WORK|OUT European Students' Review

THE NOT-SO-UNITED KINGDOM

Election results in Scotland give victory to the SNP, a party which wants to establish Scotland as a country independent from the rest of the UK — in 2010.

   | Hugh Cleary (OXFORD). The Scottish elections of May 3rd saw, for the first time, victory for the proindependence Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP), who now have 47 seats in the Scottish Parliament — one more than Tony Blair’s once all-powerful Labour Party.
   This striking result can in part be explained away, simply as voters taking another swing in the new national pastime of giving the outgoing Prime Minister a black eye. Yet the success of the SNP and its nationalist message suggests that the result could be of far greater historical importance. The SNP promises to work towards a deadline of 2010 for holding a referendum on Scottish independence, and has successfully enthused the electorate with its dialogue about Scotland’s (as yet unleashed) economic potential. The nationalists claim that revenues from Scotland’s North Sea oil reserves, combined with a revitalised spirit of success in the aftermath of independence, would propel Scotland’s economy forward and give the country the regeneration it has yearned for for years. But the future would not necessarily all be rosy, at least if you listen to the SNP’s opponents who claim that Scotland currently benefits economically from its attachment to the UK, both through trade and because of the British government’s disproportionably high investment in Scotland.
   Amongst those who particularly benefit from the current state of semi-devolution are Scottish university students. Whilst students in England and Wales have been crippled since 2001 by everrising tuition fees, Scottish students can still attend university for free. It is exactly this kind of privilege which could be lost if funding from London’s wealthy tax-payers disappeared.
   Not that the SNP will be convinced by that. They take heart from the success story of the Republic of Ireland in recent years — a revival of course driven by the country’s membership of the single currency. Unappetising as it might be for Scottish nationalists, a Scotland independent from England might inevitably have to become more closely linked to and dependent on the EU.
   What odds on Euro coins and bank notes turning up in wallets and purses in Edinburgh before they do in London?