Too Simple an Analysis from Simon.

Bearing in mind the survey I've earlier blogged about today, Simon Jenkin's requiem for the Union already looks out of date. He overestimates Salmond and the SNP's potential to switch around Scotland's mindset and lest we forget, it's also a minority government we're talking about here, one which still has not yet been seriously tested.

But, this is the bit I'd raise most objection to:

What is happening in Scotland is what has been happening throughout Europe. As globalisation makes national government ever less potent, sub-national government becomes stronger and more valued. Old arguments about viability, borders and sovereignties are left behind as centralist excuses, overwhelmed by both sentiment and realpolitik.

Globalisation may be removing the borders in Europe, but only in the favour of supra-not sub-national government; it is the European Union which is over-ruling the German and Spanish governments, not Bavaria nor Catalunya. And the one concrete example* in Europe where "borders and centralist excuses" has been overwhelmed by both sentiment and realpolitik (ie Yugoslavia)in the last 15 years is not one, you'd hope, the vast majority of European citizens would want to follow. Perhaps the most interesting potential "separation" on the horizon is not in Spain, nor even the UK, but Belgium.
Can it be argued that its two halves, if rent apart by "sentiment" and "realpolitik", will be really more viable economically and politically than the original whole? More ethnically and linguistically homogeneous, certainly, but is that really a worthy aim for the future well-being of our continent?




*I suppose it could be argued that the breakaway from the Soviet Bloc of the countries of Central, eastern Europe and the Baltics were also an example of this decentralisation, but with a few notable exceptions (ie Erdely in Romania and the ethnic Russian areas of the Baltics) each of the nations were already fully fledged and individually recognisable nations, not regions, pre 1989.