Nigel Farrago

  

 



 

 

English Europhobia rejected in Scotland:
extremist English party leader taken away by police in Edinburgh

and told to keep out of Scottish politics.

 

 

 

 

Commenting on UKIP leader Nigel Farage's outburst on BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme, a Scottish National Party spokesperson said:

 

"Anyone who heard the interview with Nigel Farage on BBC this morning would have thought he has completely lost the plot.

 

He accused the BBC of hatred when under pressure and panicked during an interview. Nothing he says can be treated with a shred of credibility, and his partners in the No campaign should be embarrassed about his behaviour."

 

In his encounter with the public in Edinburgh the English populist rabble rouser accused student protesters of being anti-English, although some of them were in fact English, as was plainly to be expected! Accused of being a fascist and a racist, he promptly turned the accusation on his accusers, whom for good measure he characterized as "scum".

 

Refused passage in an Edinburgh taxi, Mr Farage was removed from the scene not exactly foaming at the mouth but clearly sufficiently confused and irrational in his disturbingly wild and woolly utterances as to give rise to serious concern about the state of politics in England, where recent opinion polling shows this far-right, xenophobic, anti-immigrant and anti-EU polemicist to be more popular than both the UK prime minister and the UK leader of the opposition.

 

As they say in Aberdeen and throughout the Doric-speaking region, gin ye dinna ken far tae ging, ye can aye speir (if you don't know where to go, you can always ask). An arrogant self-important loon such as the UKIP leader is not in the business of asking for advice, of course, labouring under the gross misapprehension, as he is, that he has all the answers.

A number of people in Edinburgh have taken it upon themselves, nonetheless, to tell Mr Farage where to go, while First Minister Salmond has observed that the fellow evidently knows no more about Scottish politics than he knows about Aberdeen, where a Scottish Parliament by-election is taking place. The UK Independence Party candidate's chances of holding on to his deposit there can hardly be very likely to have been boosted by Mr Farage's rude encounter with Scotland, which resulted from a fundamental and wholly irremediable incompatibility, I venture to suggest.




 

POSTSCRIPT, May 18th

 

As it is noticeable that there has been a certain amount of bleating in the anglo-media on the subject of free speech in the aftermath of the Farage farrago, it is worth remembering that Mr Farage encountered his detractors in the public bar of a hostelry in which he had chosen to meet the press in an apparent endeavour to project an image of a hail-fellow-well-met sort of a chap such as one might wish to have a drink with. The fact that some of his drinking companions did not actually assist in the projection of that image, and indeed shattered it, is no doubt distressing for Mr Farage, but then that gentleman's treatment of adversaries can be rather distressing too. He who has given the President of the European Commission a major dressing down in the chamber of the European Parliament should hardly expect to be exempt from a minor dressing down in a pub in Edinburgh, I venture to suggest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Election Battle of Dundee, The Graphic, May 1908

 

 

 

 

The theme of freedom of speech in election campaigns puts me in mind of the rough passage experienced by the Liberal candidate in the Dundee parliamentary by-election of 1908. That rather more distinguished gentleman was up from England at another point in time when constitutional crisis was in the air, concerning on that occasion mainly the power of the Tory-controlled House of Lords to veto financial legislation passed by the Liberal-controlled House of Commons. The task which Mr Churchill set himself was essentially to persuade Dundonians to oppose that power by supporting Liberal proposals for House of Lords reform by means of voting for him (and thus saving his ministerial career). To that end he presumed to promise Home Rule for both Ireland and Scotland.

 

Unfortunately for Churchill, his freedom of speech in the election campaign was assailed on numerous occasions by a suffragist lady, Mrs Mary Maloney of the Women's Freedom League, who insisted on following him just about everywhere he went to demonstrate in favour of women's rights by ringing a hand-bell when he opened his mouth to speak. Needless to say, Winston accepted this adversity with good grace, accepting as he did that other people's freedom of expression is no less important than one's own.

 

Therein lies the difference, arguably, between a fair-minded democrat and a loud-mouthed demagogue. The democrat regards the democratic process as a trial which candidates for public office should undergo, including heckling and even bell-ringing, so that voters can at least have a sporting chance of seeing what they are made of. Despite harassment, Churchill won the election, of course, and represented his Dundee constituency until 1922. (His elegantly tendentious account of a speech which he made during the campaign is worth reading and can be accessed here.)

