It sounds strange doesn’t it? It’s been over 300 years since The Acts of the Union, when Scotland became part of the UK, but now more than ever we are close.
With the next UK general election two years away, or even closer if events unfold for Gordon Brown, we could be seeing David Cameron in charge of Britain, and however much I dislike the out-of-touch toff I do find the thought integuing.
Integiuing because it could set in motion events leading the independence; The Conservative party are not popular in Scotland, we are a population still bitter about the destruction of industry under Thatcher, in Scotland the Tories have a tiny party in the Scottish parliament and only one MP for the whole of Scotland in Westminster ( The MP for Galloway in fact ). A Tory Westminster would no doubt push many Scots towards the SNP and independence.
So its rather interesting that the SNP are wanting to have a vote for independence just after the next general election in 2010. With swing voters and a core of hard-core supporters its not easy to see the vote going their way. In fact even now 52% of Scots support an independant Scotland, it could be even higher in two years.
So if the vote was for Independence, what would scotland look like as a free state?
First Scotland would have to decide what sort of system it wants:
- A Republic; this may sound strange but for many years the SNP were rebpublican, its only recently that they have quietened down on this. We can also look at Ireland, they had the monarchy for twenty years after independence, this may happen to us a few years down the line.
- A monarchy; by far the most likely of choices is that Scotland keeps the Queen as its head of state, keeping very close ties with England.
- Our own King; Perhaps we ought to start looking for our own monarch, and one source I have says it could be our very own Earl of Galloway, although I doubt this as we used to live next door to him and he lived in a community for the mentally ill.
Economically I’m not sure what would happen; we would have to generate our own revenue, we could of course have closer links to the EU, even joining the Euro, this could solve our population problems as we could allow higher immigration to help our dwindling population.
It will be interesting to see over the next few years what happens.