John Major is right on independence: there's much to fear from a yes vote

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2014/sep/10/john-major-scotland-independence-vote

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John Major is a decent man who has entered the Scottish referendum debate because he is alarmed at the prospect that the UK might break up, causing serious problems for us all – not least Scots. But he is wrong to blame Labour for the looming crisis. It's not the right time for recrimination, and besides (how can we put this gently?) there have been failures of leadership and vision in all parties.

In Wednesday's Times (paywall), Sir John's main thrust is that Labour's "deadly legacy" was the one-sided 1998 Devolution Act, which did not address the governance of the rest of the UK that needed devolved powers – and still do.

Arguably worse, Labour connived with the nationalists in the 1980s and 90s to "demonise the Conservatives and, by implication, the English" despite the "revolution in living standards" that Tory policies made possible in both countries, Major writes.

There's some truth in that. You can see the same process at work now in Labour's attacks on the coalition's management of the NHS. It disowns the Blair/Brown era's reformism in opening it up to choice and competition, including some private sector provision. Late in the day the yes campaign has deployed near-identical tactics to claim that NHS Scotland is only safe in Alex Salmond's hands, the self-styled Nelson Mandela of the north.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of Jeremy Hunt's NHS England strategy, it's a pretty bogus argument on both sides of the wall. Scots have wholly run their own health system since 1999 – and Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon have since 2007 (did Sturgeon quit as health minister before her chickens came home to roost?); they face identical problems of squeezed budgets, rising costs and (even more) rapidly ageing customers.

They've done some things differently, some better (bravely pioneered that smoking ban), others worse (ducked hospital closures and handed out free scrips to millionaires). You get my point. But nowhere in Major's article does the word 'Thatcher' appear. Nor even 'Cameron'.

Those two omissions are not hard to figure out. In her economic and industrial policies, Lady Thatcher was an even more divisive and insensitive figure in Adam Smith's native land than further south. She also famously lectured Church of Scotland leaders, much as Mary, Queen of Scots did the Ayatollah John Knox (and we know what happened to her). She thought they should be grateful; in some respects they should, since Scotland has done pretty well lately. But we can see why they are not.

And if "Thatcher' is the dirtiest word in the yes lexicon – followed by "Thatcherite Blair", for Major is usually overlooked – then David Cameron has also made what may prove to be fatal mistakes too. But let's save the real inquest until later and savour Murdo MacLeod's lovely campaign photo album here.

Over-sensitive Major's shopping list of horrors – which may flow from what he sees as other people's mistakes – is a better one. The EU will be in no hurry to admit an independent Scotland, and all 28 members have vetoes, not to mention separatists of their own. If Scotland eventually gets in ("there is no certainty of this") it will have far less influence in Brussels than in London; 5 million out of 500 million. It is, of course, a weakness in the Tory position, not addressed by Major, that Cameron is playing Salmond-lite in threatening to quit the EU himself.

Trident? Some yes voters think this the most important symbol of the campaign: a "nuclear-free Scotland". Major thinks it might be the end of Trident unless it can be relocated at great cost to west Wales or Cornwall. Why would Nato want to re-admit a country that has done such damage to Nato defence, he asks? Again Scottish leftwingers might relish the thought as they build the New McJerusalem.

It so happens that a Scottish Labour ex-minister who tells me he may vote yes – "I've always been a 'small n' nationalist" – also predicts that prime minister Salmond's first betrayal will be to cut a deal over Trident and defence: he just can't afford the loss of jobs and shipbuilding capacity on the Clyde. It will be the first of many unless Wee 'Eck applies to Google to have past promises deleted on privacy grounds.

Major's spine-chillers do not end there. Can Scotland afford a UK-style network of embassies and attendant inward investment opportunities? No. Will rUK [rest of UK] retain its seat on the UN security council? No. (He may be wrong: UN inertia should never be discounted.) What will happen to the 750,000 Scots living elsewhere in the UK who have no vote next Friday?

As an ex-chancellor – the one who took us all into the abortive exchange rate mechanism (ERM), the forerunner of the euro, in 1990 (and out again in 1992) – Major echoes familiar, misunderstood arguments against an Anglo-Scots currency union (CU). "Truly absurd," he calls it, when we look at the travails of the eurozone. He's right, though we will have to do something.

Labour Britain decided the euro had been badly designed, but knew it would not be in our interests for it to fail – as it may yet do. By the same test it will not be in rUK's interest to have a depressed or unstable Scottish economy next door (or vice-versa), so if there is to be a divorce we will have to work out a least worst option together – they are all pretty grim – for the sake of the children. Scotland's over-indebted banking system? Let's not go over that one again.

So Major is on the right track, albeit in a chippy, Major-ish way. Yes or no on 18 September, we face a constitutional upheaval. It may do us all good; the shakeup we needed. But it may unleash the reactionary impulses already visible in the post-imperial era, of introspective and insular English nationalism fuelled by a cynical press and oligarchy. Think Tea Party.

On their trip north on Wednesday, the three main party leaders had better get it right. Much rests upon it.