by James Kelly

W

HEN SCOTLAND voted No to independence after that brief, tantalising period when it looked like it might just vote Yes, I was upset. And naturally, part of the reason I was upset was that the fabled “generation” looked set to miss out on all the benefits of independence we’d listed a million times to the electorate, such as always getting the governments we vote for, and the removal of Trident from the Clyde, and a far more equal society. But I was also upset about things that don’t matter so much, or that shouldn’t matter so much, but somehow from the point of view of national pride do matter. Scotland is a country, and I passionately wanted us to have all the normal trappings of a country.

‘Nationalist unionists’ as exemplified by the likes of Sir Walter Scott are a dying breed these days. But they do still exist, and what they would say is that Scotland doesn’t need political independence, because we are a proud nation inside the United Kingdom and we are already recognised the world over as a ‘proper’ country. Well, OK, if that’s true, where is the Russian Embassy in Edinburgh? Where is our seat on the UN? Where is my Scottish passport? It’s actually true that some people from beyond these shores think that Scotland is a country, but when you explain our true constitutional position to them, you can see the look of realisation as it becomes obvious that Scotland is in many ways less of a ‘country’ than an American state like Oregon, or a Canadian province like New Brunswick, or a Spanish autonomous community like Valencia. It’s all rather embarrassing.