The Scots voted against independence by a ratio of roughly 55 to 45 percent.
My old editor, Bill O’Brien, used to tell me that a vote margin of more than 10 percentage points is a landslide.
Click on Scottish independence for coverage of the referendum by The Guardian.
Somebody once pointed out that the United Kingdom is not a nation, in the way that France, Germany and Italy are unified nations, but a union of three nations (England, Wales and Scotland) and a colony (formerly Ireland, now Northern Ireland).
Today the people of Scotland will vote on a referendum on becoming an independent nation. If they vote “yes,” Scotland will become an independent nation.
Pro-independence Scots object to the right-wing policies of the UK government. It is even more interlocked with corrupt City of London financiers than Washington is with Wall Street, and deindustrialization and financialization have gone even further than in the USA.
Scots tend to be pro-labor and supporters of the National Health Service and the welfare state. They oppose London’s policies of austerity and privatization, and they would like to get control of North Sea oil. But as a smaller nation, Scots would be a weaker entity in a world of superpower nations and giant corporations. The rump United Kingdom would also be weaker.
British political leaders have promised Scotland greater autonomy – maximum devolution of authority, or “devo-max” – if they stay in the United Kingdom. If that happened Wales and Northern Ireland would want greater autonomy, too. England itself might demand home rule.
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