Complete Tosh.com

In the Scottish elections today, suspicions are the country will back the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP). The SNP, cleverly, have managed to push their raison d’etre to the back of voters’ minds by only promising a referendum on separation from England in the distant future, rather than as their first act in power.

By doing so, they look set to win because they’re an alternative administrator to the war-soiled Labour party. They pick up the migrants from the Labour vote because Alex Salmond is roughly a hundred times sharper and more interesting than the current first minister, Jack McConnell, a man who not only lacks Gordon Brown’s intelligence, but also his effervescence.

Scotland, for the moment, probably doesn’t want independence, and a good thing too. As previously noted here, the budgetary shortfall after divorce would amount to £11bn, or 12% of Scotland’s GDP. As Ashley Seager wrote back then, in an interesting piece on the economics of separation, “Nationalists dispute the GERS figures, but few fiscal experts do.” As the money dried up, so would the significantly better Scottish healthcare provision, the cheaper transport, the extra money for education. Scotland’s problems with poverty would deepen, and the money to fix it wouldn’t be around.

But there are emotional reasons too for hoping that today’s vote for the SNP doesn’t lead Scotland to separation. Alan Cochrane, a Scot (and one I used to work for in a previous life) put it rather bluntly in the Telegraph recently: I don’t want my children to be foreigners.

I want to be Scottish and British. If Alex Salmond wins, it will be the beginning of the end of my Britishness and that of my family.

Englishman Timothy Garton Ash, in today’s Guardian, also argues a perhaps more cerebral case for the strengths of the union.

By accident rather than design, we have created something special here: a nation of four nations, a multinational nation … If all our identity differences – secular, Christian and Muslim, for instance – could be organised and tamed in this way, the world would be a better place. So why walk backwards along a road on which the world needs to go forwards?

All this said, I don’t envy the voters’ choice today. The shambolic Labour campaign and all the baggage that party carries, the mouse-like Lib Dems with the non-event of Ming Campbell leading their stagger, the lunatic fringe of Tories and hard leftists… even though the SNP are untried in power, it’s easy to see why they might pick up a lot of votes, especially with a raft of moderate policies and a leader with a plausible manner.

Should they end up the biggest party, they – and the rest of the country – shouldn’t imagine it’s entirely because of the promise of independence. A lot of the votes may just be expressing a desire for change, channeled towards Salmond and Co because of a lack of interesting alternatives, in a country that has been dominated by Labour politics for decades.

G2 ran a fascinating set of pieces today on the state of the union between Scotland and England. May 1 this year will mark the 300th anniversary of the act of union. Yet, notes Ian Black (another Scot who moved south) there will be no celebration on either side of the border – despite this being a very successful, and long-lived, union. I’d recommend his thoughtful piece on what’s going on to anyone interested in the dynamics of this sometimes fraught relationship.

My favourite line, however, comes in Jenny Colgan’s piece on cross-border humour. She quotes a classic piece of Barrowlands humour (although it’s almost certainly unfunny to anyone unfamiliar with 80s pop):

Without a doubt the free-ranging Glaswegian Barrowlands native wit is alive and well – at a recent concert by the Blue Nile, the famously beautiful and gloomy Glaswegian bedsit band, the heckle went up, “Could youse no’ play something a bit mair wistful?”

I laughed, and laughed.

Finally, the piece of economic analysis I’ve been waiting for: something that explains how Scotland’s finances would fare if the country was independent.

Do read it all, but the answer in a nutshell: not good, not good at all, not even with the oil at full flow.

It’s Burns night*, hence the haggis (right). In Comment is free, Iain MacWhirter hails our fine national dish, but delivers a damning verdict on Robert Burns’ credentials to also be a Scottish national icon.

Burns, thinks MacWhirter, was too ambivalent about Scotland and Scottishness. He’s not a fan of the poetry. And he leaves the cruellest cut to the end: “If he were alive today, he’d probably vote Liberal Democrat”.

Ouch.

