Scottish independence: the Nationalists win by losing.

The Scottish Play

by Theodore Dalrymple

Last week’s referendum on Scottish independence was an excellent illustration of the famous dictum of Frédéric Bastiat, the nineteenth-century French liberal economist, that the state is the means by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else. The defeated leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party, Alex Salmond, offered the Scottish people a vision of a fairer country (fairer than Scotland now, fairer than England ever), by which he meant larger subventions for more people, distributed by him and his party.
Not surprisingly, he did best in those areas where people had most to gain from the promised subventions and where they believed that they were not getting their fair share of Scotland’s heavenly manna—oil and gas from the North Sea. This is not to say that those who voted against him were all sturdy burghers, anxious to stand on their own economic feet; many may have calculated that, with the oil and gas running out, the subventions would be larger and safer in the long run if derived from England rather than from the North Sea. But certainly most of those in the population hoping for some degree of independence from the state would have voted against him.

It was widely reported in the press that fear motivated the “No” vote, as if fear in politics were always an irrational emotion. But Salmond, theChavista of the North, said that he would repudiate Scotland’s share of the British national debt, a pronouncement more than sufficient to sound alarm bells among the better-informed. And those who rejected independence (who turned out to be the majority of voters) were probably fearful, too, of the very enthusiasm of the opposite camp, which often took a mildly intimidating turn, as enthusiasm for political causes is apt to do. There were reports of people opposed to the Nationalists being branded traitors; the majority was, if not silent, distinctly muted.

The majority was also fearful that Salmond had not been specific enough about the many problems that would arise in the breakup of a union that had lasted 307 years.

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Two books by 

Theodore Dalrymple