THIS week former Prime Minister John Major made a speech in which he set out his views on, among other things, Brexit and Scottish independence. Amidst this wicked generation of Tory leaders, Major stands out like a beacon of sanity: a moderate, sensible, pragmatic and basically decent Conservative, trying to speak sense into a madhouse of zealots and crooks.
Major’s view is that the UK Government should not attempt to prevent another independence referendum but should seek to manage the process in an orderly way. He proposes a two-stage process, with an initial vote on the principle of independence and a subsequent vote to confirm the terms of the independence deal.
Whatever the rights or wrongs of this specific proposal (which may well be the subject of another column), the wider message of Major’s speech is that Britain’s days as a first-rank world power are over. The Empire is gone. The road to recovery lies through honest acceptance of what one has become. It is time to stop pretending.
This pretence-to-greatness is nowhere more evident than in the UK Government’s Brexit policy. “Global Britain”, “Empire 2.0” and “Punching above our weight” are all signs of a frankly delusional, and rather pathetic, over-estimation of Britain’s worth.
One of the iconic images of the UK in 2020 is that of a Spitfire with the words “Thank U NHS” scrawled on the underside of its wings. The fact that some people feel reassured by this is a symptom of profound unease in the body-politic. There is a nagging fear, desperate to be assuaged, that something we once possessed has been lost, or even that the “we” that was no longer exists.
For some, retreat into nostalgia-world (rickets and outdoor privies conveniently airbrushed out) is a comforting distraction from present realities. For others, looking back is more forensic; the past is not wallowed in, but dug into, midden and all, to reconstruct it. Either way – Antiques Roadshow or Time Team – many people are stuck in a perpetual Sunday afternoon where time moves too slowly to escape from the past.
No healthy country does this. A healthy country – one that is at peace with itself, well-governed, moderately prosperous, resting comfortably on a consensual constitutional settlement, secure in its sense of itself – does not feel the need to fetishise its history.
I rarely hear supporters of Scottish independence speak of Bannockburn or Wallace. All the talk is of green energy, huts in the highlands, strategies to diversify the economy, and plans to lift the bottom quarter of our population out of its long rut of poverty. We believe that Scotland’s best days still lie ahead.
It is impossible to think of Britain’s future in that way. Instead, we must dwell on Britain’s past – and that past is an imperial one. The key to understanding and unravelling the United Kingdom is to see it as an imperial state that has lost its empire, and therefore its rationale for existing. The United Kingdom was built by and for empire. The construction of the state itself – forged into an ill-mixed amalgam by conquest, dynastic intrigue and bribed treaties – is an imperial one.
I have consistently argued that Scotland should look to the Commonwealth for inspiration on how to achieve a peaceful, democratic and constitutional independence. Against this, it is often said that decolonisaiton models do not apply, because “ Scotland was not a colony. There was a Treaty of Union. It is a partnership of equals”.
This ignores the reality of imperial power. The Empire made treaties all over the world, from the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand to the treaties with the rulers of Indian Princely States. If a treaty means a country’s political independence is abolished, in return for token representation and a promise of the protection of certain particularities of “native” law and administration, then that country has been absorbed into an imperial state and has entered a dependent, essentially colonial, relationship.
It is also true that Scotland was actively engaged in imperialism and that its elites (as opposed to the ordinary people) did rather well out of it. Where would Dundee’s jute mills have been without Bengal and Burma? But where would the Empire be, without “weans frae pit-heid and clachan” forced by economic necessity to defend the Khyber Pass? This too is how imperial works: it mollifies and co-opts the conquered elite, while using the hardiest of its conquered peoples to do its fighting for it.
None of this is to exonerate Scotland from responsibility. It is simply to suggest that in disentangling itself from the dying arms of the British Empire, Scotland is following a well-worn path.
If it is good enough for Australia, Barbados or Canada, it is good enough for us.
This decolonisation lens also forces us to be aware of the risks and pre-empt them. Not every post-colonial independence process has led to peace and prosperity. If we want to avoid “turning into Zimbabwe”, so much depends on establishing proper constitutional and institutional foundations.
This column welcomes questions from readers Times journalist Kenny Farquharson, is next week’s guest on the TNT show. Join us at 7pm on Wednesday
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