Scottish independence increasingly looks like an iceberg that could sink Prime Minister David Cameron’s government and the opposition Labour Party. And like the passengers on the Titanic, they never saw it coming.
Yesterday’s YouGov Plc (YOU) poll putting the Yes vote on 51 percent sparked a fresh effort from supporters of the union to urge Scots to come back from the brink. About 100 Labour lawmakers will travel to Scotland this week to campaign for a No vote, while Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne offered more powers over taxes and spending to the Scottish Parliament — if voters opt to stay part of the U.K.
Cameron was staying with Queen Elizabeth II at Balmoral Castle in northeast Scotland when he learned that the independence campaign had moved into the lead.
My hunch is that at the last moment the electorate will do a Quebec and draw back from the brink. Either way, what we are looking at, I fear, is part of the legacy of Margaret Thatcher. I salute her greatness: with the quiet man, Clement Atlee, one of the two most radical prime ministers of the 20th century. But somehow she managed to alienate the Scots big time. The image of hectoring from London went down badly. And in some ways the two cultures of England and Scotland have continued to pull apart. England has become more commercial, more success-orientated, more socially diverse. Scotland has remained more self-contained culturally, more egalitarian, monochrome.