Status Quo? Don’t be so sure.
The UK’s constitutional status quo (NOT the rock band) may well be under threat but no-one seems to have noticed much. This is largely because the thought that Scotland may well vote for independence after all doesn’t seem to have been taken all that seriously down South.
Perhaps that is changing though. Polls are beginning to show that support for Scottish independence is growing, although still behind support for the Union. But with large numbers of Scots still undecided, there are signs of worry within Whitehall that the nationalists are gaining too much ground.
There have previously been pro-union moves by Westminster. Cameron and Osborne have both rattled out supportive speeches for the No (to Independence) campaign, while there has also been the intervention by the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury which called into question a number of the SNP’s forecasts and assumptions, as examples. But these have not exactly halted the Yes vote’s momentum, nor have they been seemingly coordinated.
With so much at stake, what is perhaps worrying is how little work Westminster has apparently done in terms of contingency planning ahead of a possible Yes vote. “There is no Plan B” is a phrase that has been popping up in conversation recently. Robert Peston, meanwhile, writing in a blog entitled “Westminster doing no preparation for Scots independence,” perhaps found the answer to such lack of planning, quoting one Whitehall source as saying “We assume we will win”.
As Peston himself writes “it would be quite a big deal (to put it mildly) if we were to wake up on 19 September to find Scotland had chosen to go it alone,” yet that is something which is becoming increasingly possible. This partly explains why the Treasury, again, have launched a “myth-busting campaign,” arguing that “people need to know the facts.”
Salmond, canny politician that he is though, has already turned this into a hearts rather than minds vote. As the rock band Status Quo (NOT the constitutional one) sang “it sounds so nice, what you’re proposin’”. And more Scots are apparently beginning to like what Salmond is suggesting.