The whole world followed with great attention the referendum in Scotland, the preparations to which had lasted as much as two years! Some hoped that this country would vote for staying in the UK, and thus would not provide an unfounded justification for separation of many other provinces of some European countries. Everything was done according to the law there, though, and the referendum results have not been questioned, as it came about due to an agreement between the local government in Edinburgh and the central one in London. While Scotland had no legal grounds for separation, as the country has full autonomy except on taxation, foreign relations and defense issues, the British prime minister assented to this manifestation of democracy, yielding to demands of the Scottish first minister, whose party raised the referendum issue back in 2011.
Other observers, who were supporters of various separatist movements, would have liked to see this referendum to confirm their right of secession, or, as in Crimea, legitimize the illegal annexation of the autonomous republic which had no grounds for separation, effected in violation of international law and bilateral treaties. Moreover, Crimea was not a nation that had the right of secession under international law. There are no similarities to be found here, especially since Europe saw an example of legitimate divorce of Slovakia and the Czech Republic, which had together made up Czechoslovakia. The Slovaks were a separate nation that had autonomy in the federation and was divided from the Czech Republic by an administrative boundary. The divorce proceedings of the two countries were conducted legitimately, based on the results of the referendum which no one questioned.
On the other hand, there was no attempt to act in a legal and legitimate way in Crimea: it was just a simple desire of one person to tear away a part of another country. Moreover, following the West’s lack of response to such an international crime, the master of the Kremlin went on to try to implement a similar scenario in eastern Ukraine as the Novorossia project.
The results of the Scottish referendum, which saw nearly 55 percent of voters (2,001,926) saying “No” to the independence, while 45 percent (1,617,989) said “Yes,” were recognized in Edinburgh and London. First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond, who campaigned for independence, said he admitted his defeat. “It is important to say that our referendum was an agreed and consented process and Scotland has by a majority decided at this stage not to become an independent country,” he stated. He thanked those Scots who had supported the campaign for separation from Britain, and urged them to accept the “democratic verdict.”
For his part, Prime Minister of the UK David Cameron promised to give new powers to regional authorities, including Scotland, in his special statement after the announcement of the referendum’s results. He said the changes would affect taxation, budget expenditures, and social services. New plans for Scotland will be agreed in November, and the corresponding bill will be introduced in January 2015. He also noted that not only Scotland, but other parts of the UK as well – England, Wales, and Northern Ireland – stood to get new powers.
The Day asked director of foreign policy at the London-based Centre for European Reform Ian BOND to comment on what lessons should other separatist movements in Europe draw, and how the results might affect the position of Cameron, in particular on strengthening sanctions against Russia.
“I think the economic sanctions were very important. A lot of people were worried that the Scottish economy would suffer if they became an independent country, and a number of companies had said that they would move their headquarters out of Scotland. The costs of doing business would be higher and that they would have to prepare prices up. So, economic sanctions had some impact, but I also think that the appeal to the emotions, and we heard that especially from the former British prime minister Gordon Brown, was very important in the last stages, a lot of people felt like, what were you after 300 years as a single country. There were a lot of things which held us together, as well as a lot of differences. There are many people living on both sides of the border, who don’t regard themselves as either fully Scottish or fully English, whose parents came one from England, one from Scotland, or whose ancestors came from Scotland, but now they live in England, or in some cases, whose ancestors came from England, but now they live in Scotland. So, it is a very complicated picture, one which I am sure you are quite familiar with.”
Many say now that the UK will never be the same after the referendum. What do you think?
“Yes, without question. All the main political parties in Britain promised that after the referendum, if the Scots voted to remain part of the United Kingdom, Scotland would still be given more powers, more devolution. Now, we have to wait and see exactly what that means, but it probably means more power to change tax rates, so you are going to charge more income tax, less income tax, to have more VAT or less VAT, to change the balance between different kinds of taxes. So, it will be more powers of that sort, they already have a lot of power of the education system and the health system. So, I am not entirely sure what other areas they might get, but there probably will be some.
“But the question that this raises for England is what will be done for the English, because at the moment we have an asymmetric constitutional arrangement, in which you have a British parliament, which is responsible for the whole of the United Kingdom, and you have a Scottish parliament, and the Welsh Assembly, and the Northern Ireland Assembly, which have powers over certain areas of life in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, so, as I say, education, health, in some cases, policing, things like that. But there is no corresponding parliament for England or alternatively, no regional assemblies for the large English regions, like the north of England, or the west of England, or London. The government will have to do something about this asymmetry.”
Do the results of the referendum ensure that the UK will not seek to withdraw from the EU?
