good evening and a very warm welcome to the blavatnik school of government at oxford university for this discussion
of scotland and independence referendums i'm nirey woods and i'm dean of the blavatnik school of government what we do here in oxford is research teaching and working with governments across the world with the view with the goal of improving lives around the world by improving government and that means looking across the world in almost everything we do to see how it is that governments can do better and what are the actions that individuals that institutions and countries can take to make the lives of their citizens better one of the problems that so many countries face is how to govern in multi-national countries how do you govern different communities and differently organized and arranged communities as part of one union it's not just a problem of the united kingdom where we have the great privilege of being seated it's a problem that many countries across the world are facing and the united kingdom has become increasingly an interesting place to look at how that problem gets resolved or indeed how it can be exacerbated so it's a great pleasure tonight to welcome first my colleague kieran martin professor of practice in the management of public organizations here at the blavatnik school of government prior to joining the school as many of you will know kieran was the founding chief executive of the national cyber security center both uh expert in building a new institution but also on the front of wave issues that arose from cyber for government but some of you may not have known until more recently is that kieran was the constitution director in the cabinet office when it was intimately involved negotiating the basis of the scottish referendum with the scottish government in the years 2011 to 2014 and it's that experience of being the senior civil servant examining the grounds on which a referendum could take place and the way in which which is becoming increasingly fraught in these in these isles alongside kieran this evening we are delighted to be hosting professor tom sir tom devine regarded by many as the foremost living historian of modern scotland his best-selling magnum opus initially a history of scotland from the union in 1707 to the establishment of the scottish parliament at the turn of the century was described when it was published as the most one of the most important scottish books of the century meaning of course the 20th century later updates took in the period to the 300th anniversary of the union and the brink of the 2014 referendum it can probably be regarded as the most important scottish book of this century as well certainly for those of us interested in the structure of governments i'm told that at one point sir tom's book outsold harry potter in scotland that's a competition we'll release for him he was awarded the royal medal scotland's supreme academic accolade by the queen in 2001 and is the only scottish historian to date to be knighted so tom it is truly a pleasure to have you here this evening and to have you as one of the world's foremost historians of of scotland and the issues we're discussing tonight here to give a really thorough reading of kieran martin's work on this subject and willing to intervene to to four foreground it tonight with the history from which kieran takes up so could i invite sir tom devine professor sir tom devine to start this evening thank you thank you very much dean woods for that um very generous welcome and also to state at the beginning i'm very honored to be invited to take part in this important event tonight and how much i've enjoyed working over the last few weeks on this project with professor martin who from now on i would refer to in a more friendly basis as kieran i'm also grateful to both of you for allowing me to spend a few minutes at the very beginning before kieran's focused lecture on his paper to talk about some talk about aspects if you will relevant aspects of the anglo-scottish union since its earliest days down to the present day although i will be finishing probably in the year 2014 because it's really after that that kieran's um paper and lecture will in fact um concentrate i think you could argue that in the 19th and 20th centuries the um the common experience of most multinational unions in europe uh continental europe particularly where um experiences of disintegration rather than endurance rather than of longevity and it's that context that the anglo-scottish union stands out perhaps few in 1707 expected it to last for um over 300 years because in the first few years of the union there was great fiction part of that led to no less than four jacobite risings and in 1711 by a very very narrow margin the house of lords nearly nearly uh repealed the treaty the treaty of union and of course scotland and england in the late medieval and early modern period it had long phases of mutual hostility as recently in fact as you know say 40 to 50 years before the union all of our cromwell's armies had annexed scotland to england by force and of course just before the union there was also considerable castilities particularly over england's apparent role in the failure of the great darian expedition scotland's attempt to found its own its own empire yet despite all that not simply did the union endure but most crucially of all it was stable for most of its long period if you go for example to the 19th century when bloody revolutions in europe driven by nationalism uh were breaking up several multinational empires in the late 19th century when ireland became ever more truculent and finally separated in the early part of the 20th century from the united kingdom scotland was quiet so one of the issues for historians is why was the union stable when other particular comparative associations uh were fragile i think one of the things i would i would stress before we go on uh in this endeavor is that um the the foundations the foundations of union stability were relatively early set by the end of the 18th century they depended on a number of crucial pivots or crucial supports one was english toleration english acceptance of scottish nationality one edinburgh university professor in 1907 said that the union please scots because it's accepted the distinctive nationality of the scots within the union and that then became the possibility for the creation of the hybrid identity great commitment to britishness in the 19th and 20th centuries but also the survival and indeed the embellishment of scottish of scottish patriotism within the jewel the dual process the dual process of identity and historians have considered the reasons for the stability and often the orthodoxy runs like this it was because of joint protestantism it was because of the enterprise of empire it was because of the fact that they were twin pillars lingered in scotland of the great victorian and early 20th century industrial revolution workshop of the world if you will um and the thing is often omitted is the way the union was managed and this is one i want to say a few words about in the next next few minutes and i particularly want to say about how how england managed and reacted to the union because that ladies and gentlemen is if you will the great chasm the great difference between what is going on and has been going on now for the last six years in united kingdom politics and what existed for most of the union the union period remarkably in the 19th century scotland was in a state of semi-independence because it's local um its local authorities such as the kirk sessions the town councils the whole range of voluntary bodies from prisons right through to lunac asylums which ran scotland and was composed of scots and the other aspect of the same period was the way in which scots members would present bills to the westminster parliament and more often than not they would have been agreed to because quote according to dicey a majority of the scotch the scotch members of parliament wished wished it to happen now that that particular relationship of course did change during the age of big government in the 20th century but it didn't change fundamentally because i take you to you know take you through some of pivotal moments in that century even during the second world war the churchill government more or less allowed a form of great devolution to scotland uh under the then secretary of state for scotland the great tom johnson who more or less rules scotland as winston churchill had it like a monarch like a king and then if we move on into the 1960s and 1970s the secretary of state for scotland in that period easily managed to win economic privileges for the country north of the border from the cabinet in order to support the scottish nation as it started to move towards the eventual crisis of the of de-industrialization only really when we get to the 1980s and the period of thatcherism do we see if you like the english element elephant moving to the scottish side of of the bed the bed because the thatcher governments were intent on a policy of british-wide social and economic uh uh engineering in order to bring back the former economic greatness of of the uk but that was very much a small and limited interlude because very quickly the mass anger of the scottish people in the 1980s and early 1990s led to devolution over subsequent uh subsequent uh labor governments and that then eased the process once again between westminster between westminster and edinburgh between the scottish people and the the bigger the bigger entity the big partner because one of the astonishing things as i move towards my conclusion on this is the extent to which if england had wished to use its power over the smaller partner it could have done so quite easily at the union for example in the treaty less than 10 of seats in the house of commons were