What If Scotland Divorced the UK?

"If the Scottish parliament votes to have an independence referendum, that's a vote that we would have to respect and we would have to allow that and enable that to happen." —British Prime Minister David Cameron, June, 2011.

Scotland may leave the United Kingdom. This stark truth has escaped the notice not just of the international community, but of most British people too. They don’t really yet believe that our country could once again be split just north of the wonderfully named border town of Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Life north of that border has always been different, with a separate legal system, currency, and, of course, wedding outfits, but the momentum building behind the Scottish National Party (SNP) and its leader Alex Salmond is historic, not symbolic, in its agenda.

300 years have passed since the Act of Union that brought England and Scotland under one crown, one parliament and a single language, but until the SNP won an unexpected victory in 2007, few believed that Mel Gibson’s dream in Braveheart would ever happen for real.

In 1999, the British Labour party passed a law giving Scotland a devolved assembly (like Wales and Northern Ireland), now known as the Scottish Parliament. The Parliament itself was a step into the unknown, and the chances of a small, left-wing party with separatist tendencies must have seemed slim. What the SNP had, however, was the sheer rage of three centuries of waiting driving them on.

When Winnie Ewing opened the Scottish Parliament for first time on May 12, 1999, she invoked the spirit of those centuries. “The Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the March 25 1707, is hereby re-convened,“ she declared.

Eight years sitting patiently in the wings, and four years in power later, the SNP has abolished all tuition fees for Scottish students, all healthcare costs (English people pay a low set fee per prescription), and it plans to create 130,000 green jobs within a decade.

So far, so socialist utopia—but the issue of independence is only now coming to the forefront of the SNP’s strategy as it seeks to consolidate the support of Scots who used to vote primarily for the national Labour or Liberal Democrat parties.

The main problem English people have with Scotland is not a nationalistic one, but a financial one. Each of Scotland’s 5.2 million people receives from the British government in Westminster services in the amount of £1,624 more per year than your average English person. The aforementioned socialist utopia does not come exclusively from Scotland’s own economy, and to add insult to injury, that free tuition commitment doesn’t apply to English students studying at Scottish universities.

For many of the 51 million people in the UK who are English, Scottish nationalism is therefore an attractive proposition to save precious government funding for themselves.

Pro-independence Scots believe exactly the same thing. Their logic is rather that the English are constantly stealing from them in the form of revenue from the shared North Sea oil fields, and that the subsidy argument disguises the true strength of Scottish finances. Note: this is the part of the SNP’s ambitions that could lead to a potential civil war.

Nevertheless, the SNP believe that with oil revenue and their own brand of social democratic separatism, Scotland would be infinitely more successful as a nation state than as England’s less populous, cruelly overlooked neighbor.

The question is: how this will happen.

In the next five years, the 12-year-old Scottish Parliament will almost certainly win more powers away from the British government, but, depending on Scots’ ability to accept a nation with an uncertain economic future, we could also potentially see Scotland replace South Sudan as the world’s newest country.

For the immediate future, that will rest on the question of a referendum, the terms of which are currently being fought out by Edinburgh and London. Only the British Parliament and the UK Supreme Court have the constitutional right to allow or block Scotland leaving the union of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. For it to happen, Parliament would need to pass a law or hold a referendum, potentially allowing everyone in the UK to make that decision (which would almost certainly result in the perpetuation of the status quo).

The Scottish government wants a referendum that would allow Scottish people exclusively to decide if they want to be independent. An added complication is that Alex Salmond, Scotland's fourth First Prime Minister, wants two questions on his version of the sheet of paper: “Yes or No” to complete independence and “More power or complete independence” as a second consideration.

The consolidation of power just short of secession in the second question is termed “devo max” by Mr. Salmond, and is seen as a way of biding time and appropriating more power on policies like tax before trying again on full independence at a later date.

If the SNP lost their referendum outright, it would set back their ambitions considerably, but this is very unlikely. In the most recent poll, 33% of Scots favored giving Scotland more control over tax and benefits while remaining part of the UK, and 28% supported complete independence.

There is a clear majority demanding more power for Scotland, but they are split over quite how much. If the SNP could maximize its power center in Edinburgh, taking more and more responsibility away from the UK government, it just might get the mandate required to call another, later referendum on independence, and this time it could win.

It would need the support of the British government, and would have to avoid a block by the Supreme Court, but the principle of self-determination for Scotland in some form is broadly accepted by all three major British parties.

For Salmond, an independent Scotland is a fantasy sketched out in some detail. He has said that Scotland would unilaterally join the EU, that the Euro would be its currency, and that it would have an army, navy and air force that “would cooperate with our western allies in a range of engagements.”

Salmond likes to recall all the Scotsmen before him who have fought for independence, placing himself in a long line of those wrestling power from the tyrannical English. “In my heart, in my head, I think Scotland will become an independent country within the European community, with a friendly, co-operative relationship with our partners in these islands,” he once said. Don’t underestimate the force of 300 years of dreaming.

Jennifer O'Mahony is a British journalist currently based in Edinburgh, Scotland. She posts as @jaomahony on Twitter.