The right decision on a vitally important topic.
The vote in Scotland on whether to leae the UK is a matter for Scots but those of us who live in the rest of the UK - including scores of thousands of Scots who live in England and millions of British people like myself with a signifiant proportion of Scottish ancestry - are entitled to take an interest.
The FT's economic commentator Martin Wolf, wrote recently that England and Scotland have made is "the world's most successful multinational state" whose sum is greater than its component parts and whose shared contribution to the world has been immense. He added that being English or Scots is an ethnic identity, but being
"British a civic one … If Scotland were to depart, I would lose an important part of myself".
I don't often agree with Gordon Brown on anything but he was surely right when he told the Dailty Record that
".. this is a question that really is not just like a general election or one vote – it is about the whole future of Scotland over centuries.
“You cannot stand back when a decision like this is one that affects the children you love and it
affects people you respect and, in my case, you represent.”
Brown added:
“This decision, if it is made in the wrong way, would be irreversible. Therefore, my children and their children’s children have to live with the consequences of the decision we are making.
“It is because other generations are going to have to reap the effect of what we sow that I think it is very important that we take this so seriously and we actually look at what the real issue is.”
Alex Salmond recently said in the London Evening Standard that "Scotland will not be a foreign country after independence".
But in a sense becoming a foreign country is exactly what independence means.
Either way, it is not in the itnerests of Scotland, England, Wales or Ireland for the debate to be accompanied by smears, scaremongering, or vitriol from any direction, and as Alex Massie argues here there has been far too much of that.
The referendum campaign has divided hundreds of thousands of Scottish families and I was quite shocked last week by the degree of emotional discomfort and worry which appeared on the face of one of my Scottish friends when the subject of the independence referendum came up in casua conversation. (And for the avoidance of doubt, he made quite clear that this wasn't because he didn't want to tell me he was hoping for a yes.)
A recent opinion poll suggested that something like 20% of Scottish families have experienced a discussion on the subject of independence which degenerated into a row.
I think both sides of the debate need to campaign in a more positive, constructive and less aggressive way.
The FT's economic commentator Martin Wolf, wrote recently that England and Scotland have made is "the world's most successful multinational state" whose sum is greater than its component parts and whose shared contribution to the world has been immense. He added that being English or Scots is an ethnic identity, but being
"British a civic one … If Scotland were to depart, I would lose an important part of myself".
I don't often agree with Gordon Brown on anything but he was surely right when he told the Dailty Record that
".. this is a question that really is not just like a general election or one vote – it is about the whole future of Scotland over centuries.
“You cannot stand back when a decision like this is one that affects the children you love and it
affects people you respect and, in my case, you represent.”
Brown added:
“This decision, if it is made in the wrong way, would be irreversible. Therefore, my children and their children’s children have to live with the consequences of the decision we are making.
“It is because other generations are going to have to reap the effect of what we sow that I think it is very important that we take this so seriously and we actually look at what the real issue is.”
Alex Salmond recently said in the London Evening Standard that "Scotland will not be a foreign country after independence".
But in a sense becoming a foreign country is exactly what independence means.
Either way, it is not in the itnerests of Scotland, England, Wales or Ireland for the debate to be accompanied by smears, scaremongering, or vitriol from any direction, and as Alex Massie argues here there has been far too much of that.
The referendum campaign has divided hundreds of thousands of Scottish families and I was quite shocked last week by the degree of emotional discomfort and worry which appeared on the face of one of my Scottish friends when the subject of the independence referendum came up in casua conversation. (And for the avoidance of doubt, he made quite clear that this wasn't because he didn't want to tell me he was hoping for a yes.)
A recent opinion poll suggested that something like 20% of Scottish families have experienced a discussion on the subject of independence which degenerated into a row.
I think both sides of the debate need to campaign in a more positive, constructive and less aggressive way.
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