North Britons

I have been taken to task for using the noble, and perfectly factual, term “North Britons”, as it allegedly “harks back to a time when Scotland was "North Britain" or NB - and the UK was "England".” I should be fascinated to know when, exactly, this time ever was. I submit that there has never been any such time. In fact, the term harks back to the time when Scotland enjoyed a prosperity never seen before (if since), and a geopolitical influence certainly never seen either before or since. (Of course, nothing could be more guaranteed to preclude the restoration either of such prosperity or of such influence than the secession of Scotland from the United Kingdom.)

The term recalls Bevan’s speech on the first ever “Welsh Day” in the House of Commons, when he sagely opined that, since “Welsh coal is the same as English coal and Welsh sheep are the same as English sheep,” the day was a waste of parliamentary time, which should instead have been taken up with debating energy or agriculture throughout the United Kingdom. Now as then, quite.

Furthermore, it is a simple statement of fact. No distinct ethnic group exists within the predominant population group in these islands (including the Irish Republic). The local and regional variations are as great within any given part of the United Kingdom (or, again, within the Irish Republic) as between or among any two or more of them.

However, as reflected in, for example, the absence of lay magistrates or of any automatic right to trial by jury, Scotland has a more technocratic and oligarchic tradition than is usually found in England (although, up to a point, it can also be found in areas with small and close-knit middle and upper-middle classes), which in turn explains the incandescence of that largely Nationalist, if not always formally SNP, technocratic oligarchy's members whenever anyone dares to question or contradict them, something that is second nature to the English when faced with such figures. No one in Scotland has ever spoken to them like that in their lives, and they have no idea how to react.

This was demonstrated during the Thatcher period, when the great and the good of Scotland’s professional bodies and ancient universities reacted in just that way to a Prime Minister who fondly imagined that she should be governing Scotland. These people’s influence led, in turn, not only to the otherwise unforeseeable Labourisation of Scotland, albeit only up to point, but also to the equally unpredictable and surprising, but far more consequential, Scottishisation of the Labour Party, which even many working-class Scots had theretofore routinely dismissed as English.

Not least when they are senior figures in the Labour Party or the trade unions (again, this phenomenon is by no means unknown in parts of England), they are used to being politely agreed with and dutifully obeyed, no matter how ridiculous their assertion or instruction.

Thus, they feel free to suggest that there was ever “a time when Scotland was "North Britain" or NB - and the UK was "England"”. Or (even from the bench!) that the sovereignty of Parliament does not apply in Scotland, in which case, as much as anything else, the Scotland Act of that Parliament is void and of null effect. Or that the EU, or any other international body, would recognise Scotland and a remnant United Kingdom as qualitatively equal “successor states”, rather than, as would obviously be the case, the former as a simple secession from the latter.

Or that most or all of North Sea oil and gas is in Scottish territorial waters. Or that, even if it were (which it is not), any British Government would ever consider Scottish independence in return for less than fifty per cent of oil and gas revenue in perpetuity, or would use anything less than every force at its disposal in order to secure that settlement. Or that the Thatcher Government had “no mandate” to govern Scotland even though Scotland was an integral part of the United Kingdom and returned a percentage of Tories among her MPs favourably comparable, from the Tory point of view, to several other comparably populous areas.

Or that any British Parliament would ever legislate either for the further devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament, or for Scottish independence, or for a referendum on the subject. Or that such a referendum would have even the moral, never mind the legal or constitutional, authority to decide the matter, not least (though by no means exclusively) given the voting rights, certainly of Irish Citizens resident in Scottish parliamentary constituencies, and quite possibly of citizens of numerous countries resident in Scottish municipal areas, but not of the overwhelming majority of the citizens of the state the future of which was being decided, namely the United Kingdom.

These suggestions deserve to be laughed out, along with the party that has failed to deliver an independence referendum even this time round, and which will fail to deliver any programme for government, since it contains only one politician, and since no two of its members agree about anything except independence. In the days of North Britain, both those suggestions and that party would indeed have been laughed out.

So rise now, and be North Britain again.