Scotland rejects independence

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/19/scotland-independence-no-vote-victory-alex-salmond

by riffraff • 12 years ago

77 128 12 years ago

An English parliament based in say Manchester could be interesting, I wonder if they'll go for modern representative democracy or try to just expand the power of the current dysfunctional first past the post system?

"But Michael Gove, the chief whip, made clear that greater protections would have to be offered to protect the interest of English, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs”

Notice he says its the MPs interests that need protecyes!, not who they represent.

Toenex• 12 years ago

Given this is a Hacker forum lets go one step further and ask "Does a modern society need a centralised seat of government at all?"

hackerboos2• 12 years ago

Exactly - powers should be devolved to councils. Not an English parliament.

lotsofmangos2• 12 years ago

Could probably replace most of it with a bug/feature tracker on a public block chain.

dang• 12 years ago

Although most stories about politics are off-topic for HN, this one seems like the exception that proves the "most". Let's hold off flagging it unless the thread goes haywire.

arethuza4• 12 years ago

I wrote this earlier but the discussion I posted it to originally is dead:

As a Scot who voted "Yes" I must admit I am disappointed with this result - but also not in the least surprised, this is pretty consistent with the polls.

However, thinking about it a bit more (even if it is 6am) - I'm actually pretty pleased with both the turnout and that 45% of people voted "Yes" - a few years ago that would have seemed crazy.

In some ways this reminds me of the devolution referendum of 1979 - while the result then was also a "No" it raised the topic as a realistic alternative so when there was another devolution referendum a generation later it passed easily so now we do have an independent Scottish Government which has a fair amount of power within Scotland (although no powers over things like foreign affairs and defence).

I suspect that, just as in '79, the UK is in for a lot of political upheaval over the next decade and I suspect that now that independence has been introduced as something to be seriously considered that in a generation or so it might also look more sensible than it did at first.

My immediate concern is that I hope that everyone can put the differences introduced by the campaign behind them.

hackerboos2• 12 years ago

I read in The Economist that the No vote was bolstered by Scottish pensioners who fear for their retirement funds.

It's inevitable that the referendum will occur again (probably under a Tory majority government) and with those said pensioners not around; you'll get the result you wanted.

linker3000• 12 years ago

Pensioners are not a finite resource.

mike_hearn8• 12 years ago

Er, I know life expectancy in Scotland isn't great but you realise the dead pensioners will be replaced by new ones, right?

BSousa• 12 years ago

Won't you just have other pensioners then?

I read something along those lines somewhere else as well saying in 10/20 years all the old folks will be gone and they yes will win, but hasn't history shown us that idealistic young just turn to realistic oldies with time?

meatcider• 12 years ago

Check your facts, the result in '79 was a Yes.

arethuza4• 12 years ago

Technically you are correct - but that referendum had some odd requirements (it wasn't a simple majority vote) so devolution didn't happen:

"The referendum resulted in a 51.6% support for the proposal, but with a turnout of 64%, this represented only 32.9% of the registered electorate, short of the required 40%. The Act was therefore repealed."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_devolution_referendum,...

treerock2• 12 years ago

Checked the facts.

This I knew but I'd never heard that...

"the SNP carried out a survey of the electoral register in the Edinburgh Central constituency. This appeared to show that the register was so out of date that even in an area where major support for a 'yes' vote might be expected, achievement of 40% of the electorate was virtually unattainable."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_devolution_referendum...

narag4• 12 years ago

I suspect that now that independence has been introduced as something to be seriously considered that in a generation or so it might also look more sensible than it did at first.

So the plan is to ask again and again and again until yes wins, isn't it?

To be honest, that doesn't seem fair.

nknighthb5• 12 years ago

Are you saying it would be fair for one generation's majority political opinion to irrevocably tie the hands of all later generations?

tomp• 12 years ago

Why not? The threat of repeated referendums is the only way to ensure that UK will actually implement all the promises it's given Scotland in the past week.

vidarh9• 12 years ago

By that argument, why do we bother having elections all the time, when we could just have one and be done with it forever?

Does that seem fair?

petercooper• 12 years ago

As a parent, the idea of repeatedly asking the same question to get consent is familiar to me, and I can confirm it often does work ;-)

adaml_6233• 12 years ago

My immediate hope is that everyone who has got off their butt to participate in the yes and no campaigns can stay off their butt and volunteer in other ways to help Scotland. Huge numbers of people could make real permanent positive change possible without the cost of new government institutions.

dizzy3gg• 12 years ago

big society :/

sytelus2• 12 years ago

I actually think generation later trend would be more towards uniting rather than splitting. Splitting rarely benefits population as a whole. Sometime a portion of population might benefit but overall it's loss.

