❝A pound spent in Croydon is of far more value to the country than a pound spent in Strathclyde❞- a recent UK PM
A ‘Dark Star’ – ‘draining the life out of the rest of the country’
In 1704 Scottish parliamentarian Andrew Fletcher predicted that Union would lead to the unnatural circumstance of London hoarding the wealth of the whole island. He was right. In 1700 London’s population was 575,000, half of Scotland’s. Today more people live there than in Scotland, Wales and a bit more combined. And that gap is growing.
THE LONDON PARTIES CRITISE THE OVER-CENTRALISED, LONDON-CENTRIC, NATURE OF THE UK STATE – then perpetuate it
Independence from Dark Star London is to make Scotland a better place for people living here. Scotland will be the 63rd country to move on from London rule. It’s clearly a more popular constitutional arrangement. There is no ill-feeling towards any other part of the UK. Quite the opposite…
…And nothing against ordinary Londoners, the way the capital dominates the UK is a big problem. Especially felt in the ‘remote’ (from London) parts of it – like Scotland… and Wales, and Northern Ireland and northern England. Tories admit this when talking about ‘Northern Powerhouses’ and ‘Levelling Up’.
‘Net outflow of income’
The shops on Scottish high streets, the oil companies extracting vast wealth from the North Sea over decades, the big whisky companies, the ‘Scottish’ banks – headquarters and/or main bases in the London area.
The ‘City’ within the city
The ‘City of London’ is home to ‘high finance’ and, coincidentally, the world’s money laundering and tax evasion as the centre of the web connecting all the former British colony tax-havens. That strange little enclave, with its own laws and police, has far more influence on what UK economic policy should be concerned with than far off Scotland (or the rest of England, Wales, Ulster). With major consequences for those places.
Cities like Dublin, Amsterdam, Oslo, Copenhagen, and Stockholm can compete with London and each other in ways no other UK city can. Dublin is thriving thanks to Ireland’s independence and autonomy. Assets worth billions, thousands of highly paid jobs, and hundreds of businesses have gone from London to Dublin since Brexit. Remain-voting Scotland, meanwhile, has been a powerless onlooker. There is a cost to this powerlessness and lack of democracy. Its cities will bear the brunt of the Brexit effects.
Economic policy is still mostly reserved to the UK government. Scotland, stuck in Brexit Britain, is expected to fall further behind its independent neighbours. (Scotland is projected to have a smaller and older population by 2045).
| Unwanted Tory governance and the London-centric United Kingdom state are unnecessarily grating and divisive features of our constitutional arrangement. It has the effect of regularly restricting Scottish democratic expression and economic potential over generations.
From the LSE’s Tim Oliver
All the institutions of the state are based in London. London is the seat of government, the home of the civil service, security services, cultural institutions, the UK’s TV stations & newspapers, where the owners live. And its Royal family.
It has the Eurostar, 4 of the UK’s top 5 airports, the big and growing underground system, Crossrail, and HS2 has started there (billions of pounds spent later and it won’t be going past Birmingham). London had the Olympics, it has the tennis. If there’s a multi-nation bid to host a sporting event it’s automatically assumed London will get the final before any of the details are even known.
It is the economic hub, home to the headquarters of a stupidly high proportion of UK trading companies. Over half of the UK’s top 100 listed companies have their headquarters in central London. Over 70% of the FTSE 100 are located within the metropolitan area, and 75% of Fortune 500 companies have offices in London.
It was even HQ of the Tory government’s ‘Northern Powerhouse‘ initiative to revitalise Northern England. The decentralisation policy agenda platform before the ‘Levelling Up‘ rebrand. The Tories spent £40,000 of taxpayers’ money trying to hide how the NP Minister never visited the north of England.
