Now the 'still United Kingdom' problems begin

Opinion by Denis MacShane

There was a 'Phew!' of relief in Brussels as well as London as it became clear that after three centuries of marriage Scotland and England have decided not to divorce.

An independent separatist Scotland would have been a nightmare for the EU to accommodate. Could membership continue and Scotland became the 29^th state? Or would this be a new application with Scotland in the queue with Serbia and Kosovo and having to adopt the euro as its currency?

These questions for Brussels are now over but the vote against separation is the beginning not the end of Prime Minister David Cameron's political difficulties and raises new problems for all of Europe.

The issue of separatist plebiscites is now firmly on the EU political agenda. Can Madrid stand out against the right of the Catalan people to at least have a vote on their future? The 300 years of unity between Scotland and England managed just to hold, but what about the much shorter bad-tempered unity between Flanders and Wallonia in Belgium, where different languages and resentments have a centrifugal intensity?

The new Juncker Commission has no commissioner for enlargement. Perhaps it needs a commissioner for seperation, even disintegration.

David Cameron was forced to make major concessions to the Scottish nationalist leader, Alex Salmond, in the days before the referendum. There will be now written into law a hitherto informal agreement formula which grants Scotland a disproportionate share of UK government revenue compared to England and Wales.

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Already, Conservative MPs are protesting that their constituents should not have to fork out more taxes to pay for the over-large state sector in Scotland or the generosity of free university tuition and health care largesse.

As long as this cheque from England arrives there will be no pressure on the Scottish government to modernize its state sector in the model of social democratic Nordic countries where private agencies run huge chunks of public services.

Cameron has also said that there will be a constitutional revolution with MPs elected in UK constituencies not being able to take part in legislation in the House of Commons on a common basis.

The sight of 59 silent sheep MPs from Scotland marching out of the House of Commons when it discusses health care or education or policing which along with other policy areas in Scotland are decided by the Scottish parliament means that the unitary parliament of the four-nation kingdom is seeing its closing days.

The British doctrine of an unwritten constitution based on parliamentary supremacy has been quietly buried by Cameron. Instead, the UK will have to move to a more continental system of a written legally enforceable constitutional contract setting out who has powers and how they can be used. Judges, not elected representatives, will become more powerful.

The London elite establishment has taken a terrible knocking. How did the finest brains in the Westminister political-media matrix not notice until the last panic-stricken days what was going on? The prime minister has had to turn to his despised foe, Gordon Brown, and - like a latter-day Cincinnatus - call Brown from nursing his grievances in retreat to save the United Kingdom.

Scotland is now divided between its western, Glasgow, post-industrial Catholic working class citizens who voted 'Yes' and its Edinburgh, banking City-connected Calvinist better-off citizens who voted 'No' to stay linked with the south.

So the Scottish vote far from settling everything has opened up everything. There is little evidence that the Westminster political-media elite know how to think through what will be very difficult years ahead. Along with other 20^th century ruling elites in older EU member states there is now an anti-elite populism that is undermining the post-1945 political settlement across western and northern Europe.

In three weeks in Britain there will be another political earthquake, when the first United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) MP enters the Commons after a by-election in Clacton, Essex. From then until the May 2015 election, the question of Britain’s union with Europe will dominate politics. Cameron has pledged an 'In-Out' referendum – long called for by UKIP - which so far the two other party leaders, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, have rejected.

Referendum politics are very different from parliamentary politics. After a rock-solid union of 300 years which few questioned until very recently the Scots came close to separating from England. The UK union with Europe has lasted just 41 years but voters have been told by many politicians, business leaders and most of the press that UK-EU marriage is a mistake and it might be better to separate.

Cameron had tears in his eyes as he expressed his love for the UK union and his fear of it coming apart. He has never shown the slightest warmth for the UK’s union with the rest of Europe and many of his ministers and MPs make clear it is a relationship they wish they were not in.

So along with the extraordinary constitutional and fiscal upheaval that will have to turned into law to honour Cameron’s promises to the Scots, the UK will face turmoil over its relationship with Europe, with Brexit a looming possibility.

The pound rallied slightly as the 'No' vote won. But the politics of re-writing the rules by which the UK governed and the future imbroglios over Europe have all become much worse.

Denis MacShane is former UK minister for Europe.

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