General evolutionary trends for human kind had been towards uniting. We started out as small tribes then evolving to city-size kingdoms and now to huge unions like China, Canada and USA. Big countries do well simply because there far far more resources at their disposal, they are more resilient to disasters and overall utilization of resources is much more balanced. Small countries have little chance of ever matching growth and momentum of large countries. Sure, Norway and Finland can be relatively "well off" by exploiting their natural resources but they simply aren't going to be country who goes to Mars or invents next big things. By law of numbers, number of engineers and scientists in small country will always be small and thus their ability to take on big projects always limited.

jiggy201112• 12 years ago

In this case breaking up the UK could be a first step towards consolidation within the EU.

ende• 12 years ago

This is very over generalized and a bit too simplistic of an analysis (no offense). There are certainly trends across history towards larger social organization, but this isn't necessarily always mutuy exclusive to smaller, more local organization. There are both natural and political reasons for this. The human animal, like any social animal, is biologically equipped to form social networks with only a limited quantity of individuals; non-scale free network effects come into play. Neither is larger social organization desirable from a democratic point of view, as the voice of the individual becomes increasingly diluted and far removed from the center of mass.

This trend towards increasing unification you point out is also a mixed bag. Large unitarian states have tended to be rather aggressivly expansionist empires throughout history. There is a critical balance to be struck between local autonomy and global integration, and this is where notions of Federalism tend to arise.

Many of today's territorial definitions are accidents of history with little regard for self-determination, yet locked into the Westphalian status quo. A global evolution towards higher economic integration, democratic peace, and frankly the nuclear preclusion of conventional warfare between developed nations, all conspire to form a new international security environment in which minor local territorial rearrangements no longer threaten profound effects on the chess boards of great powers. It then becomes possible to peacefully renegotiate some of this status quo.

I expect that this isn't the last we've heard from scotland, and that the future of globalization with witness an increase in both unification towards an integrated whole as well as greater subdivision and recombination within and among local spheres.

Another lesson from biology: it wasn't the continued absorption of all genetic material into increasing enlargement of single cellular life that brought us to where we are today, but rather the clever federalism of diversified multicellular life that sparked a revolution.

trhway6• 12 years ago

almost magic how far some western countries have advanced - in most of the world the "separatist" is pretty much equivalent of "terrorist" and a valid reason to send tanks in while in UK they just let the vote happen (even though it would be a high treason just a couple hundred years ago there too).

arethuza4• 12 years ago

The UK is unusual though - it is a "Union" with Scotland maintaining a lot of separate institutions that predate the union in 1707: notably the legal and education systems which are often completely different from those in the rUK. For the last while we've even had our own government here in Edinburgh.

So we were already a sort of a "country within a country" anyway.

hessenwolf• 12 years ago

Is rUK pronounced ruck or are-you-kay?

slamontales• 12 years ago

You must not be familiar with the recent history of Northern Ireland - widespread gerrymandering, suppression of civil rights, massacres of civilians by unaccountable armed forces of the state, illegal torture/detention camps for political detainees etc. A lot has changed but all of that is the very recent living memory of the UK.

trhway6• 12 years ago

But that is exactly my point. The fact that just mere 2-3 decades later such things didn't happen in Scotland is mind-boggling.

allegory2• 12 years ago

I'm glad, for one obscure reason. The few people I know in Scotland became terribly hostile over the last week. I mean really anti-English. I'm talking non-patriotic professional people I've known for 20 years.

It made me wonder what purpose further dividing of the world serves other than to introduce nationalism and protect primitive identities promoted by the politicians and media.

We're all humans. Do we need another line between groups of us?

arethuza4• 12 years ago

"Do we need another line between groups of us?"

Actually, one of the reasons I voted "Yes" is because I'm in favour of the EU - I'd far rather have been part of an independent Scotland that wanted to be part of the EU (even if there might have been a bit of a fuss about getting back in) rather than a part of the UK that seems destined to leave.

allegory2• 12 years ago

Agree with you there, but I'm taking a different approach. If the UK leaves the EU, I'll move into the EU. I doubt the UK will leave the EU though as most of it is manipulation and posturing.

UVB-765• 12 years ago

The UK will not leave the EU any time soon.

mike_hearn8• 12 years ago

I suspect "bit of fuss" would have been an understatement. Thankfully it's an issue that will be explored some other day, in some other part of the world.