allocated to scottish members and of course in terms of economic might in terms of political authority in terms of natural resources england was by far the senior partner most of the union and i would include right up to the referendum of 2014 as i will explain in a few seconds for most of the union uh england tended to stand back it was uh an association of tolerance it was if you will an association of respect and a consideration that the other partner was an historic nation and not just a region it had to be if you will respected and as i say the culmination of that process and living memory it came about in 2014 and earlier after the scottish national party victory in 2011 when david cameron very quickly allowed a referendum for scotland without in fact very much in the way of reflection and further thought so what i'm saying to you ladies and gentlemen is if you consider almost all of the 300 plus years of the anglo-scottish union what we have been seeing since 2016 and in particular from brexit and subsequent developments is a real major rupture in the way how things used to be done in order to manage a stable successful and indeed friendly association between england and scotland thank you thank you um professor sir tom devine for setting an extraordinary stage an association of tolerance and respect based on a consideration of scotland as a nation not a region and that's a relationship that now looks very much in jeopardy and who better to turn to to pick up the story from here than than kieran martin not just for 23 years a civil servant and described by several people as the finest civil servant of his generation but a brilliantly trained historian here at oxford at hartford college where kieran became a historian before going into the civil service kieran martin over to you to pick up the story thank you dean woods and iri thank you professor tom it's been a pleasure working with you both thank you ladies and gentlemen for the honor of your company at this my first uh significant lecture from the blavatnik school where i'm privileged to work in the middle of the noisiest election campaign in the short history of the scottish parliament there is i think one important overlooked fact the formal position of the government of the united kingdom appears to be that there will be no lawful or democratic route by which to achieve scottish independence for an unspecified number of decades this is irrespective of how scotland votes in may of this year or at any subsequent election during this unspecified period my principal contention in the paper published today which will be on the school's website shortly is that should events transpire either later this year or in subsequent years that make this current rhetorical position a firm constitutional reality then the union as we understand that the union that sir tom described will have changed fundamentally in effect it would change the union from one based on consent to one based and upheld by the force of law that would be the most profound transformation in the internal governance of the united kingdom since most of ireland left almost exactly a century ago now it's very possible some say highly likely that in may or at some other point in the future the scottish parliament will once again have a majority elected on a very specific commitment to hold another independence referendum whether it's made up solely of scottish national party msps or snp plus greens or alba or hypothetically 65 non-party independents is of zero constitutional or legal significance a majority is a majority and as well as we shall come to no one has attempted to define a different threshold or trigger for another referendum now as tom said it was this very scenario that prompted david cameron's coalition to enter into talks with the scottish government to provide for a temporarily devolved power to hold what became the 2014 referendum i was present throughout these discussions as dean woods said as constitutional director the lead civil servant on the negotiations answering prime minister cameron and secretary of state for scotland michael moore and the paper i'm publishing draws on the lessons of that period as well as on wider constitutional law on british history and in international comparators it avoids as far as i can specific references to parties politicians or current political events it aims to stick to constitutional principles and it is not about the merits of union or independence it is about how the british state faces up to this possible clash between votes and laws now in the event of such a clash the uk government and its parliament has broadly three options for how to respond which give the title of the paper these are as follows resist resist a referendum by force of law that's the current uk government's policy reform reform the uk and scotland's positions within it alongside that resistance to a referendum with the aim of providing an alternative to independence capable of overcoming what is by historical standards it's very strong opinion polling position or we run the 2014 referendum or some variant thereof having abandoned the resistance policy in the light of the electoral mandate over the next 30 minutes or so i will go through four key conclusions so you can keep track first that the union can be maintained by force of law is not ultimately in doubt the question is whether it is wise to seek to do so questions of precise constitutional powers are arguably beside the point the evolution of the british constitutional system is a strange business in the late 2000s then cabinet secretary sir gus o'donnell whose private secretary i was came up with the idea of a cabinet manual to help handle what looked like and was became the first hung parliament for several decades this manual is now regarded often as a constitutional tablet of stone and so it is with the now famous section 30 power that provided the basis for the 2014 referendum it too has acquired seemingly sacrosanct constitutional status in fact it was a hastily improvised response to the circumstances facing the two governments following the snp surprise electoral win in 2011. although some academics had pointed out some years before its potential use as a route for holding a referendum on independence section 30 was never designed for existential constitutional issues it was designed to iron out mistakes in the way devolved and reserved powers work in more mundane matters such as road transport and to provide flexibility for new developments it was never regarded as the only legal path to a referendum indeed whitehall gave serious if brief consideration in 2011 to running the referendum under westminster law before it decided that it before deciding that it needed to be as in what became the slogan made in scotland the scottish government may find ways around a westminster refusal to grant a section 30 order that's what it said it will do but that again is potentially beside the point westminster is sovereign and it could pass a further law blocking whatever path hollywood had found ultimately there are no constraints on what westminster can do to block a lawful path to scottish independence if it's so minded so there are in effect just two things that matter one the law is in westminster two the votes are in scotland so if these two forces clash one has to give way to the other but there are no rules as to how such a situation should be resolved it didn't have to be this way and it isn't in some other countries but the uk government and parliament conspicuously failed to show any interest in setting out rules for what voting to stay in the union should mean in terms of future referendums a measure which for example canada took following the second quebec referendum of 1995. you might not like canada's rules and plenty of quebec separatists don't but they are clear surely it would have been wise in the aftermath of the close vote in 2014 to accept that scottish nationalism was not going away and that as such it might be wise to think about establishing a clear framework thresholds time frames and so on around what would and would not trigger another referendum but westminster instead turned its attention to english votes for english laws and thence to brexit there was no interest in reform so here we are now a vote next month or at any time after in favor of any majority however constituted of msps elected on an explicitly pro-referendum mandate in effect put scotland's consent for the union on polls because we have no other means by which to measure that consent mr cameron and mr moore correctly recognized in 2011 that the pro-referendum parliamentary majority was the principal legitimate measure of the views of the scottish people at that time in the words of mr cameron in his memoirs a referendum was inevitable people had voted for it we would deliver it there is no rational basis on which to depart from mr cameron's view in 2021 should it be the wish of the scottish people that a referendum is held no political argument should override the democratic mandate if as the president prime minister has argued a referendum is not the priority of the scottish people they can indicate this by voting for one or two of several parties who do not wish to hold one indeed a referendum is far higher up the agenda in the 2021 election than it was in 2011 when it was barely discussed and the referendum doesn't have to be immediate the electoral mandate is for the next full scottish parliamentary term as it was in 2011. the other argument that can be expected is that not enough time has passed since the 2014 referendum this too is an entirely political argument quoting back remarks from that period that it was a once in a generation experience is just politics it's just a slogan with the same constitutional standing as the famous promise of 350 million pounds per week for the nhs