Robert Burns Told the Scots to Be British Because Only the British Could Fix the Mess They Made

Scotland was saved for the UK by a 55% to 45% margin. Many are crediting Gordon Brown - that loathed and forgotten Labourite Scotsman who followed behind Tony Blair as the man at the Exchequer who found the money for Blair's welfare state ideas and was rewarded with the prime minister position for a very short period - as the person who saved the conservative bacon. But the Scotland question was far from a simple Yes or No vote. Here's a look at what is coming to the UK. ~~~~~ Prime Minister David Cameron responded Friday to the passion stirred by the Scottish independence movement by promising sweeping new powers to the UK's regions. Scotland's rebellion under Alec Salmond's Scottish Nationalist Party, formed by him to free Scotland from the UK and taking the majority position in the Scottish parliament in a stunning 2011 election victory, and England's own fledgling demands for more autonomy, mean that to keep an uneasy union intact, each of Britain's four nations soon may need to live mostly under separate roofs. Their complaints about being ruled by London's Parliament - to which each country sends elected members - focus particularly on tax rates and welfare benefits, and Cameron promised reform to beat back the separatist movement. And importantly, he called for a similar reform of the relationship between Parliament in London and Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and most significantly in England, the home of 85% of the UK's population. Cameron said the voice missing from the national discussion is England. "We have heard the voice of Scotland, and now the millions of voices of England must also be heard. The question of English votes for English laws...requires a decisive answer," Cameron said outside No. 10 Downing Street. ~~~~~ The political implications of Cameron's announcement are monumental. The new effort to reshape the political map of the UK will come before several key tests of opinion that, depending on how the British vote, could end in Britain's exit from the European Union in a promised 2017 referendum. But first, UK voters must decide by May 2015 whether Cameron and his Euro-skeptic, England-centric Conservative Party remain in power or give way to the center-left Labour Party, the perennial preference of Scottish and Welsh voters. Northern Ireland, Wales and even England are feeling empowered by the strong 45% support for Scottish independence. The pro-independence vote fell short but still means that more than 1.6 million Scots opted to leave Great Britain. ~~~~~ Cameron appointed one of Scotland's business leaders, Lord Smith of Kelvin, to lead a Scotland Devolution Commission that has been charged to report its recommendations by November on what responsibilities and powers should be transferred to Scotland. Cameron set a rapid timetable that calls for legislation to be published by January and passed before he calls parliamentary elections next Spring. Typically, the Commons and upper House of Lords don't work so quickly. He said similar diplomatic initiatives would begin with the regional governments in Northern Ireland and Wales, but offered no deadlines or specifics. Like Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also received their own legislatures in the late 1990s as part of Tony Blair's Labour government campaign pledge to bring a measure of self-government to nations that long have complained of English domination of decision-making. Before Blair's devolution program, the British central government was dominant, while town and regional councils covered chiefly the mundane realities of daily life, such as garbage collection and parking meters. The regional governments of Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff still have a long way to go to possess the political autonomy enjoyed by US or Australian states or Canadian provinces. While they have their own effective governors, called "first ministers," the devolved administrations cannot impose or collect taxes. Part of Cameron's campaign promises to Scotland were that the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh would be able to set sales tax policies and change income tax brackets to make the rich pay more, and potentially collect and receive other tax revenues more directly. Currently, sales and income taxes go to a UK-wide authority, and Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales receive block grants that are subsidized by English taxpayers, a sore point with the English who complain that they subsidize better social benefits for Scotland than they receive themselves. ~~~~~ So Cameron faces challenges on several fronts. Right-wingers in his own party oppose the promises he has just made to Scotland, and want to focus on preventing Scottish lawmakers from voting on parliamentary bills that apply only for England and Wales, a longstanding peculiarity of the UK's multi-layered political system. Cameron expects Parliament to pass bills to transfer more powers to Wales' Assembly and to create new restrictions on Scottish and Northern Irish lawmakers in the House of Commons, so that they could no longer vote on issues pertaining only to England and Wales. Wales has received fewer devolved powers than Scotland and Northern Ireland. But the Labour leader of its regional government in Cardiff said the Welsh wanted whatever the Scots were getting, too. Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones said : "It seems perfectly reasonable that we might expect a fair share of the pot." Bernard Jenkin, a Conservative lawmaker from southern England, said he expects England to create its own fully devolved political structures - which would leave the United Kingdom with an overarching prime minister - but England would join Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in having a First Minister overseeing internal affairs, too. ~~~~~ Cameron's move to emphasize new England-only political structures could be a politically savvy response to his narrow escape in Scotland. If he succeeds in shifting the powers of lawmakers in the House of Commons, a future British government would not be able to marshal support from Wales and Scotland to win key parliamentary votes. That would favor the Conservatives, who are profoundly unpopular outside England.Labour leader Ed Miliband hopes to oust Cameron from power in London and entice voters in Scotland back from the Scottish Nationalist Party. Miliband said at the anti-independence Better Together campaign in Scotland : "Change doesn't end today. Change begins today, because we know this country needs to change in the way it's governed." ~~~~~ Of course, Northern Ireland presents different, more dangerous problems. There, a Catholic-Protestant coalition of former enemies has been trying for months to enact UK welfare reforms. Sinn Fein, the Irish nationalist party, refuses to impose the cuts and Northern Ireland is suffering increasing financial penalties as a result, and the province's Protestant leader is warning that the power-sharing that holds the government together needs fundamentally new rules to survive. Failure there could mean a resurgence of the kind of street warfare that claimed 3,700 lives over the past four decades. And Thursday's Scotland vote also offers an opportunity for Sinn Fein, which wants a referendum on Northern Ireland's future. The province's 1998 peace accord contains provisions for a vote on whether Northern Ireland should stay in the United Kingdom, as its Protestant majority favors, or be absorbed into the Republic of Ireland, which won independence from the UK in 1922 after a bitter two-year war. A Sinn Fein leader said : "The people here, like our Scottish cousins, should be provided the opportunity in a border poll to determine the constitutional position. That is the democratic way forward." ~~~~~ So, dear readers, it appears that the United Kingdom is destined to face many competing internal challenges : between parties and capitals, between those who pay and those who receive, and between voters whose souls and patriotism respond to different stimuli. An example -- the ballot papers of 691 of the more than 3.6 million Scots who cast their ballots Thursday answered the question 'should Scotland be independent' by checking both Yes and No. And now we can look forward to ballot box battles to control local parliaments all over the UK...and we will see the conservative values predominant in England and Northern Ireland fight it out with the socialists of Wales and Scotland. Stay tuned because it's going to get messy. The right wing of the Conservative Party in Prime Minister David Cameron's coalition Parliament are already saying they have no idea what he has promised. Bette Midler once said, "When it's 3 o'clock in New York, it's still 1938 in London." That may all be about to change -- but don't bet a lot on it. The English, the British, have an uncanny ability to make sweeping changes just so they can stay the same as they were. That's why we love them.