Baby (erm Scotland), Please Don't Go

Hiking in Glencoe, 2009

I'm just returned from a glorious 4-day stint in Tasmania, but more about that later. The upcoming Scottish independence referendum has been much on my mind lately. I lived in Scotland for four wet, windy, wonderful years and while in Tasmania this week, I was seeing Scotland at every turn.

Tasmania and Scotland share more in common than just good looks. Both are occasionally forgotten outposts of a larger nation. Tasmanians talk about the 'mainland' and 'mainlanders' much the way Scots frequently talk about their southern neighbors - with mingled disdain and reverence.

Both are places where it is truly possible to leave the hubbub of modern life behind. You can still hear snatches of Gaelic in the highlands and islands of Scotland and Tasmania has no international airport; it is the kind of place where you can still rock up to the airport just 15 minutes before departure.

These are all wonderful things; and Tasmanians and Scots alike are justifiably proud of the beautiful, unique and quirky place that they get to call home. But they are also an integral, and I dare say essential, part of a larger collective. Australia would not be Australia without Tasmania, much as I find a United Kingdom without Scotland unfathomable.

I find it upsetting enough that England, Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland maintain separate teams in the World Cup and Commonwealth Games (but not the Olympics - please someone explain?!?) And that is just sports that I don't even care about; I can't imagine how upset I'd be by an actual divorce.

I have sympathy for the independence movement - I don't like the Tories much either. But I can't help but feel that this is largely what this vote is about or has become about; it's an anti-Tory referendum. It feels a bit petulant, a lot of people south of the border don't like Cameron & Co. and still bear the same scars of Thatcherism.  The vision of an independent Scotland spun by the left-leaning, socially-minded Scottish intelligentsia (see wonderful article by Irvine Welsh) is alluring, if hopelessly romantic, overly optimistic and disconcertingly quiet on the issue of currency and economy.

St Andrews

And further, the values, hopes and ambitions espoused by the gentle left are hardly those of Alex Salmond and his cronies who will, in fact, inherit the throne (so to speak). The political difference between the entrenched Labour elite and Alex Salmond's SNP is nothing more than the location of an office in Westminster versus Edinburgh. In an independent Scotland the new politics will quickly become the old politics; Alex Salmond is already taking Rupert Murdoch's phone calls.

I'm not an economist (by any stretch) and I want to keep this light, but suffice it to say that the economic nirvana envisioned by the Yes Campaign will be difficult (impossible?) to achieve whilst tethered to the her majesty's pound and their Bank of England overlords.  Paul Krugman put it rather more eloquently (and in far more detail), but the gist of it was, currency control is everything, just think about the state of the Spanish economy . . .

We left Scotland just as Alex Salmond was becoming a household name - North and South of the border. I think he is smart, sly and has masterfully manipulated the unpopularity of a Tory government for his own political ends. I have no personal stake in this vote and we left Scotland nearly five years ago now; but aside from my home town, it is the place I've called home the longest.

My husband is a half-caste (firmly in the 'No' Camp and proud of his Scottish heritage) and we're both graduates of the University of St Andrews. At 601 years it is third oldest university in the English-speaking world and pre-dates the Union of the Crowns by nearly 200 years - clearly Scotland was doing pretty well before they wedded England and I see no reason to think that an independent Scotland would not eventually succeed. But, I do think the post-independence road will be much harder than many are prepared to admit.

Regardless of which way Scotland goes next week, I wish Scotland nothing but success and prosperity, but I do hope they decide to stay.