“It makes it slightly less likely that if there is a vote on whether to leave the European Union or not. It isn’t a huge difference, but the Scots are slightly more pro-European than the English. But as I say, it is not a huge difference, and when you consider that more than 80 percent of the population of the United Kingdom is in England, you can see that the Scots would have to be a lot more pro-European than the English to have a very significant effect on any vote. But in any case, we have a general election first, there is no guarantee that the Conservatives will still be in government after our general election, and the Labor Party has not promised to hold a referendum on our relationship with Europe. So, this referendum may never happen.”
Will the Scottish “No” to separation impact separatist tendencies elsewhere in Europe?
“It will be interesting to see what happens in the Catalan referendum, which of course the Spanish government have said in any case that they will not recognize, it will not be considered legal under Spanish law. But I suspect that this probably makes it more difficult for the Catalan government to win the vote, because if Scotland had been able to win, you might have seen a great surge of enthusiasm for separatist parties in other parts of Europe. But the fact that after this long very well-conducted campaign, in which a lot of debate about the issues and what the advantages and disadvantages of independence would be, that at the end of all that, the Scots voted ultimately by quite a convincing majority to stay in the United Kingdom. I think it must have at least some psychological impact on separatist movements in other parts of Europe.”
How will the referendum reflect on the political future of David Cameron, who dared take this risky step by holding the referendum and recognizing its results?
“This has to make him slightly stronger, and certainly if he had lost, if the Scots had voted in favor of leaving the United Kingdom, if they had voted in favor of independence, then his position would have been tremendously weakened. But the fact that the Union fighters won, that Scotland will remain part of the Union, I don’t think this is going to be decisive when people come to vote next year, as it normally happens, they will be thinking about whether he has made them more prosperous in the last five years or not. At least, it is not a negative for him that the Scots have voted to stay as part of the Union.
“Except irony in one very narrow sense, which is that the Conservative Party does not hold many seats in Scotland. It is the Labor Party which will benefit in terms of the number of seats it gains, in a way that would have been impossible for the Party of Regions to have won your presidential elections in 2010, if Crimea had had a bad time already being annexed. The voting in Crimea was decisive in propelling president Yanukovych to power. And the votes of the Labor Party supporters in Scotland are normally decisive in helping the Labor Party to power in years when it has been in power. The vote against independence is good for David Cameron personally, because he would have been a much weakened prime minister if he had been seen as the man who was in charge at the time when the United Kingdom broke up. But it is actually bad for his party in terms of making it much harder for them to win a majority and form the next government.”
How should the West deal with Vladimir Putin, what tactics or strategy should be used to force him to withdraw from eastern part of Ukraine and return Crimea?
“I think they need maximum firmness and there should be no question of loosening sanctions. I think that the way in which the European Union and the US have used sanctions has so far been weak, they should have been much firmer at the beginning. And they should not suggest that just observing the ceasefire would be enough to get even the most recent sanctions lifted. In my view, the EU made a mistake in not putting much firmer sanctions on Russia, when the annexation of Crimea occurred, because that was a huge breach of international law. And the EU responded as though somebody has walked on a patch of grass, they shouldn’t have done.”
May we hope that after this referendum, Cameron will be able to take stronger stance in the EU on imposing new sanctions against Russia?
“He may strengthen his position a little bit, but we now have about six months, the government has said, in fact, all of the major parties have said that in six months they will present legislation on further devolution to Scotland. And now because a number of members of parliament in David Cameron’s own party have said that something must also be done for England, that will be much more complicated, we shall probably have quite a difficult discussion about the constitutional arrangements within the UK. And then immediately after that in May 2015, there will be a general election in this country. And so, I am sure that David Cameron will continue to be engaged in foreign affairs, because he cannot avoid being engaged in foreign affairs. But the reality is that the closer we get to next May, or even to next March, the less time he will have to focus on foreign affairs, and the more he will have to spend time on domestic affairs. I am sure he will continue to argue for it, but I’m not sure he is going to be playing an enormously high-profile role in the way that Angela Merkel has. You know, she has spoken to Putin more than 30 times this year; David Cameron has spoken to him around 10 times, I think. I cannot imagine that is going to change very much.”
What choices are left to Ukraine, must it now rely on itself only?
“I hope that the US Congress will force the Administration to give you more support with this act in favor of Ukraine, which they are currently discussing over there. I hope that at least the EU will not lift any of the existing sanctions, although I think you need to lobby in the capitals of some of your neighbors, particularly places like Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, which are not actually very strong supporters of sanctions. I think it may be a good thing for Ukraine that you have Donald Tusk now about to be the president of the European Council. He will have a certain responsibility for leading the discussions of the heads of European governments.
“You are in a difficult situation, and I’m afraid that Europe has not understood the threat to European security that is posed by Putin at the moment. The one thing I can say is that it does look with the latest economic developments in Moscow as though the regime is starting to become more divided between those who understand economics and see the damage that is being done to the Russian economy and those who only understand the KGB.”