that was made during the brexit campaign it cannot bind today's voters and this distinction between law and sloganeering may come out in court if the scottish government proceeds with a so-called plan b legislating for its own referendum because westminster has withheld its consent then the uk government will be duty-bound and in court arguments about the priorities of the scottish people or slogans about once in a generation from 2014 will not feature in the legal arguments instead uk law officers will have to say out loud and although they like to describe scotland as a nation in its own right in a great multinational partnership the country has in fact no legal right to self-determination and in the event it might be an unlikely one that the scottish government were to win the case the uk parliament could in any case pass any legislation it wanted to prevent the plan b referendum but this overruling of a democratic mandate by force of law however it's done would have two profound implications first a century of union by consent would effectively come to an end union would become an entity sustained by law alone the angular scottish union in 1707 and the extension of a similar arrangement to ireland just short of a century later took place in the pre-democratic era though the concept of partnership and consent was at the core of the subsequent narrative of the anglo-scottish story if not the anglo-irish one the later history of the 19th century and early 20th century showed that the union had clearly evolved as the tom said to command the consent of scots despite what could charitably be described as a rocky first half century ireland was of course a different story and it was ireland's experience that set the early rules of the british union no constituent part was allowed to leave indeed a century and a decade ago the then unionist now conservative party was explicit that even a uk-wide parliamentary majority as distinct from an irish one a majority for modifying not ending the union through what we would now call devolution for ireland needed to be resisted and resisted by any means necessary andrew bonolo the scottish leader of the unionist party famously said that there are things stronger than parliamentary majorities when it came to maintaining the union this union of the crisis of a century and a decade ago was demonstrably not a voluntary union of four willing nations free to leave at any time but since the resolution of the irish question in 1921 to the satisfaction of most parties other than the northern ireland minority the british union has been based on an assumption of the separate and collective consent of four constituent parts each of which is free to withdraw its consent if it wants to this principle of consent emerged slowly it was enshrined for northern ireland in the 1949 ireland act and has been implicitly accepted since scottish nationalism became visible if erratic political force during the course of the 20th century but it's been formally articulated by every prime minister since mrs thatcher though intriguingly the current administration has been rather vague about scotland's right to self-determination maybe the spirit of monologue is after all back in charge of the conservative and unionist party we shall see but secondly and relatedly the uk government would be telling scottish nationalists that there is no lawful path by which to teach by which to achieve their objectives at least until such time as the uk government gets round to deciding what it thinks a generation means the two clearest statements of uk government policy coming from the secretary of state from scotland and the prime minister close off that parliamentary and electoral route for a very long time they speculate a timeframe from future referendum starting at 2039 because 25 years from the last vote is the earliest that one should take place according to the scotland secretary to 2055 the prime minister's professed preference being for a gap similar to that between the european referendums that is 41 years there's no formal written policy countermounding these statements there's only a stated intent to refuse any request from hollywood for a referendum so it's therefore not hyperbole to say that the uk government's position is that there is and will be no lawful democratic path to scottish independence for an unspecified number of decades regardless of the wishes of scottish voters throughout that period let us dwell on this for a moment i'm not speculating for a second that scottish politics could turn violent there's no history and no sign thankfully of that indeed as one senior smp politician put it to me privately in 2012 there's been nearly a century of active scottish nationals politics and no one has suffered so much as a nosebleed what matters however is that hundreds of thousands of scots who quite clearly support independence have been told throughout their lives however old they are that if they succeed through lawful democratic parliamentary politics of the type pursued by the snp and the greens for example then their objectives will be realized now for the first time in our lifetime the uk government is saying that this is no longer the case and that for this indefinite period the lawful democratic pursuit of a legitimate political objective cannot result in success no matter how many people vote for it and however often they do such a position is not in and of itself undemocratic plenty of democracies do not allow secession spain is a democracy and article two of its constitution thunders that the kingdom of spain is indivisible it is this that renders what catalan nationalists have attempted to do unlawful under spanish law but spain does not pretend to be a voluntary partnership of different nations the united kingdom does so could the united kingdom still be a voluntary partnership of those who pursue scottish independence lawfully peacefully and reasonably are left with the choice of in effect taking it lying down or setting out to test the law on the political process it's really not hard to see how this could do terrible damage to trust not just in government but in the scot sense of participation in a union of equal partners this being the core historic principle of the union as tom has set out a union is not a union of equal partners if one does not allow the other the option to leave now this dilemma perhaps explains why some of the more thoughtful unionists are keen to float alternative structures for the united kingdom such suggestions involve buying time by resisting a referendum and using that time to try to gain support for something else in other words resist must be accompanied by reform and two options are commonly put forward one is procedural involves having some sort of constitutional convention the second involves bypassing this more deliberative phase and moving straight to some form of federal alternative model for the united kingdom now beguiling though these ideas are the second key of the four key conclusions i draw is that in my view there is no viable alternative model for the united kingdom ultimately the choice facing scotland whether soon or at some point later on is between the status quo or some variant of it and independence some reformers are fond of pointing out that it's half a century since the kill brandon commission looked seriously at the british constitution but there's been no shortage over those years of either suggestions or analysis in regard to constitutional reform and it's impossible to envisage a new commission coming up with an idea that no one has previously considered a convention might explore worthy enough ideas such as including a so-called regional dimension with the house of lords that's fine but it would seem highly unlikely that anyone attempted to vote yes to an independent scotland would find their concerns assuaged by such a measure another set of suggestions would likely be unveiled under the banner of improving the devolution settlement in the first two decades of devolution this tended to involve extending it but devolution is at or near its limits it cannot be extended further without infringing on the core competencies of a nation-state such as immigration defense or foreign policy including relations with the european union practically there just isn't much left that can sensibly be devolved and expanding it any further even if it were possible may even exacerbate tensions within the uk conservative unionists including mrs thatcher and the late david mcclechy the first leader of the scottish conservatives at hollywood have drawn the distinction between scotland's right to self-determination in other words the right to leave the union which they support and the right of scotland to in effect dictate favorable terms unilaterally within the union which they do not but the bigger picture is that brexit has laid waste to a delicate constitutional balance in terms that in particular those who advocated brexit will understand a nation is either sovereign or it is not there is no in between and scotland is not a sovereign state as far as the rest of the world concern is concerned the uk may think of itself as four nations but all that matters to them is that it's one state and that one state can only make one choice about some big issues and given the population balance of the uk and its decision taking structures this means that in important issues such as relations with the rest of the continent what england wants england gets events since 2016 have shown that the uk has not become as some suggested had after the 2014 referendum and the devolution of further powers a quasi-federal state scotland was of course removed from the european union by a narrow majority of a much bigger combined english and welsh electorate but perhaps more damage was done to this concept of quasi-federalism and the con and