A referendum without tension

Without apparent tensions, the British government of Prime Minister David Cameron and Scotland’s first minister Alex Salmond have reached an almost definitive agreement on a referendum on independence for Scotland, which will need to be officially sealed next week in Edinburgh. Both sides have given ground. The poll will not be immediate, as Cameron wanted, but will be held instead in the fall of 2014. There will be a single question on the ballot paper: Scotland’s permanence in or departure from the United Kingdom. There will be no third option as Salmond wanted on greater autonomy for Scotland, something the Scottish leader knows there is greater support for in the polls, and the thing he really wants. It will be up to the Scottish parliament to decide whether to lower the minimum voting age on this occasion to 16 years.

Although the timeframe for the vote is long in politics, currently the independence option is not the most favored by the Scottish public, who do not feel uncomfortable with the 300-year-old Union of the Crowns, which maintains the identity and names of the nations that constitute it. From the start, Westminster realized it had little scope to prevent the Scots from having their referendum. Cameron, for his part, wants to clarify the future of the United Kingdom once and for all and catch the Labour Party, which dominated in Scotland until 2007, on the back foot.

Salmond insists that independence is not an end itself, but rather a means to defend the welfare state in Scotland

Salmond is perhaps the most astute politician there is in the United Kingdom. After taking power in 2007, he led the Scottish Nationalist Party to an absolute majority in parliament in 2011, and on this basis brought up the idea of the referendum, the legislation for which must now be decided by both parliaments. Salmond is an advocate for a light form of independence based less on historic claims and more on differences in the two nations’ social policies, a factor reinforced by Cameron’s cutbacks. While tuition fees have been raised in the rest of the United Kingdom, universities in Scotland continue to be free. This is independence based more on social values than identity.

Salmond insists that independence is not an end itself, but rather a means to defend the welfare state in Scotland with the riches of North Sea oil at his disposable to do so. Salmond is not talking about secession, nor breaking with the Crown, nor with sterling, nor with common defense, and even less so with the European Union. Of course, all of this would require subsequent negotiation with London and the current member states of the European Union if the independence vote wins, something Brussels is wary of.

In a system that was not extended to England, Scotland, along with Wales, won back a level of autonomy that is much more limited than that enjoyed by the regions in Spain. If the independence option does not win, Salmond will have a solid base on which to ask for more autonomy for Scotland. And if the Scots vote for independence, his position will be strengthened yet further. It should not be forgotten that what Salmond is also looking for is to ensure his re-election in 2016.