UK parties bid to stem tide towards Scottish independence

LONDON LETTER: CONSERVATIVES IN Scotland are a rare breed. Forty-six years ago, the party won a majority of the vote in the 1965 commons election. Today, there is just one Scottish Conservative MP in Westminster, and that marks an improvement on the zero tally left by John Major in 1997.

Today, the Scottish Tories are in search of a new leader, following the resignation of Annabel Goldie after the Scottish parliamentary elections in May, when the party won 15 of 129 seats in Holyrood – its worst result since devolution in 1999.

One of the candidates, Murdo Fraser, has caused apoplexy for some by proposing that the Conservatives north of Hadrian’s Wall should go their own way, renamed and rebranded, free from central office influence.

Everything else has been tried, he argues, insisting his idea would protect and strengthen the union.

For many, the Scottish National Party’s majority victory in May – an outcome believed impossible under the rules that brought a Scottish parliament back after a gap of nearly 300 years, means independence has come one significant step closer.

Flushed with victory, the SNP’s leader, first minister Alex Salmond, decided, nevertheless, to delay a referendum until the latter half of the new parliament’s life, believing London’s rule will become more unpopular as spending cuts bite ever deeper.

Meeting in Whitehall last week, British prime minister David Cameron, deputy prime minister and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, chancellor George Osborne, and Lib Dems leading Scot, Danny Alexander, decided Salmond could be left to decide all of the next moves.

Up to now, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, who suffered humiliating losses in May’s Holyrood elections, believed that they could not take a strongly pro-unionist stand, lest it play into Salmond’s hands.

The danger of such a course, however, is obvious, since the first minister is left with a free hand to argue that Scotland, left to enjoy the fruits of declining North Sea oil revenues, but, more importantly, expected, or hoped for, revenues to come from renewable energies, can be viable.

In Glasgow last week, Alexander presented the argument in pounds, shillings and pence: an independent Scotland would have a national debt of £65 billion (€74 billion), not including the costs of bailing out the Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank of Scotland, with a deficit of £14 billion last year alone.

The Cameron/Clegg offensive marks a realisation that the constitutional future of the UK could yet become one of the biggest questions in coming years – one scarcely thought about when the Conservatives and Lib Dems agreed on coalition.

Salmond’s referendum plans, though not formally in place, would put three options in 2014: the maintenance of the status quo, independence for Scotland or more powers for Holyrood.

Tempers in the relationship between Scotland and England have begun to fray, particularly with Scotland’s determination to hold on to welfare and other benefits now lost, or never believed possible, south of the border.

Under the tortuously complicated Barnett formula, public spending in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is divided in a manner that has long favoured Scotland, though it has favoured Northern Ireland even more.

Scots have free nursing home care, no third-level tuition fees for Scottish students and free prescriptions: taken together public spending in Scotland is over £1,000 a head more generous than in England.

Each such difference raises the so-called West Lothian question: why should 59 Westminster Scottish MPs vote on matters affecting English voters, when English MPs cannot do the same on those decided in Edinburgh?

Under Barnett, the Scottish government has £30 billion a year to spend, though Conservatives point out this does not include £13 billion of welfare spending and £7 billion of capital spending.

Former Labour MP, Tam Dalyell, in his autobiography The Importance of Being Awkward, believes Salmond will get a result "indistinguishable" from independence.

Politicians, he says, sitting in newly-created parliaments, or ones like Holyrood restored but recently, always want more power. Murdo Fraser, though imaginative in his ideas, is following a well-travelled road.