Foreign Perspectives

Despite a very misleading campaign led by Alex, he still lost which just goes to show that there are quite a number of people who mainly feel British rather than Scottish. What would have been interesting is to have been able to analyse the breakdown of voting by age as, going by the media reports, it would appear that there was a much higher “yes” vote from the younger voters which, of course, is why Alex wanted the voting age reduced to 16.

Although the “no” vote won, what’s clear is that there are an awful lot of people in Scotland who think of themselves as more Scottish than British and their needs will have to be addressed in the years to come. The various parties have made committments to do just that by devolving a lot more power to the Scottish government in the fairly near future. What’s becoming apparent is that the Welsh and Northern Ireland governments will want similar powers granted to them as well as indeed will areas within England. That’s going to make life in the UK a whole lot more complicated in the years to come if local changes are allowed in taxation and welfare provision.

Will it, for example, move to more of a federation of local governments than a union of kingdoms? If so, how local would those local governments need to be? London seems to be aiming towards it’s own governing structure but if that’s granted, what about the other major cities?

If nothing else, it’ll certainly be an interesting period with the multiple negotiations going on. Already the Northern Ireland and Welsh assemblies are holding discussions as to the way forward for them and perhaps other major regions will join in that discussion in due course.