 

The success of the President of the Board of Trade's quest for a safe seat in Scotland may just conceivably have had something to do with the fact that the "inconvenient junior", as The Glasgow Herald referred to him, was apparently making what were being understood to be promises concerning Home Rule (with implications for Scotland) which had not yet been authorized by Prime Minister Asquith:

 

"A new Government has come into being under a Prime Minister who, like his predecessor, is tied to Scotland by strong and intimate bonds. Give him a fair chance. Give the Government which he has brought into being the opportunity of handling the great machinery of State. Be assured that, if you do, they will employ it for the greatest good of the greatest number. I am well satisfied at what has taken place since I have been in Dundee. I see a great concentration of forces throughout the constituency. I see the opportunity of retrieving, and more than retrieving, the injury which has been done to the cause of progress and reform by elections in other parts of our island.

 

Ah, but, a very sad thing has happened; an awful thing has happened—the Liberal Party has gone in for Home Rule. The Scotsman is shocked, The Times is speechless, and takes three columns to express its speechlessness; The Spectator, that staid old weekly, has wobbled back to where it never should have wobbled from; the Ulster Unionists declare that the Government has forfeited all the confidence that they never had in it, and thousands of people who never under any circumstances voted Liberal before are saying that under no circumstances will they ever vote Liberal again. And I am supposed to be responsible for this revolution in our policy.

 

Why, the statements I have made on the Irish question are the logical and inevitable consequence of the Resolution which was passed by the House of Commons, in which every member of the Government voted, which was carried by an enormous majority—more than 200—a month ago—a Resolution which, after explaining the plain and lamentable evils which can be traced to the existing system of government in Ireland, affirmed that the remedy for those evils would be found in a representative body with an Executive responsible to it, subject to the supreme authority of the Imperial Parliament." (WS Churchill, The Dundee Election, Liberalism and the Social Problem, 1909)

 

Arguably true, but there was at that time, nevertheless, no actual officially acknowledged Government proposal for Home Rule either for Ireland or Scotland, and the Irish Home Rule Bill which was eventually passed, in 1913, was never implemented, as a result of which the Easter Rising took place in 1916 and an Irish republic was proclaimed. As for Scotland, it got nothing, of course, but parliamentary committees and cumulative administrative devolution until the Scotland Act of 1998 came into force, creating the devolved Scottish Parliament which Mr Farage abominated with a passion but now says he has accepted.

 

This only goes to show that there is no case in a democracy for allowing politicians, even mainstream ones who have shown promise, such as the young Churchill, to be treated with fawning and uncritical respect. As soon as the public thinks it spots a rogue, or at least a roguish deviation or inconsistency, the cry should go up and the hunt should be on. And, indeed, the hunt was on for Churchill when reports of his unofficial policy announcements reached Westminster.

 

Question to the Prime Minister in the House of Commons on May 6th 1908 from a Mr Pike Pease (Liberal Unionist, Darlington), whose pet subject was Home Rule, which was being mooted in connection with Ireland at the time:

 

"Mr Churchill appears to be a most uncomfortable thorn in the side of the Prime Minister. Yesterday the young Minister's pledges about Home Rule for Ireland caused embarrassment. Today his promises in reference to Home Rule for Scotland were subjected to some caustic comments; indeed, the impression cannot be avoided that much of his programme is unauthorized. Mr Pike Pease asked Mr Asquith if his attention had been called to the 'official announcement' that the Government was in favour of Home Rule for Scotland; and, if so, whether this measure would be modelled on that introduced for Ireland by Mr Gladstone. Mr Pease pricked his ears. This was his pet subject, and he must intervene. Would the Prime Minister, he excitedly asked, bear in mind that under the last Liberal Government the Commons passed a resolution declaring the desirability of granting Home Rule to Scotland; and was he aware that at the present moment the principle of Home Rule was advocated by a large section of members 'entirely on the basis of a scheme of devolution applicable to all parts of the kingdom?' 'That is so,' replied the chief. But, as for the main question, he surprised the House by declaring that he was 'not aware of any such announcement'. Was he not aware, the member asked him, of the fact that the announcement had been made by Mr Churchill at Dundee? Mr Asquith could not see why it was necessary to condescend to such details. He knew of no official announcement. Then, enquired Lord Balcarres, did the Prime Minister repudiate his colleague? 'All I have to say,' was the answer, 'is that the President of the Board of Trade is within his rights to state his own views.' But what were the views of the Government? For these the Prime Minister referred the noble Lord, amid laughter, to his speech in the course of the debate on Mr Redwood's resolution. Little could be made of this, but quite enough was said to enable members and the electors in Dundee to understand the real value of the fugitive's utterances." (The Glasgow Herald, May 7th 1908)

