Why I am Voting Yes, Part I - Political Autonomy

I have felt somewhat nervous in preparing for, writing, and publishing this post. I do not enjoy confrontation, and unless an issue is something I really care about, I try to avoid bringing up topics that may cause contention between myself and another, be they my friends, acquaintances, or complete strangers on the internet. Unfortunately, I find myself caring more and more about contentious issues as I grow up (a process which I’m sure I haven’t finished with yet!). Scottish independence is one such issue, and one that I have been putting more and more thought into lately, not least – but also not solely – because I have recently moved to Scotland, and will be voting in the referendum in September 2014.

I will be voting “yes” when I go to the polling booth.

As indicated above, admitting this in such a public forum – especially one which I believe many friends, some of whom have equally strong feelings in the opposite direction, read – took a certain amount of screwing my courage to the sticking place.[1] A few days ago I went onto the “Yes Scotland” website and signed their online declaration. But such gestures are fairly meaningless if I carry them out quietly and privately at my own desk – hence this post.

Why will I be voting “yes”? There are a plethora of reasons, reasons which are often batted away all too easily when they are given together and in summary. For that reason, I intend to discuss each reason in a separate blog post. However, the one I want to start with is the issue of political autonomy, and I want to justify my sense in the importance of this by looking at a few maps and statistics.

Above are two maps, one from the 2010 general election, and another from the 2005 general election. (As an aside, I find it a surprise looking back how geriatric the 2005 map seems, and how recently this sort of graphical take on reporting election results seems to have been in vogue!) In terms of the four colours filling Scotland, red is Labour, blue is Conservative, dark yellow Liberal Democrats, and light yellow SNP. I chose these maps because they make it really visually striking how distinct Scottish voting patterns in 2005 and 2010 were from the rest of the UK, mainly England (although the size of the constituencies farther north obfuscates the Liberal / Labour divide – Labour won 45 seats in both 2010 and 2005, and the Liberal Democrats 11). Of the 307 seats won by the Conservative Party in 2010, one was from Scotland.

This political distinctiveness from the rest of the UK is nothing new. Pushing further back into voting history (and relying now, alas, on statistical tables rather than online interactive maps!), Scotland has never had more than one Conservative seat since 1997, in which year they lost the 11 seats they had won in 1992, leaving them with a grand total of 0 seats in Scotland for the duration of Tony Blair’s first government. Under the aegis of Margaret Thatcher, from the 1979 to the 1987 election, the Conservative Party did rather better, with a high of 22 seats (and 31.4% of the overall vote) in 1979, and a respectable low of 10 seats (and 24% of the overall vote) in 1987. However, during that same period, Labour saw a high of 50 in terms of seats (and 39% of the overall vote) in 1987, and a high of 41.6% of the overall vote (and 44 seats) in 1979. They never won less than the 41 seats, just under half of the Conservative total for the same year, filled in 1983. Only once since the end of the Second World War have the Conservatives gained more seats in Scotland than Labour – that was in 1955, when 36 seats went blue and 34 went red.[2]

This post is not about the pros and cons of specific party politics per se. However, a friend of mine has a comment that he makes from time to time regarding the current political establishment; “David Cameron, you won a minority government. You did not receive a mandate to rule.” And yet, in spite of that lack of mandate, the government since 2010 has brought into effect a variety of significant policies, some of which, it could be argued, reflect Conservative ideals far more than those of the Liberal Democrats (for example privatisation of public institutions such as the NHS and Royal Mail, and increasing student fees, to name but a few). In other words, these policies represent the voices of a minority of voters within the UK. Such a reflection is even starker when considering Scotland alone. In 2010, whilst 39.6% of voters in England put a tick next to the blue box, only 16.7% did the same in Scotland (I fear my mathematical skills are not up to figuring out the overall proportion for the ‘rump United Kingdom’).[3]

What this adds up to is simple: the political views of the majority of people in Scotland are not represented by the Parliament in Westminster.

I am aware of the existence of the Scottish Parliament: however, it does not currently have the power to make the same kinds of life-changing decisions that Westminster makes every day for the population of the UK. To highlight one (less hotly discussed) such element of governmental policy, there have been suggestions that Scotland would be better off with a different immigration policy than England; Scotland is under-populated, and relies on migration for population growth far more than the rest of the UK does.[4] Moreover, it seems that the people of Scotland on the whole have a less negative attitude towards immigration than those in England.[5] Michael Moore, the Secretary of State for Scotland, has argued that Scotland changing its immigration policies after potential independence would cause a “complete nightmare” in terms of Scottish-English border controls, suggesting that, in spite of the arguments against a “one-fits-all” approach to immigration, this is one area in which a non-independent Scotland would be highly unlikely to see any autonomy.[6] And this is just a single issue. And is it really likely that the vast majority of voters in Scotland who have, over the past fifty plus years, voted for left-wing parties, have ever desired the policies brought in by successive right-wing governments ruling from Westminster?

Therefore, one of the reasons I am voting “yes” is because I strongly believe that the gap between Scotland and the rest of the UK is far more than a historic line on a map. There is a clear disparity between the decades-long political allegiances of the Scottish population, and the rest of the Union. This is not about high-sounding phrases such as “Scotland should rule itself”, or “Scotland’s voice should be heard”, but the political reality for a population of over 5 million people inhabiting a country that is not just geographically but politically discrete. Scottish voters should be able to look at the government making the policies that shape their lives and know that they reflect their democratic voices, as 30 years out of the past 54 have not.

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Postscript: I am aware that one possible response to this argument is that political distinctiveness should not political independence make, otherwise one could argue for the total independence of certain counties within the UK which have traditionally voted in a certain way. It is difficult to know how to respond to this (although I think it is perhaps a shade reductio ad absurdum), except to repeat that this is but one of my reasons for supporting the dissolution of the Union, and that this reason is by no means independent of the others that I have yet to discuss. The "line on the map" between Scotland and the rest of the UK is evident in other ways, and it is when all of these differences - political, social, cultural - are taken together that I, personally, find them persuasive. 

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[1] If you are one of those friends, please let me say that regardless of differences in opinion on political matters, I hold you all in great affection. Please keep talking to me! :)

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Scotland#UK_Parliament.2C_Westminster
I refer both to seat totals and percentage of vote to satisfy the interests of both those who support FPTP, and those who prefer the idea of PR voting. I am aware that in PR terms there would be more Conservative seats in Scotland for many of the elections I refer to than occurred with FPTP.

[3] I have no idea how I would even do that without knowing the exact number of people voting in each constituent part of the UK...

[4] http://cpc.geodata.soton.ac.uk/publications/BP10_Patterns_And_Perceptions_Of_Migration.pdf

[5] As above; see also http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/english-teachers-case-highlights-parallel-reality-of-border-agency.22089683 and http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/uk-immigration-policy-damaging-scottish-economy-1-2936945

[6] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/10214943/Michael-Moore-Immigration-a-nightmare-if-Scotland-votes-for-independence.html