I don't think you should see UK exit from the EU as a dead cert. That debate has hardly even begun. Of course right now it's being driven by the Euroskeptics because a referendum date hasn't even been set and they're the ones agitating for it. But as this referendum shows, sentiment can change a lot in the runup to a vote.

There are lots of people who do not want to see the UK leave the EU, although I guess most of them would be in favour of a rebalancing of powers. Those people will presumably/hopefully learn lessons from the iScotland campaign and base the "no to leaving" campaign on positivity rather than simply listing all the problems the UK would face on its own. If the no campaign can seize the positive moral ground AND it has lots of economic arguments on its side, it should force the yes side into simply being negative about the EU and well, Salmond has shown everyone the power of positivity (even over reason).

trhway6• 12 years ago

It made me wonder what purpose further dividing of the world serves other than to introduce nationalism and protect primitive identities promoted by the politicians and media.

in the modern world even a small state comes with a "magical" powers not available to any other, even if it is much bigger, group of people or organization. Thus a Yes or No for independence means "do we want to wield such powers" or "do we want somebody wielding such powers upon us".

jevgeni4• 12 years ago

I think the problem is, that, although we have common physiology, there is no common culture. What is OK for some is offensive to others.

I'm an expat Ukrainian, for example, and what I've seen since the Maidan events last year, was an explosion of hostility from all my friends, who considered themselves Russian or of Russian heritage. Somehow the idea, that my home country could decide for itself, without constantly praising the benevolent, though kleptocratic overlords, that Kremlin considers themselves to be, was offensive to my Russian friends.

That made it very clear to me, what deep, cultural gaps might exist between people, even if they seemingly get along well most of the time.

trhway6• 12 years ago

I'm an expat Ukrainian, for example, and what I've seen since the Maidan events last year, was an explosion of hostility from all my friends, who considered themselves Russian or of Russian heritage. Somehow the idea, that my home country could decide for itself, without constantly praising the benevolent, though kleptocratic overlords, that Kremlin considers themselves to be, was offensive to my Russian friends.

The Kremlin overlords got opportunistically into the game when new Ukraine government started assault on basic rights of Russian minority, like language. That has got angry a lot of Russians everywhere, even the ones who daydreams about Putin slipping on a banana peel. I ultimately formed my opinion when i saw (on western news sources) Ukrainian government forces (majority are volunteers from Western Ukraine - a lot of ancient hate toward East/Russia) shelling civilian cities - that clearly shown what new Kiev government thinks about the people and the region (i hate to say it, yet i'm starting to think that by taking over Crimea (i personally was really against it at the time), Putin, as a side-effect, saved people there from the fate of people in Donetsk/Luhansk).

Maidan was anti-oligarh, anti-corruption uprising which was skillfully channeled (by the regime of corrupt oligarhs to payback the debt to nationalist forces who supported them and to divert the attention from the fact that the oligarhs got even more power in Ukraine after Maidan - starting with the new Ukraine president, Poroshenko) into ethnic conflict with Russian minority assigned the role of the scape-goat.

davb• 12 years ago

The few people I know in Scotland became terribly hostile over the last week. I mean really anti-English. I'm talking non-patriotic professional people I've known for 20 years.

I've seen quite the opposite. A lot of people here have openly said we'd love to work and trade closely with England - we just want our policies to reflect our differing political leanings.

The line already exists - it's there in the left of center, socialist culture we have in Scotland. Unfortunately as Westminster slowly drifts further right, we find ourselves (Scots) even less well represented.

I have, however, seen a real anti-Scottish sentiment from a very small proportion of English press and media. I know that's absolutely not representative of the English population, but it was disturbing nonetheless.

There are horrible people on both sides. Let's not let that color our opinions.

gabemart2• 12 years ago

  > For the no campaign there was relief: a spate of
  > authoritative polls in the final days of the campaign had
  > said the vote was on a knife edge, bringing Yes Scotland
  > within touching distance of victory after a dramatic surge
  > in support.

Did anyone actually believe the odds were close? I've been following the odds at the major betting exchanges for the last few weeks. I am not aware of any large exchange or bookmaker offering decimal odds lower than 3.00 at any point during that period. For the last few days it's typically been between 3.50 and 4.50. If anyone actually believed that the outcome of the referendum was "on a knife edge", they should have placed some very large bets on a "Yes" outcome.

tinyman• 12 years ago

I agree, though as in a real market, the betting odds are quite sentiment driven. Maybe more so.