the subsequent negotiations the terms in which the uk sought to leave were negotiated between the uk government and its english backbenchers not with the legislators or members of the commons or in fact anyone representing scotland the process showed that the scottish parliament is not in reality a national parliament in the proper sense of the word politically the scottish parliament was established because a clear majority of scots voted for it in the referendum of 1997. but legally it is a creature existing entirely at westminster's pleasure constitutionally it is nothing more than a large powerful county council and during the brexit negotiations it was treated commensurately a fifty plus one majority in the house of commons is all that matters in uk politics if the government chooses to govern in that way and it did so viewed from the perspective of 2021 the devolution settlement is unlikely to expand as it's nowhere further to go indeed long term it's more likely in fact to be rolled back given the current political mood amongst conservatives who are increasingly vocal the whole enterprise was a mistake lest the sun fanciful let us look at two post-brexit developments which took place without the consent of the devolved administrations one is the abandonment of the so-called sewell convention which existed as a carefully observed undertaking from london not to alter the powers of the devolved legislatures without their consent it's now effectively gone the second is the internal market act which perfectly lawfully but without the consent of scotland or wales confirmed the powers of the uk government to intervene directly in devolved affairs and there are no limits to the powers of westminster to curtail the powers of the devolved bodies now a properly federal arrangement for the uk would however afford such protection for some form of self-government for scotland federalism would confer unchangeable guarantees on the existence and powers of the scottish parliament in the matters for which it is responsible as well as a clear set of rules for decisions made on uk wide matters so could the uk become properly federal realistically my view is no this is not just because england is so vastly bigger than the other parts and has no desire to regionalize into smaller blocks it is because it is simply impossible to see democratic consent materializing for such a proposal federalism would require the abolition of the ancient doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty and it's worth explaining why when gordon brown for example was preparing his package of constitutional reforms on becoming prime minister in 2007 one of those he wanted to introduce was a law to make the scottish parliament permanent he was quickly and correctly advised that such a measure was absolutely impossible there is no lawful way of telling the uk parliament that it can't abolish the scottish parliament or curtila powers if it feels like doing so in the future that is not the case in properly federal power countries like the united states so for true federalism parliamentary sovereignty would have to go the catch is that parliamentary sovereignty has been the bedrock of the english constitution for centuries so such a change would surely meet the threshold for a referendum now we have just endured five years of the most tumultuous political wranglings of the post-war period brought about entirely because an english and welsh majority wished to reclaim what it perceived to be a state of full sovereignty that the uk had previously enjoyed it is surely impossible to see the same english voters turning out in a referendum to limit the powers of the westminster parliament in perpetuity including presumably giving the non-english parts of the uk some sort of a lock in major uk wide decisions so that scotland might feel more comfortable within the union if one of the senior pro-brexit leaders were to say in public that he or she was willing to recommend the renunciation of parliamentary sovereignty federalism might stand a chance but even then the union with scotland unlike separation from brussels is not an issue that tends to excite the english popular vote and would scotland vote for it that too seems unlikely current polling shows that so-called devo max a sort of proxy for federalism is much less popular than it was in 2014 and surely scotland could not be expected to vote for federalism if it had been denied a referendum it actually wanted on independence and would the ratification of a federal constitution require the separate consent of all four parts of the uk if so it seems likely that at least one would vote against and let's not get started on whether a simple or cross-community majority would be needed in northern ireland and if it were a uk wide vote and scotland voted against federalism but it was overruled by england as it was in brexit then imposing a constitutional scotland of the tradition of english majoritarian restraint that has often though not always been evident in the history of the union ironically it used to be conservatives in particular who were acutely sensitive to accommodating scottish differences for example winston churchill and post-war opposition but building the foundations of the 1950s dominance of scotland by the conservatives or unionists as they were still called which saw them win an outright majority of the popular vote in scotland in 1955 churchill openly fretted that labour's post-war nationalization of industry on a uk-wide basis would replace local scottish control and scottish distinctiveness of key scottish employers with london-based bureaucracies but this sensitivity to scotland already in long-term decline has been completely abandoned brexit is done and it was done to scotland not with it the manner in which the post-brexit constitution was delivered was not as a united kingdom of partners but as a greater england the genius of the british union was always that england was disproportionately powerful within it but didn't act like it was with the english imposition of a hard brexit on scotland that is no longer the case and noticeably so and this comes on the back of a period the second trend where more often than not and in a manner that's somewhat out of culture with the history of the union scotland has been making different political choices to england this has been underway for four decades at least but it's become much more pronounced in the last half decade as scotland on the instruction of its voters has effectively withdrawn from any leading part in uk wide politics in three consecutive general elections scottish voters have sent to westminster an overwhelming majority of mps whose core political objective is to withdraw scotland from uk public life this has killed off one of the core narratives of the union over the course of its three centuries that scots have played a disproportionate part in the leadership of the uk as a whole when some malcolm rifkind then foreign secretary lost his edinburgh seat in 1997 it was not obvious that he would be the last conservative sitting for a scottish seat to hold a senior position in the cabinet the only current senior conservative with a scottish accent mr gove sits for a surrey constituency on the labour side the commons no longer has its gordon brines it's alistair darlings it's john reeds neighbors most senior scots shadow chancellor annalise dodds hold a seat here in the city of oxford the last senior mp for a scottish state to play a major role in a uk-wide government was danny alexander there isn't even a surniculous fair burn figure loitering around westminster reminding us of the now defunct tradition of layered scottish tourism now this is a fundamental change to the union that no constitutional tinkering can fix so if events do bring us to the position of a second binary choice either sooner in the more distant future then my third of four conclusions is that the 2014 template is broadly replicable for a further referendum should there be another referendum a high threshold must be applied to changing any of the arrangements that worked reasonably well in 2014 the edinburgh agreement along with the 2014 vote should be recognized as a remarkable achievement given the history of constitutional disputes in the uk and the experience of other countries this was a free and fair vote in a hotly contested campaign but with no serious complaints from either side before or after the result fear of a different result should not be allowed to validate on one unwarranted criticisms of that process but we might expect such a debate it would for example be possible to vary the terms of say the franchise or to insist on holding a confirmatory subsequent referendum following a yes vote in principle but all this comes back to questions about consent and in what way unionists seek to maintain the union there are numerous ways in which westminster could try to tilt the balance to prevent scottish independence happening by democratic means but none of them would be invisible for example extending the franchise to scots living in other parts of the uk might gain marginal support for a no vote and i understand this argument as someone who find it painful not to have a vote on the 1998 agreement in northern ireland having left there just two years earlier but such a decision would be prohibitively complex there would be bound to be hard cases and questionable implementation and it would introduce a potentially troublesome form of ethno-nationalism into the contest it would therefore be wildly contentious and if expatriate scots votes were seen to be decisive it would hardly settle the matter similarly we already know from the 1979 devolution referendum that a turnout threshold is liable to cause great and enduring resentment and despite giving the brexit experience the allure of a second referendum on the terms