Votes in the British election will not be counted for two weeks but it is already clear that the result will have far-reaching consequences for the country. Unless the pollsters are all wrong, voters in Scotland – hitherto a bastion of the Labour Party – will overwhelmingly elect MPs from the Scottish National Party, which wants independence.
If this sounds familiar, there is a reason. A referendum on Scottish independence seven months ago narrowly failed to win a majority, but this defeat has paradoxically re-energised the nationalists. It is possible that they will win at least 50 of the 59 Scottish seats in the Westminster parliament.
This has several consequences. Without its Scottish seats, Labour cannot hope to form a government on its own. The familiar alternation of power between Labour and Conservative will be consigned to history.
The Scottish nationalists now see themselves as the kingmakers of UK politics, a destabilising position from a party that wants to destroy the 300-year-old union between England and Scotland. If they become the eternal coalition party, their demands for fiscal autonomy, while enjoying a UK financial guarantee, will alienate English voters, thus exacerbating tensions between the two nations.
Beyond the crude arithmetic of votes, there is a clear change in tone among the British political elite. As the insurgents north of the border gain in strength, Conservative politicians led by the prime minister, David Cameron, are warning of a Labour-SNP “coalition from hell” at Westminster.
Such talk, combined with the London tabloids’ depiction of the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon as “the most dangerous woman in Britain”, convinces ever more Scots that they would be better off going it alone. Making the strong case for the union somehow seems impossible.
The union between England and Scotland was a voluntary agreement forced on the Scots after their elites were bankrupted by a failed colonial venture. Faced with a choice between running a country with many clans and no roads, or joining in England’s global empire, they signed up to the union in 1707. Despite its initial unpopularity, Scotland thrived in the empire days and the union survived two world wars and the Cold War.
But with the English and the Scots both sitting in the warm bath of the EU, facing no great threats and harbouring no grand ambitions, people are increasingly asking if the union is destined to survive. Indeed, the question of the resilience of the nation state is not just alive in the Middle East, where Syria, Iraq and Libya are at varying stages of collapse, but also in more peaceful parts of the world. As social media encourages multiple identities – regional, linguistic, religious and ethnic – the nation state commands less loyalty from its citizens.
Simon Schama, the historian, laments the fracturing of what he calls “a splendid mess of a nation” combining many peoples, languages and customs, all jumbled together. Perhaps such countries need to find ever new reasons to ensure their survival.
Even if Britain succeeds in cobbling together a working government, it is clear that the UK will be increasingly disunited in spirit, with an English majority facing ever increasing demands from the peripheral nations.
While the short term may be uncertain, the long-term winner of these changes is clear. London is breaking its bonds with Britain to become the pre-eminent global city. It is all but unrecognisable to the rest of the country: a jumble of the world’s footloose super rich and ambitious poor, 40 per cent of its population are foreign born and a further five per cent illegal or undocumented migrants. Its financial success enables it to subsidise the rest of the UK. In return, it has sucked the talent and wealth from the rest of the country, large parts of which have become industrial wastelands, Scotland included.
London represents the other side of the coin of the nation state’s declining ability to command the loyalty of its citizens. To be a head of government is to be cut down in stature week by week in the struggle against irresistible global forces. But the mayor of a city has the power to get results on an urban scale which the voters can see and experience. This is what Joko Widodo is discovering as he moves from the role of popular governor of Jakarta to a struggling president of Indonesia.
If the struggle to preserve the union is lost, London’s role will grow. It will not be the ambitious servant of Britain, but the master of England. The rest of the country will be its hinterland.
Simon Kuper, a writer in Paris, predicts that the “Londonsphere” will soon encompass Manchester and Leeds and stretch to continental Europe, with people coming in to work by train for a couple of days a week from Rotterdam, Lille or Brussels. They will not be able to afford London house or hotel prices, but will use rooms let through Airbnb by cash-poor Londoners. The capital will transform itself into a super commuter destination where the rich, the talented and the ambitious can rub shoulders.
This London ambition to be the pre-eminent global city has clearly undermined the cause of preserving the union with Scotland. If the break-up happens, part of the reason will be that leading politicians in the capital – not least the ambitious mayor of London, Boris Johnson – see a future as custodians not of a major country but of a global city with a country attached. So if Scotland reverts to being the nation state it was in the 17th century, that’s not the end of the story. It will be up to Edinburgh to find its own place in the brave new world of cities. Otherwise it will be just another outpost of the Londonsphere.
Alan Philps is a commentator on global affairs
On Twitter: @aphilps