 

Reference to Churchill naturally puts one in mind of his much later speech on European union, which one cannot but encourage Mr Farage to read even if it can almost certainly be counted on to make no perceptible impression on him:

 

"There can be no revival of Europe without a spiritually great France and a spiritually great Germany. The structure of the United States of Europe, if well and truly built, will be such as to make the material strength of a single state less important. Small nations will count as much as large ones and gain their honour by their contribution to the common cause. The ancient states and principalities of Germany, freely joined together for mutual convenience in a federal system, might take their individual places among the United States of Europe. I shall not try to make a detailed programme for hundreds of millions of people who want to be happy and free, prosperous and safe, who wish to enjoy the four freedoms of which the great President Roosevelt spoke, and live in accordance with the principles embodied in the Atlantic Charter. If this is their wish, if this is the wish of the Europeans in so many lands, they have only to say so, and means can certainly be found, and machinery erected, to carry that wish to full fruition.

 

(...) Our constant aim must be to build and fortify the strength of the United Nations Organization. Under and within that world concept we must re-create the European Family in a regional structure called, it may be, the United States of Europe. And the first practical step would be to form a Council of Europe. If at first all the States of Europe are not willing or able to join the Union, we must nevertheless proceed to assemble and combine those who will and those who can. The salvation of the common people of every race and of every land from war or servitude must be established on solid foundations and must be guarded by the readiness of all men and women to die rather than submit to tyranny (...)

 

Therefore I say to you: let Europe arise!" (Sir Winston Churchill, Zurich, September 19th 1946)

 

More on this here.

 



Scaremongering

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

La Gaceta, May 12th 2013

 

 

 

 

Hysterical unionist scaremongering emerges as an art form with the publication of today's front-page spread in the highly conservative Spanish newspaper La Gaceta, picturing the mild-mannered and liberal-minded centre-right pro-independence First Minister of Catalonia, Artur Mas, as a sinisterly gun-toting 007 figure alongside headlines according to which "Catalan Separatists Want Their Own Secret Service" and are preparing to prioritize "control of information and cyberspace".

 

Meanwhile, in Scotland, as we know, anglo-unionists are going about cyberspace insinuating that the independence advocated by 'the Dear Leader' would lead to pogroms of immigrants of one description and another while they drown out useful debate with pernicious scare story after pernicious scare story of a more routine and pedestrian character on a daily basis:

 

"The fear seems to have affected even the BBC. Online monitors – fast becoming the great hope of democratic accountability – performed a quick, basic internet search of the BBC linking the words 'Scottish independence' and 'warning' in the same sentence.

 

Prefaced by the dreaded i-word and a colon in each case, they found: 'Pension shortfall warning'; 'Warning over weakened military'; 'Havoc warning from pensions firm'; 'Luxembourg warns against going separate ways'; 'Barroso warning on EU membership'; 'Michael Moore issues warning over vote question'; 'Border checks warning from Home Secretary'." (Robert McNeil, A Glimmer of Hope for Life after 2014 Vote, The Herald, May 10th 2013)

 

Be afraid, very afraid . . . of unionists, that is, who represent a true threat to democracy by robbing the people of intelligent debate, as Telemadrid attempted to do the other day by comparing First Minister Mas with both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin in the same broadcast, in which independentists were accused of, among other things, propagandist manipulation, which is a field of operations which unionists evidently prefer to reserve to themselves:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"As the saying goes, fear keeps you sitting, boldness helps you stand. And, once standing, let's boot these will-sapping warnings back into the receding darkness." (McNeil, ibid.)

Secession in the EU

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For those who may be under the impression that Germans have no sense of humour - and I don't know where you can have got that idea from - here is a German joke, told by Dr Roland Vaubel, professor of economics at the University of Mannheim and a member of the Advisory Council of the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology. Are you ready? Thinking caps on! Here it is:

 

"Four persons travel to Scotland: a theoretical economist, an empirical economist, a statistician and an epistemologist. As they are crossing the border, they see a black sheep in a meadow. The theoretical economist says: "In Scotland sheep are black." The empirical economist says: "In Scotland there are black sheep." The statistician says: "In all probability we can reject the hypothesis that there are no black sheep in Scotland." The epistemologist says: "In Scotland there appears to be at least one sheep, one side of which at least is black."

