I CRIED into my under-salted porridge. We’d got back from a midwife’s appointment to find our free baby box from the Scottish government on the doorstep, and unpacking it brought a bubble of joy. The basics were reassuring but it was the art that brought tears: a National Orchestra of Scotland app with music for your baby; a poem from the Makar, the national poet. And a picture from the National Gallery. “Hello wee one,” it says on the back. “We chose this print especially for you.” The Scottish government says the box “is designed to give every single baby in Scotland an equal start in life”. But it does more than that. A nation is an imagined community, and the Scottish state has worked hard to ensure that we feel our child will be loved by that community.
Yves here. As much as the UK Government looks determined to drive into the nation into a ditch rather than climb down from its negotiation overreach, and the Tories’ pro-finance, austerity policies have hurt Scotland, Wales, and the hollowed out North, it sadly doesn’t necessarily follow that breaking up Britain would make things better in less than a generation.
As Chris Grey has stressed, one of the problems with Brexit is the UK is too small to go it alone in a world of regional trade blocks, particularly since it depends on a lot of imported goods. This problem goes double for an independent Scotland, which would also have to set up all of the elements of a true national government that it currently lacks (start with trade negotiators!). How about health service? Scotland’s NHS contracts for medicines through the UK. How long would it take to get those sorted? And what happens to people who need insulin in the meantime?
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