By Nicholas Winning, Matt Moffett and Jenny Gross
Scotland's independence referendum has generated a political
shock that will have long-term implications for how the U.K. is
governed and is already reverberating across Europe and the
world.
Whether it won or lost Thursday's vote to break away from the
United Kingdom, the Scottish National Party's unlikely bid to push
the U.K. to the brink of a breakup forced a desperate British
government to promise Scotland's devolved parliament more control
over its affairs than it has ever had within the fold of the U.K. A
brushfire of autonomy could now spread to Wales, Northern Ireland
or even other regions of England that have long been ruled
primarily from London.
Scotland has also become the role model for a growing list of
other separatist groups seeking independence, in Europe and
elsewhere. Those groups have poured into Edinburgh this week to
study what now may be seen as a template for challenging their own
capitals. The independence roadshow will soon shift to Spain, where
the country's Catalonia region is pushing for its own secession
referendum.
In the U.K., Scotland is poised to win more power in any outcome
thanks to the ability of independence campaigners to, almost
overnight, erase a double-digit deficit in opinion polls and turn a
potential landslide defeat into a virtual dead heat.
Suddenly faced with a much closer-run race than expected, Prime
Minister David Cameron and the leaders of the two other largest
U.K. parties went into scramble mode, promising to introduce
legislation to grant Scotland's semiautonomous government more
powers if voters reject independence. They pledged to begin that
process on Friday, according to a timetable set out during the
referendum campaign by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and
endorsed by party leaders.
It promises to be a messy process that will take years to
untangle. Details of exactly what powers would be transferred, or
how, remain unclear.
"It is inevitable that the promises that have been made are
going to be incredibly difficult to deliver," said Andrew Hawkins,
chairman of London-based polling company ComRes.
Scotland's referendum is likely to unleash momentum for
transferring powers to other regions--a concept that creates
problems for Mr. Cameron because it is unpopular with many in Mr.
Cameron's Conservative Party.
"Cameron is going to be under increasing pressure from his own
backbenchers over what he has promised," said Mr. Hawkins. The
prime minister "risks opening all sorts of cans of worms with
Northern Ireland and Wales in particular and expectations about an
English parliament."
One critical hurdle is that the three political parties at
Westminster don't agree on which powers to devolve to Edinburgh. On
paper the differences are small--for example, whether to give
Edinburgh full control over the rate of income tax in Scotland or
to give it the power to vary it from the U.K. rate only a
little--but they could add up to billions of pounds a year in
revenue and the autonomy that represents.
Another potential hurdle is whether predominantly English
lawmakers in the U.K. parliament will agree to give Scotland more
power without securingsome concessions to their own voters. There
is also the concern that a close result will sharpen nationalists'
appetite for another vote in the not-too-distant future, raising
the risk of a so-called "neverendum" which could unsettle investors
and hurt Scotland's economy.
The offer of further devolution for Scotland could prompt other
regions, such as Wales and Northern Ireland, in the U.K. to push
for greater powers. In an effort to appease nationalist movements
elsewhere, the U.K. government has committed to giving the Welsh
administrative control over some taxes and introduced a bill to
allow for a referendum on whether some control over income tax
should be devolved as in Scotland.
A cross-party U.K. parliamentary committee has agreed to hold an
inquiry to consider whether the levels of devolution that are being
offered to Scotland should be offered to England, Wales, and
Northern Ireland, and whether there should be a written
constitution to establish that settlement.
"My own view is that if it's good enough to offer to Scotland,
it's good enough for England, Wales and Northern Ireland," Graham
Allen, a Labour Party politician and the chair of the Political and
Constitutional Reform Committee, said in a statement when the
inquiry was announced on Sept. 9.
Leanne Wood, the leader of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist
party, said she hopes a similar independence debate will grow in
Wales. "I want to see Wales, and I want to see people in Wales have
their say in the same way as people in Scotland have had their
say," she said. "We have got the right to self-determination, we're
a nation, too."
As the U.K.--or what is left of it--grinds out its future, the
Scotland independence drive has galvanized secession supporters
from Europe to Africa and beyond. Wherever there are disputes over
regional sovereignty, separatist groups are sure to cite the
Scottish referendum, amicably agreed to by leaders in London and
Edinburgh, as a template for conflict resolution.
Nowhere would the Scots' "yes" vote trigger more euphoria than
in Catalonia, a wealthy industrial region in northern Spain that is
preparing for a nonbinding referendum on independence in November.
The government in Madrid vows to sue to block the referendum, which
it says is unconstitutional.
"The Scots have helped inspire us in our fight, all along the
way," said Rosario Borras, one of an estimated 1.8 million
pro-independence Catalan demonstrators who last week poured into
the streets of Barcelona to form a giant V-for vote.
A host of Catalans traveled to Scotland this week to lend moral
support to the independence push, including three firemen who made
the trip crammed into a tiny 45-year-old Seat sedan. And they
weren't alone: Separatist movements from places as far-flung as
Italy's island of Sardinia showed up to learn the Scottish
formula.
In the rest of Europe, the Scottish vote could help reinvigorate
once-potent independence movements that have lost momentum in
places such as Spain's Basque Country, northern Italy and the
Flanders region of Belgium.
But what secessionists see as a flight to freedom is just
another big headache for others. If any of the separatist efforts
advance, it will create a new and complicated set of problems for
both national governments and other bodies, like the European
Union.
The Scottish case could set a precedent for how the EU treats a
new country carved out of an existing member state. "The
consequence of a 'yes' vote is going to finally be the European
Union expanding itself internally," said Xavier Solano, an adviser
to the pro-independence Scottish National Party who was formerly
the Catalonia government's permanent representative to the U.K. "It
would be the first of amplification of member states from
within."
While Mr. Solano thinks the EU will smoothly incorporate
Scotland, that is far from clear. EU officials have said they will
take their time in examining the Scottish case. And there is sure
to be resistance is certain from states with homegrown separatist
movements, such as Spain.
On Wednesday, "Everyone in Europe thinks these [independence]
processes are enormously negative," Spanish Prime Minister Mariano
Rajoy called the independence process "a torpedo in the soft spot
of the EU, which has been created to integrate states not separate
them." For that reason, he said, "it is going to be very difficult"
for newly independent regions to be accepted in the EU.
Jason Douglas contributed to this article.