Os escoceses vivem hoje de mensalão britânico, isto é, recebem mais do Reino Unido do que contribuem. Também pudera: não elegem respresentantes conservadores para o parlamento da Grã-Bretanha, só trabalhistas, que são distribucionistas por excelência (com o dinheiro dos outros, claro).
Em síntese, o Reino Unido vai deixar de ser o Reino Unido, e vai virar uma potência de terceira classe, quase na companhia da Etiópia (estou exagerando, claro...). Enfim, vão voltar a ser o que eram até o século XV, ou seja, dois séculos antes da absorção da Escócia por aqueles ingleses arrogantes.
Os escoceses vão estar melhor?
Duvido. Mas vão ficar orgulhosos de seu cantinho, vendendo uisque e salmão para todo o mundo. O difícil vai ser dividir o petróleo do mar do Norte, pois nessas horas todos os políticos são rentistas.
Quem sabe uma nova guerra resolve os problemas?
O que diria Adam Smith disso tudo?, ele que não ligava para as fronteiras e apenas queria comércio livre e sobretudo nenhuma colônia para sustentar...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
It's Not About the Money
Why Scotland Might Just Say Yes to Independence
Manpreet Sing Makkar -- active in the Yes campaign -- poses for a photograph in Edinburgh, July 16, 2014. (Paul Hackett / Courtesy Reuters)
Debates
over national independence are seldom rational. Since they deal with
what may happen in the future, each side must convince voters that it is
the better soothsayer. In the political battle over Scottish independence, which will come to a popular vote on September 18, two competing visions are clashing hard.
The “No” camp, which goes by the slogan “Better Together,” has run a campaign that focuses primarily on the costs of separation, which are hard to price but estimable. The “Yes” campaign’s response has been to dismiss such concerns as “fear-mongering,” highlighting instead how much better Scotland would fare after independence. In so doing, the Yes camp has rested its case on a counterfactual that can never be proven, seemingly a weaker hand to play.
Yet the key nationalist claims are not
without merit. First, since the 1980s, Scotland has overwhelmingly voted
for the Labour and the Scottish National Parties, whereas the United
Kingdom has voted Conservative. As a result, most Scots feel that they
often end up with a government they didn’t vote for.
The establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 went some way
toward addressing the democratic deficit. But since the body has limited fiscal powers
-- and no independent monetary powers -- it has provided only a partial
fix. Second, Scottish voters, the Yes campaign argues, favor a generous welfare state
backed by a government that defends public institutions from austerity.
And third, most Scots, so says the Yes camp, want to be part of the
European Union at a time when the British government is thinking about
parting ways with Brussels, so independence would safeguard ties to Europe.
As a wish list, such priorities may seem
admirable, especially if one’s politics stand center-left. But to what
extent are they achievable? That question has formed the crux of the No
campaign, which has shied away from extolling the benefits of the union
and stressed instead the economic risks that would come with
independence. The core dispute in the independence debate has been over what currency an independent Scotland would use;
after all, if you are not in charge of your own money, one has to
question the extent to which, like a teenager who never leaves home, you
are truly independent and can set your own goals.
Three hundred years is a decent run for any political project.
As the polls narrow and the referendum
nears, the money question has become all the more pressing. According to
the latest poll, the Yes camp is trailing by only six points, with eight percent of voters still undecided. The result, in other words, remains very much up in the air. Markets are starting to get nervous,
suddenly waking up to the fact that if Scotland goes, neither the
British pound nor sterling securities will be what they once were. If
sterling’s backers, the British taxpayers, are suddenly reduced by ten
percent, should UK bonds reflect that risk?
The Yes campaign wants a currency union
with the rest of the United Kingdom that retains the pound. (Although
London has ruled that out, how Westminster could prevent such a union
without removing the coins and notes already in circulation remains an
open question.) Yet a currency union would not do an independent
Scotland any favors. The United Kingdom’s electoral politics would
ultimately determine monetary policy, and Scotland could find itself
facing an even tougher macroeconomic and monetary environment than it
already does. If the Labour Party was deprived of its Scottish seats, it
would struggle to form a majority
in the House of Commons, strengthening Conservative control. And with
Scotland gone, London’s finance-centric economy would have greater
influence still.
London could turn the screws on Edinburgh further, and not without reason. An independent Scotland would have a massively oversize banking system,
with assets possibly exceeding 1,000 percent of GDP. This would
represent an Icelandic-sized risk to British taxpayers, who would have
to stand behind the liabilities of the Scottish banks if they ran into
trouble. As the Financial Times put it in a recent editorial, no British government would back those banks “unless Scotland were to accept very heavy constraints over its public finances.” In short, budgetary austerity and conservative policies would remain the only game in town, even after independence.
To get out of this bind, an independent
Scotland would need its own currency, an option the Yes campaign has
only recently acknowledged as a possible “plan B.”
Without monetary sovereignty, a country can neither print nor devalue
its way out of trouble. And if it doesn’t want to default, austerity is
the only way forward.
Yet to establish an independent currency,
Scotland would need three things: a central bank, a bond shop, and
independent tax institutions. For now, Edinburgh has none of these. And
it would take five to ten years to build them. In the meantime, the country Scotland just broke up with
would be raising the taxes, paying the bond investors, and running the
currency -- and charging a pretty penny to do so. Joining the euro, the
only other alternative, would simply mean austerity would come from
another direction, from Berlin rather than London.
Given all this, if Scotland votes in favor
of independence, the United Kingdom’s reaction would not likely be the
velvet divorce the Yes campaigners envision. Nationalism, like most
forms of identity politics, thrives only in the face of a foreign other.
Far from safeguarding Scotland’s position in Europe, the United
Kingdom’s already resurgent nationalism will likely grow fiercer.
Edinburgh’s exit would probably make London’s withdrawal from the EU
more likely, complicating the Yes campaign’s desire to protect European interdependence.
Yet perhaps the oddest thing about the
Scottish debate has been its lack of concern for issues of language,
culture, or past sins -- all central features of Basque, Catalan, and
other independence movements. On the surface, it’s been all about the
money, which makes the recent turn at the polls all the more telling.
Although the No camp has largely won the economic arguments, the Yes
campaign has gained the upper hand. The question is why?
The journalist Paul Mason noted recently in The Guardian newspaper that age is becoming a key factor in determining how Scots vote, with older people being more likely to vote no. This sits well with the famous observation (falsely attributed to Winston Churchill) about being a liberal at 25 and a conservative at 35.
Those with assets in the current system don’t want the system to
change. Those with no or few assets are willing to see it transformed.
Generational, rather than monetary, politics may well be the determinant
of the final result.
Raised in a country where the policy choice
of the past 30 years has been neoliberalism with airbags (New Labour
under Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown) or neoliberalism on
steroids (under the Tories), and faced with falling real wages and
diminished opportunity, young people in Scotland want another choice.
This is perhaps why nationalism retains the capacity to surprise. It’s
not about costs, risks, or uncertainties; it’s about the idea that a
different future is possible.
As Mason noted, “Once
established, political psychologies like this do not go away. History
shows they intensify until something gives, and at some point it is
usually the borders of a nation state.” Three hundred years
is a decent run for any political project. If the United Kingdom’s
borders give way in a few days’ time, nobody should be surprised that
those who said Yes ignored the warnings about what their vote would cost
them. For Scotland’s young, those who yearn for a different future, it
was never really about the money.
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