Sir Malcolm Rifkind: Britain's nations have always been stronger together

The no to independence campaign is ahead in the polls but must keep working for a resounding victory
Royalalikes: pro-Union Scottish fans in Edinburgh cheering on the Queen's Commonwealth Games baton
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What is happening in Britain? Most of us were used to seeing the United Kingdom as an oasis of stability in a turbulent world. The Soviet Union might disintegrate into 15 separate states and Yugoslavia implode but Britain was different. England, Scotland and Wales, integrated into a United Kingdom for hundreds of years, were a unique example of stability and union on a small island. (Northern Ireland was, of course, very different but for reasons peculiar to its history.)

In less than 100 days that could all come to an end if five million British citizens in Scotland vote, on September 18, to leave the UK and become a separate state. The opinion polls suggest that outcome is unlikely — but polls have been known to get it wrong.

So the UK is faced with an existential crisis. But the reality is that this is not just suddenly happening, nor is it restricted to Scotland. In 1998 the Scottish Parliament was re-established in Edinburgh for the first time since 1707 and a Welsh Assembly was created in Cardiff for the first time ever.

Britain has, for 16 years, already been a new kind of united kingdom, reflecting the national diversity of its people, not just through recent immigration but because of the historic national identity of the Scots and Welsh being given new political recognition.

These changes have not just been a British phenomenon. The aspirations of the Catalans and Basques in Spain or the Flemings and Walloons in Belgium are part of the cultural rebirth of the small nations of Europe.

But Scottish independence would be traumatic and highly disruptive for the English and Welsh, as well the Scots.

The United Kingdom is not an accident of history, as Alex Salmond would have us believe. Britain is a small island. Islands throughout the world have an identity of their own and, overwhelmingly, have within their shores common political institutions and a shared citizenship.

But it is more than that. Both in Scotland and in England, 300 years of union have made most families British not just in name but through marriage, career moves and personal choice.

I am just such a person. I am a Scot, born in Edinburgh but with an English mother from Manchester. I was married in London, lived in Scotland, have two Scottish children who both now live and work in England. Many of you will be able to say something similar.

London, in fact , is not that different from Scotland: mllions of people, living peaceably with the rest of England but with a population, cultural diversity and difference of attitudes quite distinct from their fellow citizens elsewhere.

In the same way, hundreds of thousands of English people are living happily in Scotland. J K Rowling, born in Gloucester and resident in Scotland for 21 years, wrote last week about her loyalty to Scotland combined with a passionate determination to preserve our common British identity.

Alex Salmond puzzles as well as annoys me. In demanding a separate Scottish state he clearly believes that the Scots, English and Welsh now have insufficient in common to justify sitting together in the House of Commons and sharing a Government for matters common to the British Isles as a whole.

But simultaneously he is determined that a new Scottish state should enter the European Union and submit itself to European jurisdiction and a European Parliament on a host of matters. Why is sharing a parliament and sovereignty with the Portuguese, Greeks and Hungarians desirable and aceptable but sharing the House of Commons with the English and Welsh anathema?

Some folk in London and in my own Conservative Party say it would not be such a bad idea if the Scots went their own way. We would then have a Conservative government in England for ever, and we would not have the Scots voting in Parliament on legislation that only affects England. Both arguments are profoundly wrong.

England will never be a one-party state even if the Labour Party could not rely on Scottish votes. Labour thought it would always rule the Scottish Parliament after 1998. Within a decade it was ousted by the SNP and Alex Salmond. Something similar would happen in England when the English, eventually, got bored with the Tories.

Nor do we need Scottish independence to stop the Scots (and the Welsh and Northern Irish) determining English laws at Westminster. As a London MP I have argued that all we need is a requirement that no new Bill for England alone would become law unless not only the House of Commons as a whole but a majority of English MPs voted for it. We do not need the huge extra expense of an English Parliament when such a simple reform would do the trick.

I am quietly confident about the referendum. While nothing is certain, the Nationalists have been well behind in the opinion polls since the campaign began. It is looking as if at least 60 per cent of Scots will vote to remain in the UK and it may be higher. Alex Salmond knows most Scots have already made up their minds and that time is running out.

But I am not complacent. We not only need to win but to win by such a substantial margin that the whole issue goes away for the foreseeable future. A narrow win would mean that a referendum became a “neverendum” and that would be bad for investment and stability.

That is why I shall be addressing public meetings throughout Scotland in the weeks to come. Dr Johnson may have said that the noblest prospect for a Scotsman is the road to England. I, as the MP for Kensington, will be doing the exact opposite in August and September — and for a noble cause.

The Evening Standard/City of London debate, Scottish Independence: London and Scotland Need Each Other, will be held at 6.30pm on Monday June 30 at the Guildhall, Gresham Street, EC2. Free admission but strictly ticket only. Apply at standard.co.uk/scotland

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