One of many dire warnings voiced by people opposing Brexit (British exit) from the European Union is that it will shatter the United Kingdom itself. The concern has merit, and I say that as someone who for more than 20 years has wanted Britain to throw off its EU shackles.
A majority of Scottish voters, 62 percent in the June 23 referendum, backed continued EU membership. When British voters went 52-48 the other way, Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party, described Brexit as “democratically unacceptable.”
You can see her point. Her country clearly voted Remain, but the larger constitutional entity of which it is part voted Leave. Sturgeon, whose party wants to free Scotland from the U.K. and the overwhelming voting numbers of England, accepts the almost tautological principle that people want to govern themselves. It’s a good principle.
But wait: If Scots should be able to choose how Scotland is governed, doesn’t it follow that the U.K. should have the same choice? If Scots dislike rule from a distant capital controlled by politicians with whom they disagree, surely the same must be said of Britain vis-a-vis Brussels.
If it is democratically unacceptable for Scotland to be withdrawn against its will from the EU, it’s just as democratically unacceptable for the British to be locked inside the EU against their wishes.
So, what’s the next step? Once the British government has reconstructed itself following the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron, it should trigger the statutory two years of negotiations over the terms of exit from the EU.
I dearly hope EU negotiators follow the dictates of self-interest rather than of revenge, and come to an arrangement that allows continued cooperation at many levels. Pleasingly, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, appears to be indicating that as her preference.
If so, and if Britain simply repatriates decision-making to the mother of parliaments, it will give the lie to those who smeared Leavers as xenophobes, isolationists and “Little Englanders.”
Britain was the most international-minded nation on Earth for 250 years before the EU existed, the very reason English is today the international language. There’s no reason why it should turn inward just because it becomes free once again to make decisions for itself.
And Scotland? Scottish Nationalists, having lost an independence referendum in 2014, cannot afford to demand another unless or until they are sure they’ll win. A second defeat would surely doom their cause (which I hope is anyway doomed) for at least a generation, probably forever. So Sturgeon and her fellow “nats” will make that calculation continuously.
Perhaps they’ll take the plunge. If they do, they should at least recognize that the democratic principle they’re invoking is the same one that is taking Britain out of the EU. They haven’t been stabbed in the back, as some now claim. British voters are merely exercising the same right they’ve demanded for Scotland for decades.