 

It's the way he tells them, but something could always be lost in translation. If you would care for more from the estimable Dr Vaubel, try his paper on the political economy of secession in the European Union, which does not have many jokes in it but is worth reading even so:

 

"This paper argues the case for the right of secession in Western democracies. I suggest that the winners gain more than the losers may lose. Indeed, the external effects of secession may well be positive. However, the political economy of secession is highly problematic. Ideally, the rules for secession should be set at the international level but international organizations have a vested interest in preventing secession. It is easier to establish the right of secession at the national level. The opinion of the EU institutions that Catalonia and Scotland, after seceding, would have to re-apply for EU membership has no basis in the European treaties. Nor has this question been settled in any UN agreement or Vienna Convention. There are merely practices, and they vary among international institutions. The paper concludes with suggestions on how secessions from EU member states and withdrawals of EU member states might be implemented." (Roland Vaubel, The Political Economy of Secession in the European Union, April 9th 2013)

 

Dr Vaubel's paper (in English) can be downloaded by clicking here.

Catalonia Explained

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

A BBC documentary on Catalonia dating from 1979

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a broadcasting curiosity for you.

 

In 1979, the year when a form of devolution was introduced in Catalonia in accordance with the post-Franco Spanish constitution of 1978, the BBC produced a documentary television programme (Catalonia, a Region Apart) of a type which seems to have dropped out of Auntie's English-language repertoire these days, the subject of sub-state nations having become rather too much of a hot potato in the anglo-state and Anglo-Saxophone standards having fallen into a lamentable decline.

 

The constitutional change which took place in Spain in the late 1970s is known as the Democratic Transition, whereas the constitutional change which pro-independence Catalans are endeavouring to bring about now, i.e. the creation of a Catalan state, is referred to as the National Transition.

Consistency

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dennis Canavan MP and Jack McConnell
at an anti-cuts campaign rally at Stirling University
(Brig magazine, October 1981)

 

 

 

 

 

Unaccustomed though I am to introducing a personal note to this blog, the title of the post on which I am embarking leads me to mention that I have been consistently in favour of the restoration of Scottish sovereignty since the early 1970s, the abortive devolution referendum of 1979 and the Thatcher era which followed hard upon it serving merely to strengthen my adherence to the cause.

 

Such, however, was not the effect upon the budding politician shown in the right-hand picture above, who was moved to move to Labour from the Scottish National Party at that juncture, for reasons which I leave you to work out for yourself. Suffice it to say, perhaps, that some cynical souls have ventured to point out that career prospects in the SNP had suddenly dimmed. Only a person of vision, faith and principle could have been expected to trust that they might eventually brighten again one day, as indeed they did on the day when Jack himself was ejected from Bute House, with bag and very considerable baggage, in May 2007, when Labour dominance of the devolved Scottish Parliament, which was then only 8 years old, was brought to an end by the wondrously revived Scottish independence movement.

 

Never one to miss an opportunity to sing his own praises, the former Labour First Minister of Scotland was publicly admiring what he referred to as his own consistency the other day, when reportedly caught up in a distasteful little cyberbrit incident involving risible polemical vituperation on the theme of racism, which opponents of Catalan independence happened also to be harping on about at roughly the same time, with Telemadrid broadcasting a report comparing the liberal-minded pro-independence Catalan First Minister to Adolf Hitler and, for good measure, Joseph Stalin! Staunch unionists appear to know no self-restraint wherever they are confronted with independentist political parties which have the temerity to attract substantial popular support.

 

Jack was said to be so upset about the cyberbrit stishie that he weighed in when the anglo-unionist tweeter in question got himself into difficulties to such an extent that all efforts to dig himself out of the hole into which he had dug himself seemed only to make matters worse, whereupon the former First Minister was moved to remark, according to The Herald newspaper, that he abhorred racism, "whoever is the target and whatever the context". Patting himself on the back with a stab at po-faced gravitas, as is his wont these days, he added: "I wish others were as consistent."

