite that hasn’t cared much for years what they think.
These are interesting times as the saying goes. They will become even more interesting if Scotland votes Yes. If they do, I hope it works out for them. I hope even more it works out for Wales. But I suspect what’s good for Scotland, won’t be good for us.
Martin Johnes 