Many more people were betting "yes" than "no" (see oddschecker). This tended to skew the market towards a higher "yes" probability. At least one high-street bookie said the same thing. They said that they had their books setup effectively gave them a bet on "no".

This means the betting markets were optimistic on "yes". "Yes" was never that likely.

sytelus2• 12 years ago

What are these "major betting exchanges"? People often refer them but I've no clue where they go to find them. Google/Bing is turning up funny links as well.

gabemart2• 12 years ago

Betfair is probably the best known in the UK.

learnstats28• 12 years ago

I will say the same as the other commenter, but the opposite:

It was suggested that very large bets were placed on No, skewing the odds, perhaps because City of London workers had significant sentiment for No.

blackRust• 12 years ago

What is amazing about the Yes campaign is the odds they were up against: all but one newspaper were against independence, the one for is a weekly paper. We have seen a strong and undeniable media bias.

Even though the majority is for No, ~1.6m voted for radical change. This was not a "nationalist" movement. It was a movement of ideas (the breadth of the campaign has been astounding). A majority of the ~2m that voted No did not vote for the status quo: they just thought the risks too great.

UVB-765• 12 years ago

We have seen a strong and undeniable media bias

On the contrary, the media insisted for weeks the referendum was "too close to call", citing endless polls that generally favored the 'no' vote, but were close to 50-50. Obviously people vote more conservatively when it matters.

Meanwhile, the bookmakers, who actually had skin in the game, knew a 'yes' vote was unlikely, and reflected that in their odds.

treerock2• 12 years ago

Not sure how that is to the contrary? Press may report that it's too close to call to motivated No voters to get out and vote.

(I don't know either way, not being paying much attention to the press, though BBC Scotland has seemed quite balanced)

jcbrand• 12 years ago

Saying the referendum is "too close to call" is not the same as being even-handed (i.e. not having a bias).

They were biased because they consistently took a negative stance towards the potential ramifications (not chance of outcome) of independence.

ZeroGravitas3• 12 years ago

I was following the polls more closely than the bookmakers, but both were clear that No was likely to win.

If the media, who overwhelmingly supported No were reporting it as "too close to call" then either a) they felt that was the most effective way to bring about the result they desired, or b) they are idiots who don't understand the basics of the things they report on. Probably a little of both.

tobylane3• 12 years ago

I saw the media coverage more as either populist - the majority did vote no, or wanting something to talk about - once you go into detail there's very little the yes side has, whereas the big companies were thinking of moving out of iScot which easily fills pages.

mike_hearn8• 12 years ago

Yes definitely, though it can be even worse. Look at how poor Nick Robinson was the subject of professionally organised protest marches for the crime of asking Salmond difficult questions and then being blunt about his lack of answers:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2755858/BBC-s-Nick-R...

doc_holliday4• 12 years ago

Politically it is very interesting and a result that in a lot of ways can bring about real change too (however, I do have obvious scepticism).

The tide is now with change as for the Union to continue change must happen. A lot of the high yes vote was not because people 100% believed Scotland should be independent but more they wanted change to the system (and I do believe a Scottish Parliment offered a better system), it did come with a lot of risk and a possible lose / lose for the people of the UK as a whole.

It opens up the question of representation for people of the regions of England, Northern Ireland and Wales. I think a lot of momentum has been gathered for something a kin to federal government in the UK and is something I would very much welcome.

In essence that is in a lot of ways what that Nationalists wanted... to keep the currency union and have essentially the same terms of attachment to the EU.

I voted no on the day after a long time believing in a yes, the tide of politcal change swayed me that we may ultimately be better in a UK that had the momentum with change to our representation. The no campaign however ran an abysmal campaign and it pained me to end up siding with them, and that was in more in spite of what they had to say.

Being part of the UK benefits Scotland's internal trade immensely and to think terms would have remained the same with the rUK who would have become a foreign nation at that point was naive. I think a Union with the UK has much the same arguments as staying in the EU with respect to trade, contracts and funding. It is just English nationalism and Scottish nationalism have picked differing sides.

jiggy201112• 12 years ago

I don't know how a federal system could work when England is about 80% of the population. The USA already has issues with California and Texas being so significant in terms of population, but England would dwarf both of them in terms of proportion.

