The fragmentation of federalised member-states is not acceptable to European Union policy. Certainly there is a regional policy that breaks nation-state borders: bits of England subsumed into northern France; bits of north-eastern Europe grouped together regardless of borders....
Until more stable political union, though, individual member-states may not, ever, be encouraged in break-up into their constituent parts and thus thwarting the regionalisation policies of the EU.
Scotland is an enormous threat to all this. The UK is unique in having proper countries as its regions; and Scotland presents the most challenging and realistic advance towards independent statehood (and might even seek independent EU membership). This is not what the European Union is for. The EU is for administratively convenient and historically destructive zones - not the re-affirmation of local identities, unapproved policy goals, and democratic responsiveness.
As the dead Labour Party marshalls its House of Lords zombies to disrupt Scottish expressions of individuality (finding themselves without the mass of Scottish Westminster MPs is to be dead and buried for Labour), the Conservatives conform to their EU directives - no nationalist-rooted fragmentation - and to their own EU sustenance rules - no referendums of any kind, ever, in case an example is established for all of the UK voting to leave their noxious relationship with the European Union, and as the Liberal Democrats wonder how to stop losing the very few seats they have managed to retain on the edges of the UK, we have temporary common cause.
A cross-party consensus, no less, using the undemocratic and brownian-Labour stuffed House Of Lords (sniggers, Lords indeed) has risen from the stagnant pond of political after-life that is the UK democracy's Upper House of Parliament, to take the high ground (more sniggers) against Scottish freedom to choose how it is ruled and settles its affairs democratically. The EU wants none of it; the Labour party wants none of it; the Conservative and Liberal coalition wants none of it; doubtless the hereditary (this is 2012 but feudal structures reign) monarchy wants none of it. But the greatest of these is the European Union. There will be no encouragement to Catalonia, Corsica, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Brittany, the Basques or any other, least of all Northern Ireland, attempt to set up alone or rejoin a lost future.
It will all be cast in the language of UK constitutional practice but Scotland is not going to get away with disturbing ever-closer union.
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4 comments:
I hope not.when there gone we can alter the clocks
At least there'd be less chance of them striking 13 with the Labour Scottish MPs gone from Westminster, Chief
Doesn't Scotland actually coincide with one of the EU's precious "regions" anyway?
So it wouldn't make any difference, right?
Scottish "independence" (not actually independence at all, of course, but that's another post) would probably be the final push that would let the EU appropriate our Security Council seat. There is, of course, no chance whatever of France giving up hers...
otoh the prospect of no more Labour governments, ever, is not without its attractions.
'Region' is a many-faceted word though, isn't it Yacht. It is in the slippery spaces between all these different 'regionalities' that the European Union is advancing and reinforcing one of its main goals - ever-closer union.
Which is more than satisfactory for continental Europeans - who enjoy the acquis communautaire, which member-states must, indeed, be willing and capable of implementing - but in the UK should be anathema. Is anathema, except to UK political elites.
A Scotland independent would bring to the surface the hidden manoeuvres to meet the acquis communautaire requirements laid on the UK by its signature on EU treaties; not least because Scotland would need to become an accession state and would alter the EU status of the remnant UK dramatically.
Scotland is very rare if not unique in the EU as a 'region' that is, in truth, a non-sovereign nation.
Scotland's independence would provide England's opportunity to truly renegotiate its relationship with the EU.
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