Stepping out from under the yoke of history: Can England and Scotland boldly embrace the 21st Century

The differences between Scotland seeking independence from the UK and the UK seeking to cut its ties to the EU is that Scotland is treated as a subject of England, whereas the UK may be subjected to constrictions for operating within the EU but it is not a subject of the EU. Conflating the two is disingenuous.

We have polls telling us that support for Scottish independence is waning but, almost as if to undermine that proclamation, we also have polls telling us that Ruth Davidson is more popular than Nicola Sturgeon. Where?

Britain has been subjected to six years of the most incompetent government imaginable, every policy decision taken by the Tories has been both calamitous and wrong; from the most recent folly of the incompetent managing Britain post the EU referendum to the decision to have the referendum with no understanding of what a Leave victory would mean, no contingency for a Leave victory, or even the legal capacity to deliver on a Leave victory. All of the Tories’ economic decisions have been proved to have been exactly wrong, 180 degrees wrong. Everything that the Tories inherited when they took power in 2010 has been squandered and, with the Tories giving away every last shred of publicly owned assets, Britain has never been poorer outside of times of war. Since 2010, Britain has, in effect, been at war with the Tories and their self-interested and self-serving ideology.

However, Scottish independence is not just about unshackling Scotland from the vagaries and vandalism of Tory governments. To England, sovereignty over Scotland is the final vestige of the age of Empire. The Empire was dying before 1939 and unraveled almost entirely after 1944 but there are those in England’s ‘establishment’ who cannot let it go and the UK and, most especially, England suffers for it. The question is not about Scotland standing alone but whether England can stand on its own two feet and of course it can, it just needs to step out of the shadow cast by the England that ruled the world while it ruled the waves. Britain is a slave to its history.

The United Kingdom has entered the 21st Century but it has not embraced it, some have pushed against perceived constrictions of membership of the EU but it is clear that we do not currently have a government competent enough to make a success of leaving the EU. Scotland voted to remain. The Union of Kingdoms should be reimagined as independent states and respected as such. England should stand on its own two feet and face the disastrous governance of the Tories with clarity. Scotland should embrace the opportunity to step out from under the yoke of subjectification.