Far be it from me to doubt Jack's claim to be consistently non-racist, "racism and facism [sic]" having been exceedingly frequent targets of Stirling University's Students' Association campaign posters when he was its president way back in 1981, when he took part in the anti-Tory cuts-campaign rally pictured above in Stirling's student magazine of the period alongside Dennis Canavan, currently chairman of the advisory board of the Yes campaign for the Scottish independence referendum, who was then a Labour MP, and Jim Sillars, who was first a Labour MP and later an SNP one.

 

Who has been less consistently non-racist than Jack? We are left to speculate. The implication that consistency itself is intrinsically meritorious would appear, however, to be one which circumspection should lead him to be wary of. He might conceivably enjoy brandishing that suggestion at Jim Sillars and Dennis Canavan for turning away from anglo-unionism to support Scottish independence, while defending his own abandonment of the  latter cause, but that would hardly do.

 

After all his tub-thumping socialist student rhetoric and the subsequent somewhat inconsistent attachment to New Labour neo-liberalism one is tempted  to remark that what ultimately matters in politics is a consistent devotion to vision, faith and principle . . . at least for those who enter politics for the purpose of doing something rather than merely being something.




POSTSCRIPT


For those who might prefer a more forthright presentation of the cyberbrit incident referred to, here is a helpful video provided by Bella Caledonia:







 



Hype Cycle

 

 

 

 

 

 



"[...] in technology, it is what happens after a technology fades for a time from the public eye when things finally get interesting. Wild expectations bandied about in the press give way to hands-on projects which produce concrete applications in real-world situations. That is exactly what has happened with Catalan independence. While Catalonia has all but vanished from the international press, the Catalan Government and the Catalan Parliament have moved steadily and inexorably forward on the road to independence." (Liz Castro, Catalan Views, April 29th 2013)

 

Read more here:

The Gartner Hype Cycle of Catalan Independence

If you read Ms Castro's article, you will gather that the Gartner hype cycle consists of five principal identifiable stages, as shown in the above illustration:

1. Trigger

2. Peak of inflated expectations

3. Trough of disillusionment

4. Slope of enlightenment

5. Plateau of productivity.

If this cycle of development is also applicable to the Scottish independence movement - and why would it not be? - which stage are we at, would you say?

Liz Castro, a well-known Catalanist, is the editor of What's Up with Catalonia? This recently published volume of essays in English on the Catalan independence movement can be accessed by clicking here.

 

 

 

 

 

 



On the Brink

On the vexed question of currency union, which has been much ventilated lately, the following material may be of interest.

 

"For there to be monetary transmission you need a single fiscal and budgetary system associated with a currency. That is not what we have in Europe: what we do have is a common currency with seventeen different fiscal systems. [...]

 

At this point in time there is every reason to be pessimistic. We are at a very critical juncture. The Eurozone is on the verge of falling apart. The system is in such a fragile state that the slightest spark could set off an explosion." (Paul Jorion, The Eurozone Is on the Brink of Collapse, Mediapart, April 30th 2013)

 

So the euro-drama returns. Did it ever really go away? On this topic there follow two blog extracts which seem to me to be pretty much required reading at the moment. The authors are both financial experts: Yanis Varoufakis, writing in English, and Paul Jorion, writing in French which I have taken the liberty of translating.

 

Dr Jorion's contribution is from a Mediapart interview which he reproduced in his blog yesterday. In that interview he refers to the blog post from which Dr Varoufakis' contribution is taken. The original Varoufakis commentary relates to the release of a Bundesbank deposition published in Handelsblatt the other day, concerning a case to be decided by the German Constitutional Court on June 12th, as Dr Varoufakis explains:

"On 12th June 2013 Germany's constitutional court is scheduled to rule on the legality of Mr Mario Draghi's OMT (outright monetary transactions) programme. Of all the institutional interventions during the past three years of cascading Euro crisis OMT (together with Germany's reluctant acceptance that Grexit was too risky) was the single most significant measure that has calmed the bond markets and allowed the euro not to fragment (beyond the recent de facto exit of Cyprus from the Eurozone).

 

This is not the first time that Germany's constitutional court has heard cases against Europe's institutional reforms the purpose of which was to calm markets and buy the Eurozone (and its political class) additional time. It was only last September that it ruled, through clenched teeth, that the ESM (the European Stability Mechanism) could go ahead, while imposing massively constrictive conditions on Germany's participation in it (e.g., limiting Germany's contribution to the ESM to less than €200 billion, specifying that the ESM would not be able to make a move without the Federal Parliament's consent, etc.).

