Scotland Forever?

If not for Queen Elizabeth I's steadfast refusal to take a prince consort and sire a child, England and Scotland might never have become one country.  When Elizabeth died in 1603, the closest heir to the English throne was King James VI of Scotland, who became King James I of England and the first English king of the House of Stuart.  England and Scotland remained separate countries until the Act of Union - overseen by Queen Anne, England's last Stuart monarch - formed the modern state of Great Britain in 1707.

Ironically, the Scots, who sired the union, have been junior partners in it ever since.  They lost much of their sovereignty in the years that followed, and they came to be looked down on by the English as second-class citizens.  That, among many other issues to numerous to go into full detail here, has led to tomorrow's referendum on Scottish independence.

The reasons to vote for Scottish independence are compelling.  The country has had to switch to a service-based economy as factories have closed down, and Scots are more liberal than the government in London, which - like the U.S. government in Washington - turned to the right at the end of the seventies and rendered a progressive revival to the realm of wishful thinking.  (Good thing everyone in Britain got public medical insurance before that happened.)   Scots are so liberal, they want to get rid of the nuclear submarines stationed in their waters.  (That's going to be tricky; where else would you put them?)  Many of the Scottish people want a chance to build up their own economy adn make their own decisions about their national defense.  More importantly, though, the Scots have an identity and a sense of ethnic pride all their own, and independence would no doubt be the best way to preserve it.

There are reasons for the Scots to stay in the United Kingdom, most notably difficulty of getting an independent government up and running as well as establishing a currency, and there may be even more reasons than that, but British Prime Minister David Cameron apparently can't think of any.  He's been going up to Glasgow and Edinburgh and any points in between to make the case against Scottish independence, and he's been talking about the special "family of nations" the British people form.  Whatever that means.

English platitudes and English attitudes may be the reason the polls over the yes-or-no question of Scottish independence is so close it could go either way.  But get this:  Every poll I've seen shows the "yes" percentage and the "no" percentage adding up to 100 percent.  In other words, there are no undecided responses; everyone in Scotland has apparently made up their minds.  All that's left now is to await the returns tomorrow.  Given the five-hour time difference between New York and Glasgow,  we Americans should know the results in time for the evening news.    

It's gong to be an interesting development, no matter which way the vote goes.