of exit a requirement for a confirmatory referendum incentivizes the following truly dreadful outcome a heavy vote in favor of the principle of independence because at that point there are no consequences followed by very tough negotiations whereby london seeks to disincentivize scotland from actually leaving and then there's a second referendum with a narrow vote to stay in the union because the terms of exit are so harsh it is hard to think of a better recipe for ongoing sullen discontent of scotland within the union for decades to come what would be needed in the aftermath of another no vote would be a positive attempt to show up the union as well as new rules for how scotland might be allowed to exercise self-determination in future there is always so much discussion about what a yes vote for independence would lead to there was too little last time but what a no vote to stay in the union might mean this is why we are facing the possibility of such a constitutional mess as early as next month should the same situation occur at some point it would be perfectly justifiable and reasonable for the uk government to seek to agree at that juncture a set of rules for the future exercise of scottish self-determination but such a move cannot legitimately used be used in my view as a way of dealing with an outcome next month that provides a parliamentary majority for a referendum if if scots vote if scots vote next month for a referendum there should be one legislating for new rules to impose new requirements for referendum after votes have been cast is in effect legislating to set aside the result of an election and this brings me to my fourth and final conclusion which is that the conduct of the campaigns on both sides in 2014 unnecessarily complicated what is a huge but actually reasonably straightforward political choice which is easily understood by most people so if there is to be another referendum this need not be so again on the campaigns it's now becoming clear that another objection to a referendum or perhaps a precondition for one is giving detail on what an independent scotland would look like and here's where the experience of 2014 should be studied carefully and can be improved on because both sides made wildly implausible assertions in 2014 the scottish government sought to assert that independence would mean broad continuity in many areas stretching credulity in the process most notably with its utterly implausible claims of automatic entitlement to a currency union but the uk side was hardly blameless on the uk side which is less scrutinized the government undertook three strands of work one was around economic forecasting which invariably showed a high likelihood of severe economic trouble for scotland under independence the professional quality of these forecasts was unimpeachable but the future is unknowable no one could have predicted that within a century of each the anglo-scottish union would be proved a roaring economic and political success but the british irish union would be proved a disaster as with brexit voters are invited to take the long view the second strand was the most questionable a series of analyses implying that an independent scotland would be alone and friendless in the world whilst the question of eu membership has changed completely since 2014 it remains troubling to me that when it came to what was at the time the issue of continuing eu membership for scotland the uk government asserted as near fact that scotland would be expelled in reality no one knew what would happen and there was a powerful counter-argument from no less a figure than sir david edward the scottish former judge at the european court of justice he argued that the court on which he used to sit would not countenance the involuntary expulsion of five million european citizens and would mandate an obligatory negotiation so beware seemingly authoritative warnings about the eu in a future campaign spain is normally the union's strongest card and the then prime minister of spain mariana rajoy helpfully waded in on behalf of unionism into the 2014 debate with spain's more recent decision so it would likely be to be open to an application from scotland providing as would be expected the uk recognized the existence of the new state spain is no problem with montenegro's accession but it blocks kosovo's that's because serbia recognizes one but not the other similarly in 2014 the eminent scottish diplomat dean marriott leslie demolished arguments about the perceived difficulty of scotland joining nato a very different organization to the eu they married herself being a former uk ambassador to the alliance and as a former security i would concur with her view that it is very difficult to envisage nato rejecting an application from a willing scotland in the present political climate the third and final piece of uk government work is likely to be the most enduring and it's worth anyone interested in the subject revisiting the legal opinion of professors james crawford and alan boyle on the laws of statehood and how new states come into existence published by the uk government and based on voluminous precedent from the uk itself and from the rest of the world over the previous hundred years or so what the paper shows is that whilst negotiations bringing new states into existence are lengthy and difficult involving very hard choices there is a clear path to negotiated independence the continuing state in this case the uk starts with many of the advantages of the ownership of assets but that's not without its drawbacks because ownership also extends to public debt so if the continuing state isn't fair on asset division it won't get its way on debt and taken together these factors normally incentivize an equitable agreement and this is what has happened in numerous examples across the world over the past century let's be clear there are huge consequences to independence should there be a further referendum those proposing separation would do well to avoid silly assertions to the country as with brexit independence would involve the creation of barriers that do not currently exist there would be a land order of some sort with england just as there has been in ireland for a century before during and after the uk's eu membership there would in time be different currencies as there have been for decades across the irish border during and after the uk's eu membership nationalists would also have to address very challenging fiscal numbers assuming a reasonable settlement of debt in the negotiations similarly eu membership would be likely but not inevitable and almost certainly not immediate and history shows that setting up a new state is time consuming resource intensive and disruptive the challenge for nationalists is to persuade voters that the disruption would be worth it equally however unionists should not repeat their 2014 mistake of in effect claiming that the enterprise of creating a successful scottish state is almost impossible the history of northern europe with its numerous small independent states forged from larger ones so that such an assertion is plainly ludicrous nor should unionists be allowed to demand as they did in 2014 and show every sign of doing so again that their opponents be required to provide certainty about future arrangements for an independent scotland these are designs these are demands that are designed to be impossible to meet how an independent scotland would fare would depend in large part on the decisions taken by its voters and its sovereign government after independence as well as on the actions of others such as the uk and the eu and the circumstances of the time no one predicted brexit would take effect in the middle of a pandemic as the present uk government knows perhaps better than most major constitutional change is a mixture of risk and opportunity of certainty and unknowables voters understand this but bluntly surely it is not beyond voters to compare scotland as it is now with the benefits and drawbacks of being part of a larger state with what it might look like as a small independent northern european nation there is ample basis for scots to make an informed choice in this question but scots will vote will vote shortly on whether they wish to make this choice so i shall conclude by returning to what might become in a few short weeks the most pressing question whether or not they are to be allowed a choice at all the temptation for the uk government to push scotland's choice into the distant future into someone else's term of office is obvious no one wants to be the lord north of the 21st century but history reaches its own conclusions regardless of exact time frames ronald reagan's term of office expired before the fall of the berlin wall but history records that he won the cold war conversely history will recall the attempts of the major and blair administrations to put the uk at the heart of europe as field efforts even if it took years for that failure to become a reality if it is clear that the union suffered fatal damage during this period in our history no future historian will absolve this government from blame for its collapse even if it finally happens long after our present leaders have left office so in defending the union it professes to cherish the first choice the uk government might face whether in may this year or at some point in the future is whether it will try to maintain the union through force of law or to win renewed consent for it in people's hearts and minds it's one or the other thank you well thank you very much uh kieran martin um a brilliant lecture as so many people uh posing their questions have noted and thank you for your brilliant questions and do feel free to use the question and answer tab at the bottom of your screen as we go uh through this next part of tonight's lecture and can i also reassure you that