 

While no one really expects that Germany's Constitutional Court will dare a ruling that explicitly bans Mr Draghi's OMT, almost everyone expects that it will attempt to weigh in regarding the form of conditionality that will accompany any bond purchases under the OMT – exactly, in other words, as it did with the ESM; i.e. give it a grudging green light while binding its operations in a manner that, effectively, renders it ineffective. Then, of course, the proof of the pie will be in the eating, both in terms of how the markets will react and, more importantly, how the ECB will act if it needs to activate OMT quickly to assist, say, Italy's bond market (i.e. will Mr Draghi and Ms Merkel abide by the Court's conditions or will they, quietly, sweep them under the carpet?).

 

In a sense the German Constitutional Court is doing nothing new; hedging its verdict by officially saying 'yes' to Berlin while piling up the conditions so that it is an effective 'no'. Yet this time it is different. While Karlsruhe (where the Constitutional Court is situated) will, most likely, tread a fine line between obstructionism and avoiding a public clash with Berlin and Frankfurt, what makes this hearing different is a deposition that was tabled last December at the court by Germany's Central Bank, the intransigent Bundesbank – a document that was only yesterday released by Handeslblatt and commented upon extensively in the financial press.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Page 1 of the 29-page Bundesbank deposition dated December 21st 2012

(Click on image to enlarge.)

 

 

 

 

 

Three statements make this a bombshell of a deposition. The first openly questions whether the ECB has a mandate to preserve the integrity of the euro; that is, to prevent the currency's collapse. The second, in reality, questions the joint decision of Ms Merkel and Mr Draghi to keep Greece in the Eurozone. And the third challenges Mr Draghi's oft-stated conviction that the ECB's broken monetary transmission mechanism should be mended as quickly as possible. Taken together, these three passages constitute an act of war against the euro as a coherent currency; especially in view of the fact that they are official depositions by the Bundesbank to the German Constitutional Court for the purpose of invoking a constitutional ban on Mr Draghi's monetary stance." (Intransigent Bundesbank: Mr Jens Weidmann's Surreptitious Campaign to Bring Back the (Greater) Deutsch Mark, Yanis Varoufakis, April 27th 2013)

 

Dr Jorion's remarks:

 

 "Considering the cases of Greece, Cyprus and Portugal, it is clear that it is Germany that is in charge of the Eurozone. It has begun to do the accounts. The bill which Germany has to pay is getting bigger and bigger, as are the risks, as is borne out by Target 2 (the intra-European compensation system, which shows that Germany is a creditor to the tune of €700bn in relation to the rest of the Eurozone). Ensconced in its status as a net exporter, it is becoming increasingly exposed to risk. The Germans have become the sole guarantors. The Eurozone has become far too heavy a burden for them. It would be in Germany's narrow self-interest to cast it off. [...]

 

Logic dictates that the politics of self-interest should come to an end, that we should reconstruct an international monetary order, the absence of which has been dragging us all down since 1971. The loopholes and flaws in what has been constructed at the European level are apparent. We need to go more in the direction of federalism, so that we can have a budgetary and fiscal system which will complement the single currency. But, if that is done, it will be in opposition to public opinion, which has become disenchanted with the European project: people hoped for a citizens' Europe but ended up with a mercantile Europe instead.

 

At this point in time there is every reason to be pessimistic. We are at a very critical juncture. The Eurozone is on the verge of falling apart. The system is in such a fragile state that the slightest spark could set off an explosion." (Jorion, op. cit.)

 

By September 18th next year much water will have flowed under the euro-bridge, but it is already apparent that pressures are building up which will either pull the Eurozone apart or lead to its restructuring on the basis of a form of federal European Union such as the UK would not be able to accept. In the latter scenario Scotland could clearly only realistically expect to remain in the EU by becoming a member state in its own right.

 

If Scottish voters have to choose between an unbalanced and highly dubious currency union with an hysterically Europhobic and indeed resentfully Scottophobic residual UK state on the one hand and on the other hand a reformed or at least reforming euro-currency union in which Scotland would be one of a number of federated states with full rights of representation and influence (alongside a newly-independent Catalonia), it should not be too difficult for them to turn away from the dark side, I venture to suggest, if only Yes Scotland can get its act together by then.