English: Detail from a frieze in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Queen Street, Edinburgh (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is a deeply worrying, must-read, lead story from the Telegraph. Check it out!
via Scottish independence: The Queen is urged to intervene – Telegraph.
Personally, I am against independence for Scotland. I do not believe that it will be in the best long term interests of Scotland nor the rest of the UK. Broken up the UK will be much weaker economically, politically and as a society.
There are three reasons for this mess.
Firstly, there is David Cameron‘s poor strategic judgement in agreeing to the referendum. This blog has repeatedly argued that Cameron has played for short-term political advantage, rather than what’s in the strategic interests of the UK. See my earlier blog on abuse of strategy.
Secondly, Ed Milliband has been totally ineffective and working class people in Scotland have no faith in him.
Thirdly, the Scottish people, especially ordinary working and middle class people are angry that recent governments have ignored their interests.
For me, whether it’s a “yes” or “no”, Cameron, Milliband and Clegg should immediately resign. The country needs to return to democracy. If Scotland wins an independence vote, the country will enter an uncharted economic, political and social crisis. There will be massive economic speculation, with major employers potentially savaged. Ultimately, in the short-term, I fear that Scotland’s working and middle classes will suffer a crisis on the scale World War I or II, with huge increased unemployment and loss of savings – a true depression. The world’s economy is fragile, especially Europe and this will be seen as a disaster. In terms of size, I believe that the disaster could have much greater impact than Japan’s nuclear disaster at Fukashima, for example.
Personally, I do not believe that it is the Queen’s place to bail out the politicians. However, there is perhaps a case for Her Majesty to add her stature to the gravity of the decision, stating the arguments both for and against, and to confirm that she believes in the Scottish people.
Thoughts?
Dr Alf's Blog 