Simon's Blog

What an outlandish claim and one that is undoubtedly wrong (you can see why I never made a life for myself in tabloid journalism). The source of all this grand chest thumbing is that the Western Isle, Shetland and Orkney want independence from mainland Scotland. This should come as no suprise.

Before I go on I need to feel in some historical background (I apologise to any Scots historian reading this as I might get a few things slightly wrong but the general thread will be correct – I hope). Scotland as a unified country didn’t really exist much before the later medieval period. Before then there were a series of different ‘states’ that controlled much of what is now Scotland. One of these states was Norway that controlled the Western Isle, Shetland and Orkney ever sense the viking expansion of the 9th century.

If you should ever visit this remote and wonderful place you are quickly struck by the fact that it has little or nothing in common with the Clyde/Forth central belt other than being ‘Scots’. This is not trying to down play the importance of being ‘Scots’ but rather to point out that Scotland isn’t a homogeneous whole but varies greatly across its large and mainly empty land. Whilst this is all very well and good but it wouldn’t matter that much in the Independence debate unless you realise that the Shetland Isles sit at the centre of much of the remaining oil and gas in the Scottish sector. So suddenly it does start to become very important as it would seem that the whole Scottish Independence debate seems to revolve around the income from this. (I have always thought that this is a pointless argument as surely a country should be independent despite any temporary windfall not because of it – you are a country and that is that – any financial advantage is just icing on the cake).

So what will the First Minister do? (Why is Scottish independence always framed like this?) My guess is that he will at first ignore it and then if forced to confront it will bluster and shout and if this fails claim that it is all ‘an old Etonian conspiracy by those nasty English Tories’ – perhaps this will part of the bluster and shout phase. But it is a genuine issue that needs to be addressed and one that Cornwall would readily identify with. How do you deal with ancient and nobble attachments to the land and what it represents in a much large state, be it Scotland or the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? If Scotland does become independent they will have to deal with this themselves – which is what countries are about rather than money.

Again for the record I hope that Scotland doesn’t vote for independence but if they do then I wish them well. It will be a rocky road as Scotland and the Rest of UK come to terms with one another but we’ll get through it. However, I don’t think that Scotland will benefit as much as the SNP are claiming but they will be independent to make there own way in the world. That is unless Mr Putin doesn’t do something really stupid like trying to cause problems in the Baltic states and then god help us all.