The only way it could work would be to abolish England entirely and break it up into regions.

doc_holliday4• 12 years ago

I think English regions should be split up too, and their is great desire for that. England is made up of many quite distinct regions, the problem is much of the power is concentrated in London and subsequently a lot of investment and money is poured into London and immediate surroundings. The fact that England has such a disparity in investment between it's first city (London) and second city (Birmingham) is a problem. It also isn't helping concentration of populations and jobs which remained close to London.

The issues Scotland has are felt throughout the UK, and Scotland therefore has a lot in common as far as wanting powers as do regions of England out with the immediate surroundings of London. This in essence is why this result could be better for the regions of England.

learnstats28• 12 years ago

Not the only way: The Norwegian system is such that regions are compensated for their geography - rural areas with less direct access to government have disproportionately more representatives.

The EU also works quite well for small nations.

jokoon• 12 years ago

it's true that it would have changed a lot of things.

argumentum• 12 years ago

This referendum has convinced me that we should enfranchise 16 & 17 year olds for US elections. My main hangup before was that these people might be pressured by their parents into voting a certain way. It turns out not only do they have political minds of their own, their energy and intelligence was clearly a boost to the spirit of democracy so evident in this election.

As adults, we often romanticize our childhoods, because well .. they are by and large romantic. The experience of discovering the world and yourself is the centerpiece of youth, and it's important that we have that perspective reflected in our democracies.

tobylane3• 12 years ago

It turns out not only do they have political minds of their own, their energy and intelligence was clearly a boost to the spirit of democracy so evident in this election.

Does it? I would always assume that, but I'd shy away from claiming it without proof.

throwaway2837192• 12 years ago

I think it's interesting to talk about the failure of polls to predict the magnitude of the result. Here are the results of the final polls from six major polling organizations, taken 1-3 days before the vote

  Organization    Yes     No      Number*
  ---------------------------------------
  Opinium         0.479   0.521   1087
  ICM             0.477   0.523   1010
  Panelbase       0.474   0.526    954
  Survation       0.473   0.527    910
  YouGov          0.474   0.526   3043
  Ipsos Mori      0.474   0.526    951
  ---------------------------------------
  TOTAL           0.475   0.525   7955

  * excluding undecided voters

On one hand they were accurate in that they forecast a "no" result with high probability - the proportion of "no" voters is more than four standard errors away from 50%; the standard error being

  s.e. = sqrt(0.475 * 0.525 / 7955) = 0.006

On the other hand, the final proportion of "no" voters was 55.3%, which is more than four standard errors away from the forecast value of 52.5%.

So the polls were significantly underestimating the proportion of "no" voters out there. A similar effect was seen in the Quebec independence referendum, where the polls actually predicted a slight advantage for "yes" but the final result was a decisive victory for "no".

mike_hearn8• 12 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shy_Tory_Factor

nknighthb5• 12 years ago

A related question I'd be curious about is the likely voter issue. In the US, left-wingers are less likely to actually go vote than right-wingers. Pollsters try to correct for this with a "likely voter" model (which varies by pollster, but tries to discover how likely a respondent actually is to vote).

If you poll everyone eligible to vote, you get left-wing results. If you poll registered voters, it pulls a bit right. If you poll voters that match a reasonable "likely voter" model, you'll get results that are even further right and tend to be closer to the reality of votes actually cast.

Does this dichotomy exist in the UK and/or Scotland specifically, and if so, do pollsters there try to correct for it?

adaml_6233• 12 years ago

I'm not sure because I don't know where you've sourced your data but where are the figures for undecided voters? That was always a large number and explains why your s.e. is too small.

throwaway2837192• 12 years ago

That's a good point, and I've now corrected for that, but it makes very little difference to the top line result (that the polls underestimated the support for "no" by a large margin).

The proportion of undecided voters in these polls was about 7.1%.

Source is http://whatscotlandthinks.org/opinion-polls

jiggy201112• 12 years ago

My guess is that a lot of people like the idea of an independent Scotland but are frightened of the reality and bottled it on the way to the polling station.

philjohn• 12 years ago

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/international/salmond-vot... ;)

UVB-765• 12 years ago

Independence was the high-risk option.

I don't think it's surprising that people are more risk-averse on polling day, when their vote actually matters.

oliwarner• 12 years ago

And there were notes that went along with these figures. Certainly YouGov's. They said that if correct, their figures were likely going to be multiple-points out in favour of No because of various social factors:

- "No" is fundamentally negative, people don't like to be negative - Supporting the Conservative party is seen as violently offensive anywhere north Sheffield. People that do are less likely to give their opinion in public.

Given the lack of precedence, these are factors they couldn't adjust for.

Scotland rejects independence

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