The unprecedented announcement that the three party leaders are to dash to Scotland today to shore up the NO campaign is a show stopper, not because it may make a difference, but because it shows a degree of panic at the prospect of a YES win. A feeling reinforced by the irrational spectacle of the Scottish flag aloft over Downing Street.
Whitehall, famed across the world for having a plan for every contingency, has nothing prepared for a YES at all. On Cameron’s orders apparently. So if Scotland goes, nobody knows whether in 2015 there will be Scottish MPs elected until the actual date of separation in 2016, or whether none will be allowed in. In the former case it could mean a Labour government with a majority that only lasts a year. In the latter case it would mean Scotland is governed for a year from Westminster without representation. Neither can be said to be ideal. Or maybe a parliament that is dissolved on separation so that the rest of the UK has to elect a new one? Or extending the current one, already well past its sell by date, for another year? But if you think that is a mess, see what comes next, if NO wins.
If NO wins Scotland will be given major new powers including tax raising, spending and borrowing as almost all significant domestic policy will devolve to Edinburgh. It will then be necessary to finally confront the anomaly that English MPs cannot vote on devolved issues for Scotland but Scottish MPs can vote for those very issues as they affect England. If that is changed, as it must be, then everybody will vote for the issues over which they have jurisdiction, but not on devolved issues. This could easily mean that a Labour government loses its majority in London when the Westminster parliament votes on English issues, which would be the only ones on its agenda for the most part anyway. It could also mean that there would be a different parliamentary majorities for Welsh or NI matters because their jurisdictions are different to devo max Scotland and to each other. Because there is no written constitution and because nobody has thought anything through a NO vote could introduce a period of ungovernable chaos. If things were left as they are with Scottish Labour giving a Milliband government a false majority, democracy would be in ridicule. And of course whereas every other country in the world, bar two, can consult its constitution for guidance, Britain does not have one.
Whatever your ideas for the political map ongoing may have been, forget them. Great Britain is about to leave the road and take to the woods. Thursday week may not be the end, but the beginning. The beginning of confusion at the core of the British state the like of which has not been seen before. Whether the Sots vote YES or whether they vote NO. And nobody saw this coming.
