Latest News About England: Scotland's future: clash of the cabinets

lunes, 24 de febrero de 2014

Scotland's future: clash of the cabinets | Editorial

The lasting importance of yesterday was that the whole British political class became more engaged in the argument

It has been nearly a century since the cabinet last met in northern Scotland. Then on Monday, like proverbially long-awaited buses, two cabinets turned up in Aberdeen on the same day. With both the UK version and its Scottish counterpart in town, it was diverting to dwell on the rival photo ops, as David Cameron donned his hard hat on a North Sea oil rig and Alex Salmond strode through a churchyard holding his saltire umbrella. All the same, it is important to grasp that something genuinely significant was nevertheless going on.

In fact, two significant things took place in Aberdeen. The first, inevitably intertwined with the political meetings in Scotland's petro-economic centre, was an argument about the prospects for North Sea oil under the respective regimes of an independent Scotland or an unsundered UK. With the publication of Sir Ian Wood's review of the exploitation of the remaining North Sea oil and gas deposits, there were at least facts and figures for the camps to agree on. Production has fallen by 38% since 2010. But with prices still high, if volatile, there is plenty of wealth left under the sea bed, albeit sometimes in places in which extraction costs are high. Nevertheless, that still leaves approximately £200bn-worth to be extracted over the coming 20 years. So there is plenty of North Sea gas in the political tank for the next two decades.

Neither side won the energy argument conclusively on Monday. The UK government, proposing a new regulator along the lines proposed by the Wood report, made great play of its greater ability to support the oil industry in the face of inevitable market volatility. But the Scottish government, which has always put oil at the centre of the independence case, reiterated its dream of creating a Scottish sovereign wealth fund on Norwegian lines. The truth is that oil is an asymmetrical factor in the Scotland debate. It helps to make the case for independence more reassuring but it is not at the emotional heart of the case for the union.

When the memory of the photo ops fades, the lasting importance of Monday was in nailing down the moment when the whole British political class, and perhaps the whole British nation, became more engaged in the argument about Scotland than before. Until very recently, the argument was intense in Scotland but neglected in the rest of the UK. The combination of George Osborne's rejection of currency union, José Manuel Barroso's caution about Scottish EU membership, and Gordon Brown's warning about the fundability of pensions – along with Mr Salmond's dismissal of all three amid charges of bullying – has broadened the debate. The UK cabinet meeting in Scotland consolidates that change.

This is a welcome development, long overdue and good for debate. Britain's non-Scots have an important place in the discussion about Scotland that they have not, until now, found it easy to take up. That is undoubtedly partly their own fault for neglecting Scotland in the past. But it is partly also the nationalists' doing, intent as they are on depicting the rest of the UK as distant from, indifferent towards and even hostile to Scotland. The past two weeks may have begun to break down some of the inhibitions. If so, that is a good thing. Mr Cameron, sneered at again by Mr Salmond on Monday, deserves some credit for winning a hearing and making this possible.

It is too early to judge the impact of the past two weeks. Some Scots are offended by the entry of UK politicians into the debate and the way it has happened. Others welcome the widening of argument and perhaps even the new voices, especially if they offer a positive case for union. Opinion polls tell a nuanced story thus far. There is much more to say before the referendum in September. But the future of the nation is everybody's business. And the debates that have begun more widely – about money, energy, identity, our place in Europe and our common purposes – are not debates for Scotland alone. If the debates over Scotland act as a catalyst for wider debates within the rest of the UK, that is surely all to the good.

Editorial