Whanganui Chronicle
  • Whanganui Chronicle home
  • Latest news
  • Sport
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
  • Death notices
  • Classifieds

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • On The Up
  • Sport
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Residential property listings
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology

Locations

  • Taranaki
  • National Park
  • Whakapapa
  • Ohakune
  • Raetihi
  • Taihape
  • Marton
  • Feilding
  • Palmerston North

Media

  • Video
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-Editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

Weather

  • New Plymouth
  • Whanganui
  • Palmertson North
  • Levin

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Whanganui Chronicle

Scots must avoid neverendum' danger

By Gwynne Dyer
Whanganui Chronicle·
16 May, 2011 09:19 PM5 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

"I'd grown up with the assumption that Scotland was a poor, wee, deprived place that had never had a fair kick of the ball and could certainly never stand on its own two feet," said Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), whose goal is an independent Scotland. He certainly doesn't believe that now - and the SNP finally won a majority in the Scottish Parliament in the election on 5 May.
Salmond first formed a government four years ago, but that was a weak coalition in which the SNP had to bargain and compromise with the other parties. This time, with 69 out of 129 seats, Salmond doesn't have to haggle. He can carry out his election promises, which include a referendum on Scottish independence.
If the voters said yes, that would be the end of the United Kingdom, the 300-year-old union of Scotland and England.
In the real world, many Scots are afraid that their small country, with only one-tenth of England's population, would be too vulnerable to the financial and strategic storms that shake the world. Opinion polls consistently show that no more than a quarter to a third of Scottish voters would vote yes in an independence referendum. Yet they voted the SNP into power. Why?
The main reason is that the Liberal Democratic vote collapsed in Scotland in this election. Quite a lot of those Scottish Lib Dems gave their votes to the SNP instead, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they support independence.
Since Salmond has been canny enough to promise a referendum, they knew that they could vote yes to an SNP government, and then say no to independence. He delivered sound government in difficult circumstances over the past four years; why not give him another go?
The reality is that Salmond is unlikely to persuade the Scots to vote yes in his promised referendum, even if he postpones it until near the end of his term in the hope that he can cajole or manipulate more of them into backing independence. The smart money is betting on 2015. So there shouldn't be any big changes in Scotland as a result of this election - and yet it may hurt the country a lot, in the end.
Scottish separatists hate the analogy with Ireland, which they once held up as an example of how a small European country with few natural resources and a big but undercapitalised banking sector could do very well in the world.
Now they just try to change the subject when Ireland comes up, but that's not the worst thing that could happen to Scotland.
The real danger is what would happen to Scotland if the separatists lost the forthcoming referendum but kept on trying.
That happened in Quebec, where the separatists came to the fore politically in the 1960s. They held and lost two referendums, in 1980 and 1995, but for half a century the prospect that there would eventually be a referendum (or yet another referendum) on separation from Canada was there every year.
"Planning blight" is what happens when the word gets out that they may be running a freeway through the neighbourhood, and property values and new investment collapse.
Quebec had it on a province-wide scale for half a century. It's impossible to calculate the financial cost directly, but the population numbers are a good indication of what happened.
For the first half of the 20th century, Quebec and Ontario, the two biggest Canadian provinces, had about the same population and grew at about the same rate. In 1960, Quebec was only slightly smaller than Ontario, with 5.2 million people compared to Ontario's 6.2 million people. By 2010, Quebec had only grown to 7.8 million, while Ontario had 13 million people.
The contrast is equally dramatic for the big cities. Montreal, the metropolis of Quebec, had always been Canada's biggest city.
In 1960, Montreal had 2.2 million people, and Toronto, the capital of Ontario, had only 1.7 million.
Now Toronto has six million people, while Montreal has only 3.8 million.
It's as if Chicago had started growing fast in the 1960s, and was now half again as big as New York City. It was the planning blight of the ever-looming next referendum on independence - the "neverendum", as English-speaking Quebecers sometimes call it - that did this to Quebec.
The same thing could happen to Scotland.
Independence for Scotland would not necessarily be a financial and demographic disaster, but the permanent expectation of another independence referendum certainly would be.
The Scots are unlikely ever to vote yes for independence, because the world has become a much harsher place economically for small Western countries with declining traditional industries and big debts.
An independent Scotland would presumably inherit about a tenth of Britain's national debt.
Yet Salmond has now put an independence referendum firmly on the Scottish political agenda, and it is unlikely to go away again in the foreseeable future even if he loses this one. Neverendum.
The expanded and updated second edition of Gwynne Dyer's latest book, Climate Wars, was published recently in New Zealand by Scribe.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Save

    Share this article

Latest from Whanganui Chronicle

Whanganui Chronicle

Earthquakes every six to seven minutes detected under Mt Ruapehu

08 Jul 10:48 PM
Whanganui Chronicle

'Serious shortcomings' in pilot academy management and systems - authority

08 Jul 06:00 PM
Whanganui Chronicle

Health NZ stops funds for Fit for Surgery programme

08 Jul 05:01 PM

From early mornings to easy living

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Whanganui Chronicle

Earthquakes every six to seven minutes detected under Mt Ruapehu

Earthquakes every six to seven minutes detected under Mt Ruapehu

08 Jul 10:48 PM

Volcanic tremor remains low; Mt Ruapehu is at Volcanic Alert Level 1.

'Serious shortcomings' in pilot academy management and systems - authority

'Serious shortcomings' in pilot academy management and systems - authority

08 Jul 06:00 PM
Health NZ stops funds for Fit for Surgery programme

Health NZ stops funds for Fit for Surgery programme

08 Jul 05:01 PM
'The truth will come out': Scott Guy's parents speak 15 years after unsolved murder

'The truth will come out': Scott Guy's parents speak 15 years after unsolved murder

08 Jul 09:03 AM
Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky
sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • Whanganui Chronicle e-edition
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Subscribe to the Whanganui Chronicle
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • NZME Events
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP