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THE OPINION PAGES | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Scots Must Vote Nae
By NIALL FERGUSON SEPT. 14, 2014
GLASGOW TO most Americans, Scotland means golf,
whisky and if they go there steady drizzle. Even to
the millions of Americans whose surnames testify to
their Scottish or Scotch-Irish ancestry, the idea that
Scotland might be about to become an independent
country is baffling.
Yet, this week, a referendum could decide just that.
With days remaining before the Scottish electorate votes
on whether or not to remain in the United Kingdom, the
result is too close to call.
Born in Glasgow, but having spent most of my life in
England and America, I am rather baffled, too. From the
moment in 2012 when a deal was done to hold a
referendum on the question Should Scotland be an
independent country? the opinion polls have shown a
consistent and comfortable lead for the Better Together,
or No, campaign. But the past two weeks have seen a
surge of support for the pro-independence Yes
campaign. What is going on?
Lets first deal with some common
misapprehensions. This is not a belated revolt by
Englands last colony. The Welsh were subjugated in
medieval times; the Irish slowly conquered from the
mid-1500s. But Scotland and England were united as
equals.
In one respect even, it was Scotland that acquired
England, when King James VI of Scotland inherited the
English throne upon the death of Queen Elizabeth I in
1603. The merger of the two countries Parliaments by
the Act of Union in 1707 was also consensual, even if the
great Scots poet Robert Burns later lamented that the
Scottish elite had been bought and sold for English
gold. To this day, the Scots retained their separate legal
and educational systems.
Is this a choice, then, between being Scottish or
English? No. It is a choice between being inside or
outside the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland (its full, long-winded name). Like the
English and the Welsh, the Scots are British: Indeed, it
was James VI who, on becoming James I of England,
adopted the appellation Great Britain to reconcile his
new English subjects to having a Scotsman as king.
The distinction is important to Scots (if no one else).
The Scottish comedian Stanley Baxter once played a
prisoner of war in a film in which a German prison guard
yelled at him, English swine! Mr. Baxter, pale with
rage, replied, Scottish swine!
Scotland regained its own Parliament in 1999,
following an earlier referendum on so-called devolution,
which significantly increased the countrys autonomy.
Since 2007, there has been a Scottish government, which
is currently run by the Scottish National Party. So much
power has already been devolved to Edinburgh that you
may well ask why half of adult Scots feel the need for
outright independence.
The economic risks are so glaring that even Paul
Krugman and I agree its a terrible idea. What currency
will Scotland use? The pound? The euro? No one knows.
What share of North Sea oil revenues will go to
Edinburgh? What about Scotlands share of Britains
enormous national debt?
Is this going to be one of those divorces in which one
partner claims all the assets and offers the other partner
only the liabilities? Whatever the S.N.P. may say, a yes
vote on Thursday would have grave economic
consequences, and not just for Scotland. Investment has
already stalled. Big companies based in Scotland,
notably the pensions giant Standard Life, have warned of
relocating to England. Jobs would definitely be lost. The
recent steep decline in the pound shows that the
financial world hates the whole idea.
Yet the economic arguments against independence
seem not to be working and may even be backfiring. I
think I know why. Telling a Scot, You cant do this if
you do, terrible things will happen to you, has been a
losing negotiating strategy since time immemorial. If you
went into a Glasgow pub tonight and said to the average
Glaswegian, If you down that beer, youll get your head
kicked in, he would react by draining his glass to the
dregs and telling the barman, Same again.
So what kind of appeal can be made to stop the
Anglo-Scottish divorce? The answer may be an appeal to
Scotlands long history of cosmopolitanism.
The great Scottish philosopher David Hume was
contemptuous of what he called the vulgar motive of
national antipathy. I am a Citizen of the World, he
wrote in 1764. Humes account of the consequences of
union with England could scarcely have been more
positive: Public liberty, with internal peace and order,
has flourished almost without interruption. His only
complaint was the tendency of the English to treat with
Hatred our just Pretensions to surpass and to govern
them. (At the time, the English had not quite got used
to Scottish prime ministers, of which there have been 11,
by my count.)
Petty nationalism is just un-Scottish. And todays
Scots should remember the apposite warning of their
countryman the economist Adam Smith about
politicians who promise some plausible plan of
reformation in order to new-model the constitution,
mainly for their own aggrandizement. All over
Continental Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries,
nationalism was what ambitious hacks espoused to
advance themselves. Scotland was the exception. May it
stay that way.
Niall Ferguson, a professor of history at Harvard, is the author, most recently,
of The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 15, 2014, on page
A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Scots Must Vote Nae.
2014 The New York Times Company