the lecture will be available on the blavatnik school of government youtube channel and a link to which will always be on our website um kieran can we take the questions really in the order of your argument um and let's start with the premise of the argument which is highlighted by a question from john lloyd is your case that in scotland there are too few citizens who see themselves as british as well as scots to sustain the union he writes polls appear to show that fewer than half of all voters would vote for indep independence if that were put to them which would at least passively seem to mean that they wish to retain britishness as part of their national identity it's a very good question i'm hesitant about answering it and so tom may want to come in it's mainly because the argument i was making in that part wasn't so much about that aspect of identity politics but essentially around the principle of consent there are you know there is i'm afraid only one realistic measure open to us at this moment in time as to whether there is a sufficient um uh support for another referendum on independence for scotland and that is its uh parliamentary elections as i said in the lecture it didn't have to be that way um i think you know and it's acknowledged difficulty in the argument that very tight 50 50 poles um are worrisome in terms of social cohesion and and and so on and you know the consent of the of what would appear to be a narrow minority that would lose a large minority that would lose one way or the other so um i'm not predicting the outcome of any uh i'm not predicting the outcome of any uh referendum i think that question of britishness and so forth would clearly be a major um part of this i think what i'm getting at actually is is a fundamental change in the nature of the of of of the partnership i mean we have been debating scottish independence on and off for decades um and it's been a huge and growing feature of british political life i think what's changing now is the fact that it is now unattainable that's essentially the point i was making in that part but tommy may want to comment on the um on the broader question tom is scott is scotland does scotland still feel british or not sorry kieran do you want me to come in there yes absolutely uh thank you um i think uh john lloyd is perfectly correct i mean there's two differences between uh you know a final referendum result and a decision to hold a referendum as a result of votes which will take place uh in in may because the final result as to whether scotland should remain independent or not will depend on the number of votes overall and as we speak this evening scotland is split it split down the middle and john lloyd would draw attention naturally to the fact that a very large number of scots perhaps in terms of the polls nearly half or around half patriotic scots by the way um do feel strongly committed to the union as you know has been really the case since the late 18th century scots very committed to being scots but at the same time having a strong affiliation with with the youth with with the union so i i think in terms of kieran's um presentation tonight because he's really talking about the route the possible route or not to a referendum then i think it looks highly likely in terms of the polls that will be an overwhelming majority as we speak for those parties who wish a referendum but then if a referendum is granted then quite honestly the future is not my period well let me move to a couple of um cries for help in making their decisions thomas connolly asks what do you see kieran as the most effective way for those who support independence to achieve it if as expected there's a pro-independence majority following next month's election i'm tempted to recite tom as uh and i'm tempted to quote tom about saying that the future is not my period either and i think it is um it's a difficult question and as i said at the beginning i mean i'm not talking about the merits of independence and so queasy about advising anybody on how to on how to achieve it i do think that um both morally and politically um the maintenance of the uh lawful parliamentary democratic path is essential and i would predict that even if there is a blanket refusal to continence a referendum from from from london i would expect and hope uh that that that sort of parliamentary representation parliamentary pressure would continue to be the main focus of the pursuit of um of those backing uh independence and as i say i think that's for two reasons one is moral you know as tom said in his uh excellent um introduction and as i said in the paper you know most countries in most places throughout most periods of history have not sorted out these sorts of national um identity disputes well so you know it is very important morally that that pass continues and you know i suppose there'll be plenty of people arguing for less gradualism as the snp internal debate has been called for years but there will be others who will say that you know there's only so many mandates that can be resisted i also think and i know this is something that tom feels so i don't want to steal a point that he makes more elegantly than me um but in terms of you know the previous question about building a majority for independence from the current you know pretty um uh 50 50 uh split and it is essential for those supporting independents to retain a significant chunk of voters who are open to independence but will be absolutely horrified by any extra parliamentary or unconstitutional activity so i think bearing further forward on that question and then i'm going to turn to professor devine to answer this as well you know kieran layton andrews says you know you've clinically dissected the argument against a referendum but also the likelihood of a federal state so what is the real choice left for those of us who have spent 20 years trying to make devolution work but post-brexit wish to see a radically reformed uk should we suck up the current settlement or support scottish independence to force a brexit style crisis so i think it i think this is a really really difficult um point and in my you know adapting to the new world to which you have appointed me uh nairy uh one of the things that i have begun to realize is that after 23 years in whitehall where you know part of the psyche and training is that you can draft your way out of any situation i'm not sure this is one where you can draft your way out of it i'm not sure there is a neat um solution you know there are major historical forces um at work here a fundamental shift in the nature of the union in england's uh restraint within it which has been abandoned in scots very different and political identity has manifested in its recent um returns not so much to hollywood but to the uh the house of commons which make that very difficult now given i know and um you know have a high regard for leighton anderson and his work in in in wales um if if you can ask me to suspend reality for a minute just uh and and let's let's think that the sting gets drawn somehow from scotland and northern ireland somehow i'm not going to say hi because i don't know but let's say it ends up being a sort of 2010 situation where there's no snp majority but there's a strong enough but reasonably containable national sentiment sentiment in northern ireland is stable i think where layton sits in wales is actually very interesting and it's where if you like that sort of plural devolved union could be saved um uh it could be the chance but at the moment there are come some very difficult i'd love to talk to him about this and maybe post a pandemic this is the sort of thing we can talk about um there are extremely challenging trends in wales where instead of a consensus in favor of the evolution you've got two trends towards polarization just like we have polarization in lots of other places you have a growing movement to abolish the assembly all together and just centralized power back in london and you've um what would have been seen as highly unlikely levels of polling support admittedly solved for uh for independence and when i see the welsh first minister talking about this as a government that really dislikes and doesn't find it easy to work with devolution in one respect you can see that as a labour politician attacking a conservative prime minister in another respect it sounded to me a bit like a cry for help you know that the the the devolved settlement in wales within the union is under pressure from both sides from a very absolutist soft brexit sovereignty type of argument that just says look the uk is a unitary state what are we doing with this evolution stuff it's a mess look at scotland look at what it's done on another side uh saying maybe will should follow scotland uh for independence and there is now to going to phrase a squeezed middle uh potentially of um of of people indeed um supporting the late 90s devolution uh settlement tom devine can i turn to you and ask you justin kenrick asks us does the uk's government approach to scotland mirror its attitude to protest and and difference in general you know this this controlling rather than negotiating um um uh approach which has brought us to this very difficult conjunction is there a is there a moment in the history of the union that you are so master of that this reminds you of or that we can learn from you can answer that question uh uh with hopefully with some ease but before i can i go back to the question from mr andrews very briefly nightly okay absolutely just been asked um think of an ideal world an ideal world which is not the reality of course if the uk government could roll back to the period of consent and respect i honestly do think the union would survive um or at least a very good chance of it surviving the problem is that this is a government in westminster which is not only