But I think the failings MacWhirter highlights make him a perfect icon; being an “anglicised lowlander” puts him in the same category as most Scots today – Scottish enough to be conflicted, saddled with the shortbread and tartan stereotype but still regarded as a bit plastic by the highlanders. He loved drink and womansing, and after death was an influence on liberalism and socialism, four subjects of some interest to m’countrymen, I understand. As a legacy, it’s not bad at all.

Meanwhile, “See oorselves as ithers see us” might have helped fuel “that numbing self-consciousness and personal insecurity that afflicts so many Scots today”, but it was a fire that was burning – still burns – pretty brightly without any lines of poetry to add to the flames. There’s an interesting thesis in finding out who dropped the Bryant and May’s on that kindling.

So, really, here’s to Rabbie Burns, the entirely fitting national icon of Scotland. Who’s like him? Damn few, and they’re aw deid too.

* I celebrated in traditional style, with a slightly burnt deep pan spicy beef frozen pizza and an Arran blonde.

David Cox has written a provocative piece on the state of the United Kingdom. With both England and Scotland wanting to split, it seems, could the Scottish parliamentary elections in May prove to be the separation that precedes the divorce?

Nobody down here would, it seems, care much.

“The English have far more cause to do the deed. For a start, the money they currently spend appeasing the Scots could sort out London Underground’s problems or lend some succour to the Kingdom’s poorest districts, which are to be found not in Glasgow or the Western Isles but in the eastern boroughs of the Capital. The English would also be freed from the drag on their development caused by backward attitudes north of the border.”

Cox spoils his piece towards the end by sounding a little too piqued at the success of those with Scottish-sounding names…

“Even the Tories are led by a man called Cameron. Andrew Marr, Andrew Neil, Jim Naughtie, Alistair Stewart and Eddie Mair, together with various Kirsties and Fionas, keep us abreast of these gentlemen’s doings.”

But by then he’s made his key point…

“In the voting booths, the subsidy bawbees that keep public spending in Scotland 30% higher than in England are likely to weave their usual counterspell. Indeed, their persuasiveness will be greater than it has ever been. As Michael Fry notes in the current issue of Prospect, the margin by which public spending exceeds revenue in Scotland increased from £5 billion in 1997/1998 to £11 billion in 2003/2004. Scots are well aware that this is why, unlike the English, they can enter care homes without selling their houses, send their children to university without paying tuition fees and consume medicaments whatever their cost.”

This could be Gordon Brown’s biggest problem; a barrier to him being elected leader in the first place (Labour MPs may spot the danger of having an untelegenic Scot in charge) and a handicap for him should he make office (An England under the glare of his rule might start feeling it’s suffering from the democratic deficit that Scotland suffered from, under Maggie, all through the 1980s and most of the 1990s). Yet Labour can’t afford to lose the safe seats Scotland ponies up at every General Election, one of which belongs to Gord.

Will Scotland vote to go it alone? I find it hard to tell – I, obviously, don’t live there now. This nationalistic fervour has risen up before, most notably in the late 1970s and early 1990s, but quickly subsided. Scotland now seems to be more inward looking than then, so maybe things won’t deflate so quickly. Plenty of Scots also seem to be unaware of the subsidy the country receives, and cling to the naive notion that all of, or most of, the tax revenues from the North Sea will come to Edinburgh.

It all depends on how the border is drawn as it heads east, and the most likely scenarios I’ve seen don’t leave much to the North. But not much of this argument looks likely to be settled by rational debate; this one will be wrapped in all the paranoia, petty jealousies and rancour that accompanies talk of national identity and pseudo ethnicity.

It’s the picture that says: Scotland have just… er… romped to a 1-0 win over World Cup finalists France, with a goal from Gary Caldwell.

Given the French were in the World Cup final, and that’s the first time in seven years they’ve lost a qualifying match, I think that means we’re at least second best team in the world.

And, given Italy – World Champions – are down the bottom of the table in the same European Championship qualifying group, I suspect any fair-minded soul would agree that we’re now almost probably the best team in the world. Magic.