Scotland's independence : 007's toughest mission

Published on July 24, 2014

“Scot­land has an op­por­tu­nity to make a step change”, noted Scot­tish actor Sean Con­nery in British weekly mag­a­zine New States­man. The fic­tional agent in her Majesty's Se­cret Ser­vice was plead­ing his fel­low coun­try­men to vote on Sep­tem­ber for the in­de­pen­dence of “one of the most fa­mil­iar coun­tries on earth” in order to stir “re­newed focus on our cul­ture as well as our new pol­i­tics”. “There is no more cre­ative an act than cre­at­ing a new na­tion”, he added at the end of his state­ment. Nev­er­the­less, notwith­stand­ing the in­spir­ing words of sir Sean Con­nery, the truth is that none of the polls show a pro-in­de­pen­dence lead since last Au­gust, when a sur­vey taken by the Scot­tish Na­tional Party (SNP) - ar­chi­tect, along­side the gov­ern­ment in Lon­don, of the ref­er­en­dum - re­vealed a slight lead in favour of in­de­pen­dence by a mere 1% mar­gin. Today, re­cent polls have un­equiv­o­cally shown a com­fort­able ten-point lead in favour of the sta­tus quo, sup­ported by the “Bet­ter To­gether” cam­paign, de­spite a nearly 27% of un­de­cided vot­ers. With these num­bers in mind, sep­a­ratists desperately con­tinue their on­slaught while Union­ists cautiously hold their ground. 

This will be the third time in the last 35 years that the Scots will choose their fate re­gard­ing their po­lit­i­cal ties with the United King­dom. In 1979, the votes favour­ing in­de­pen­dence came up short and were un­able to re­open the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment, closed since the an­nex­a­tion of Scot­land by Eng­land in 1707. The “reestab­lish­ment” of the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment would fi­nally come after a sec­ond ref­er­en­dum was launched in 1997 by the Labor Party under Tony Blair's ad­min­is­tra­tion. 

still On the fence

Today, the final de­ci­sion will have far­ther-reach­ing con­se­quences than ever be­fore : in­de­pen­dence, be­sides es­tab­lish­ing a fron­tier, will re­quire the new sov­er­eign coun­try to begin ne­go­ti­a­tions with West­min­ster on crit­i­cal is­sues such as own­er­ship of the prof­itable oil de­posits off the coast of Scot­land in the North Sea, the adop­tion of the British pound as Scot­land’s of­fi­cial cur­rency, and the fate of the strate­gic British nu­clear ar­se­nal - lo­cated in Scot­tish wa­ters - which cur­rently al­lows the United King­dom to main­tain its in­flu­ence in in­ter­na­tional diplo­macy as one of the per­ma­nent mem­bers of the UN Se­cu­rity Coun­cil. 

Else­where, the real bat­tle is being fought dig­i­tally on so­cial net­works. On their last cam­paign video, those in favour of in­de­pen­dence were pas­sion­ately sell­ing the hopes of an in­de­pen­dent Scot­land ca­pa­ble of fos­ter­ing the progress of fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. Mean­while, Union­ists are doing every­thing in their power to ap­peal to the Scots' British side claim­ing that : “we are team GB”, as one of their mes­sages reads.

The first writ­ten con­sti­tu­tion

In any case, Scot­tish au­thor­i­ties are plan­ning for a vic­tory.  They al­ready sub­mit­ted the first draft of a new Con­sti­tu­tion - a rev­o­lu­tion­ary doc­u­ment - in an ef­fort to in­cite the peo­ple to vote. Sub­ject to edit­ing by the cit­i­zenry, the doc­u­ment de­clares Scot­land a sov­er­eign coun­try - al­beit keep­ing queen Eliz­a­beth II as head of State, as­sumes con­trol of Eu­ro­pean leg­is­la­tion, and makes a com­mit­ment to­wards en­vi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion - since the Scot­tish Green Party is the only ally of the SNP in the de­fence of in­de­pen­dence that cur­rently holds seats in the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment.

How­ever, it all re­mains painfully un­cer­tain. At the mo­ment, only one map ac­knowl­edges Scot­land's in­de­pen­dence: the map found in cy­ber­space. On July 16, sources an­nounced the launch­ing of the pub­lic do­main name .scot. In Sep­tem­ber, the Scots will fi­nally con­firm if, once again, the dig­i­tal world got ahead of re­al­ity, or if, on the con­trary, it only sold false hopes of a life­long dream.

Translated from NO, Sean Connery, puede que no veas una escocia independiente