locked into a certain mindset but also which is based on a conservative party which is increasingly becoming according to commentators who know more about this than i do the english nationalist party so the the the the room for johnson boris johnson to change uh the horses and to move back to a more lenient support approach to scotland i think are quite are quite minimal now the the um the uh so so the the the reform of the the reform of the union and in terms of mr andrew's question is possible certainly can be can take place but in my own opinion it cannot take place under the present government so it really depends on how long the standoff will last over the next few years and of course it also depends will there be the next general election a different government with a much more realistic approach to relationships within the union not only not only in scotland and england but also wales and england and also most significantly perhaps of all in terms of the root of peril we are currently walking the position in northern ireland um niley could you repeat the question you wanted me to ask as a second one yes i just wondered what are the you know so many questions from the audience are about well what do we do then you know if we can't do federalism and we we we can't do independence or the referendum then what is it that we should do and i just wondered what what is the nearest parallel in history in the history of the union where where as it were england overplayed its hand and scotland wanted to reassert itself what are the lessons that we can draw from history if we move out from the earlier period of friction which lasted for about 50 years down to the end of the jacobite risings in the 1740s and we moved into the entirety of the history of the union down to the present day there have only been two such episodes one during the governance of margaret thatcher in the late 70s and 80s but that problem which um you know appalled scotland because it was the first experience that the citizens of scotland had of the actual um constraints of the union rather the rather than the kind of liberal approach that they had been accustomed to a westminster actually stamping its authority don't forget the poll tax of dreaded memory was first piloted in scotland and that was not forgotten at the time but that crisis in the union was then assuaged by the blair government and the coming of devolution and then for a period of time a labour government where there was a considerable number of scottish big beasts the situation now has completely is completely different if johnson at all were prepared to roll back to a more uh consent conciliatory and consensual approach to the scottish question then the union could be saved but i think what seems to be happening almost like a roller coaster unless london sees sense um we're likely to we're likely to end up in the not too distant future with constant conflict between the scottish parliament and london and i don't think there'll be extra if you like street activity or anything like that in terms of violence because the scottish government realized as soon as that starts they will have they will lose a majority for scottish independence that's just the way scottish society is at the moment it would never commit itself to that kind of illegal behavior thank you um tom devine the next question um for kieran is from a fellow former senior civil servant um philip rycroft uh welcome well let me welcome you to the blavatnik school um obviously for the for our audience philip rycroft as you will know was permanent secretary of the department for exiting the european union um and he also has a new paper which i'll happily advertise on the ad hoc approach to government of the current government which we're all studying here in in oxford um but phillip rycroff's question to you kieran is as the person who managed the uk end of the negotiations on the edinburgh agreement how might negotiations be managed between the uk and scottish governments in the event of a positive vote on independence what advice would you give the uk government in that circumstance um so just very quickly before i do that i realized i gave a very weak answer say my tone to the past to the previous question about advice so if i was trying to draft my way out of this and i can see um i mean i don't think before we get to what would happen in terms of any independence negotiations um for people who are very worried about the state of the union would like to see some imaginative state craft i think there are broadly two options but neither of them are without risk um and both absorb in full tom's respect and consent agenda so the highest risk one is allowing the referendum to go ahead should there be a mandate for one but with a clear and consideratory package of and a change of tone all the things that tom decided but of course that is existentially risky because if you lose it then that's that's that the other is that despite the fact i think you know intellectually legally historically the case for acknowledging a mandate is um is overwhelming and that's what i've put in the paper i think it's um you know it's not it's not something the current government is attracted to um and this comes to some of phillips points um why not offer talks why not issue as the uk government did in uh january 2012 where it issued a consultation against the wishes of the scottish government saying what sort of referendum should we have we'll do another consultation let's find out what you know if if the uk government thinks it's too soon or the mandate of the 2021 elections uh isn't strong enough whatever it is let's have some consultation about what it should be now i've said in my paper that i think that's retrofitting the rules after an election but it's probably better and more respectful than just saying no for an indefinite number of decades which is the current position on philip's point and just i also happily promote uh the paper it's an excellent um it's it's an excellent read um with lots of common not identical analysis but lots of common analysis in a different uh uh question um because philips recommendations are about how to improve the intergovernmental uh workings of of the union and i think you know firstly uh uh i think we uh in the event of a yes vote i think the crawford boyle paper um is an absolute masterpiece um it is uh so it's a it is worth examining from its 2013 it was published i think in january february of 2013 and it's um uh you know two of the leading professors on the law of statehood um uh talking about the way that new nations come into being they considered various models for an independent scotland but the most likely one which is the way that the irish free state later irish republic came into being is the continuing uh legal personality of the united kingdom not least because as a permanent member of the u.n security council or recognized nuclear power uh the uk has to uh continue to exist to fulfill those uh uh uh obligations and then there are a series of things around you know divisions of assets debt and so forth which are onerous but can and take years to settle the details but board agreements in principle can be uh can be outreached um but i think then the key point is actually tone um you know the uk has a history going back to the recognition of the united states after the war of independence uh to the creation of the irish free state of post-independence generosity of spirit and and and in practice and that was out of enlightened self-interest rather than you know um sort of getting over a major strategic um and uh psychological setback um reasonably well uh so i think that sort of generosity of spirit would be extraordinarily um important about how to make two different jurisdictions on the same uh on the same island at work because actually you know i mean i could board the wrestlers meeting um about the various sort of subsets of you know physical assets foreign relations what to do with the diplomatic estate and all of that but it's all doable it's been done many many times before it's not like leaving the european union which had never been done before by a major nation state you know new states have come into existence out of large estate an awful lot so there is a template for it and i think as i say in the paper you know for that reason i think a campaign that's respectful would neither make implausible assertions about how easy everything is on the pro-independent side nor would it say like the whole thing would be completely prohibitively and stupidly impossible because it isn't a lot of questions are really about the alternatives and and i'd like to address this question from callum miller to both kieran martin and tom cobine he writes could you comment on the prospects of a more variable federalism in the uk and specifically he proposes if you if you had could not greater devolution to the english regions consistent with rebalancing power within england dilute the power of westminster generally in a way that supported the restoration of english majoritarian restraint in relation to all three other nations of the union so a suggestion that constitutional devolution within england could help rectify and rebalance the union at large what do you think kieran um it's an interesting case it's i i can see it being tried and certainly being the platform of parties uh the challenge and i hate to be so negative about all the uh possible alternatives to a binary and um you know uh anguishing a choice for millions of people um the challenge is uh manifold um uh one is england has never wanted to regionalise um you know it's one of the oldest um uh um uh states in the in in in the world every attempt to offer regional demolition to england as regions um has been um rejected but of course individual cities have taken it and secondly it requires huge shifts in the in the institutional architecture and psychology of the british state in which you know callum and i both spent a significant part of our um careers it is one of the most centralized um states in the world and then the third the third point is it doesn't you know it may not do anything to shift that imbalance i mean it might by you know diminishing the over-winning power of the central state it might do what callum achieves i would be skeptical um and not least because you know um and this comes back to something tom said in his uh uh uh remarks um the um scotland is not a region it is a nation so it is a different challenge um and if you are trying to promote alternatives then i'm not sure how um looking at regional power within england actually uh offsets that challenge to the respect and historical respect and consent that's been intrinsic to a union between two ancient nations thank you kieran we seem to have lost tom devine but hopefully he will rejoin um so let me pick up a a tricky pointed question at kieran from kevin o'sullivan um i read today that you said the failure of david cameron's government to set any rules for another referendum after the no vote in 2014 meant that there was a looming constitutional crisis given you a part of the edinburgh agreement did you advise that such rules should not have been set at the time and if so why was that advice not heeded it's so nice to look back with hindsight but a great question kevin yeah that's a great and perfectly fair question and you know i don't claim we've got um everything uh right and you know whilst that this works in both the positive and negative uh direction by the time it came to the aftermath of the referendum i was um setting up the national cyber security center i do think there was uh you know um the constitutional mosque constitutional policy making is not one of whitehall's great uh strengths um and uh i certainly wasn't back in uh in in those days we made plenty of efforts and philip reitcroft deserves great credit for um augmenting it um during his uh tenure um i think you know and maybe it's something we can do more wrong here uh when you're in a large bureaucracy um like whitehall there is finite capacity there's finite capacity in the official machine there's finite capacity in the um in the political system and there are other priorities and there is a great tendency to prioritize the urgent over the important and the scottish question became important it remained important but became non-urgent on the 19th september 2014 because scotland had voted to stay in and it was going to be it was going to be a future problem uh historic history may be harsher on us than at the time it was easy to overlook it at the time there was things popular discontent uh discontent so while i think it was unwise of david cameron and i think a lot of people remain shocked that on the morning just after the returning officer had pronounced that scotland narrowly voted to remain in the union and a lot of people were shocked that he spoke immediately to the concerns of england rather than the healing in scotland um and so i think that was unwise i think it is more forgivable but still um regrettable that the whitehall machine didn't think you know what let's break the habit of a lifetime and actually think strategically about how to see this off again and i don't or how to manage this potential uh tension um again and in so far as i have a um you know um uh uh part to uh play in that um field i'm very very happy to acknowledge it but i do think it's something that um i i i do think it was something that in retrospect would have been much better had it been done thank you and welcome back um tom devine yesterday i temporarily lost power very good um uh well what i i'd like to just come to kieran one last question and then come to tom devine for a concluding comment kieran at the blavatnik school we always like to um look internationally for what we can learn from other countries um people in their questions have posed both quebec and catalunya in spain what is it that you have learned from those two examples in thinking through the relationship between westminster and scotland um i think on i probably learned more useful from canada than spain um that's partly the function of government the uk and canadian system for obvious historical reasons are much more closely aligned than the spanish one but i think um i think there are two um um i i think i've learned two things from this one is that some form of um some form of reasonable but not complete flexibility is useful in these in these things so you know whilst i think there is a high bar for changing any arrangements from 2014 it perfectly reasonable people could discuss and and and and debate those whilst i think you know it would be beneficial to have uh rules in place if there's another no vote in any future uh referendum reasonable people can debate what those are the rigidity of the spanish system is a real problem i mean um i i know it's deeply embedded in um the psyche of many um uh people in spain who think that what the catalan how many what you would call unionists in spain i suppose who um think what the catalan separatists are doing is appalling but at the same time when the constitution of the country says the kingdom is on is indivisible it doesn't leave a lot of room for imaginative statecraft within the law it just doesn't i think the uk and canada have that advantage but i think canada did although you know um it didn't do it the first time around uh canada did decide that it would um um put tough but respectful conditions on its problems as i mean it applies equally to all provinces but as everybody knows it's only really talking about quebec and it did it from a position where it didn't have to you know it was it was in 2000 um this the fizz had somewhat gone out of the um canadian uh sorry of the quebec pro-independence movement after its extraordinarily narrow defeat in 1995 but i think we do learn from that that it's now accepted that if you're going to hold a referendum on quebec secession from canada here are the conditions you've got to fulfill to have it recognized and everyone knows that supreme court has upheld it and so forth so i think i was very very wise and that's what i've learned from from that experience tom divine do you have a closing comment for us uh just a couple of closing comments nightly in a fascinating discussion and as everybody who's tuned in i think will it will accept um fascinating paper full of ideas but also cogent and trench and common sense and if i if i say so uh kieran or you're not a politician political knows uh two to two comments first of all as an historian i would encourage those within downing street and particularly those within the emerging social unit which is now being supervised by somebody who i think has got great abilities as a senior civil servant as she has shown in northern ireland to reflect upon the history of the union particularly perhaps in the 20th century and to learn how stabilization was possible even in during the period of the rise of scottish nationalism in the later part of the 20th century the second thing is i think there is no choice now for westminster government but to exceed um unless they are looking for a long-term rupture of relationships between scotland and england to accede to a referendum a referendum planned of course through consensuality and i expect the um the uk government to adopt a hard line on this but i think the principle of the referendum should and has to really be considered if we're going to move back to consent a process of consent as the kieran is cogently and eloquently argued for and then then the battleground goes on to the issues and it's at that point that both the scottish government but also and crucially the um the uk government can enter the lists of debate and attempt to convince a majority and my hope unlike i think part of the debates that took part took place in 2014 is that there will be at least a considerable degree of intellectual honesty because those of us who are my age are not necessarily concerned about the future for us because we don't have long to go but i am mentally concerned about the future as so many people in their 70s will be for their children and grandchildren and that's the reason for future generations once we get and i think we will almost certainly get to a new referendum the party is concerned have a moral obligation not only to current generations but to subsequent generations to conduct a debate in a civilized and honest manner thank you so much uh tom devine reminding us of the power and importance of civilized the civilized manner respect restraint consent in political authority and in government uh kieran martin this talk has been described variously by people posting in the question channel as dazzling as an extraordinarily good talk as brilliant um insightful i think i speak on behalf of everybody listening in thanking you and in thanking sir tom devine for joining us this evening thank you both for shedding so much light and thought and reflection um and detail onto this issue that affects everybody in the united kingdom and those beyond the united kingdom looking to this as yet another example of how to govern a multi-national state my thanks to all the audience for your brilliant questions i'm sorry we didn't get to all of them they are excellent we will make sure that both kieran martin and sir tom devine get copies of those questions and comments that you've sent in um i will close in just saying thank you for joining us at the blavatnik school of government and i hope that we'll see you again soon in the school in its virtual form if you can join me you can come off mute join me in thanking and applauding both kieran martin and tom devine
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