The Kingdom to Come

Thoughts on the Union before and after the Scottish Independence Referendum

Peter Hennessy

• Publisher: Haus Publishing
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781910376065
• eBook ISBN: 9781910376232
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Despite the "No" vote in the Scottish Independence Referendum of September 2014, the issue of potential Scottish secession from the United Kingdom has likely only just begun. The Kingdom to Come is the first book-length look at the consequences and implications of this momentous event.

Peter Hennessy discusses the run-up to the Scottish Independence Referendum and its immediate aftermath, as well as the constitutional issues the referendum opened for the entire United Kingdom. This book includes Hennessy's personal impressions of recent questioning of the Acts of Union that created Great Britain and describes when he, as the top expert on Britain's unwritten constitution, became an important voice in what might happen next. The Kingdom to Come also offers a valuable examination of the possible agenda for remaking the constitution in both the medium and long term.

Part one

The result: the view from Westminster

It is difficult to write a diary when you are in a television studio. Here in diary form is the result as I recorded it the day after it was plain the kingdom was not to sunder.

SATURDAY 20 SEPTEMBER

Sheffield

Travelled up here yesterday on the afternoon train for brother-in-law Douglas’s 65th birthday dinner. Writing this late afternoon. Relief still coursing through the capillaries.

Final result:

No: 55.3%; Yes 44.7%

No: 2,001,926 votes

Yes: 1,617,989 votes

Turnout: 84.59%

Male: 53% No; 47% Yes

Female: 56% No; 44% Yes¹²

Phew.

Kingdom survives; HM Queen calls for unity; Salmond to stand down as First Minister in November.

Immediate political fallings out over whether or not the new powers promised for Scotland will materialise and how soon.

Managed to scribble down a few notes during the long night with the BBC 1 results programme; the early-morning appearance on Today and lunchtime with The Daily Politics on BBC 2 …

THURSDAY NIGHT/FRIDAY MORNING 18–19 SEPTEMBER 2014

Arrived at 3 Albert Embankment just before 11pm. Millbank is being done up so the BBC took a studio five floors up with a stunning view across the river to the lit terrace of the Houses of Parliament and the MI5 HQ at Thames House as the backdrop.

Go up to the top of the building about 11.20pm to a makeshift radio studio to talk to Jim Naughtie in Glasgow, who’s anchoring the Radio 4 results programme. Jim asks me about HMQ. I say any biography of her will now linger on the Crathie moment last Sunday, the photo of her about to chat to the well-wishers and how niftily and technically neutrally it was done. [The Queen had just asked the people of Scotland to think carefully before casting their vote. See page 110.] I added that one can’t impute views to others – let alone the Sovereign – but it’s known she loves every particle of her kingdom. We talk about the 1977 speech to both Houses of Parliament, when in her Jubilee year she reminded the country that she had been crowned ‘Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’.

Why is this so special? I say to Jim that he and I have both been round the block a bit – but we’ve known nothing like this. Not like any of the 40 independence settlements with portions of the former British Empire between 1947 and 1980. This is flesh of our flesh. If Scotland goes it won’t be severance. It will be rending. No general election night compares. ‘It really is different. It’s about a kingdom.’ I tell Jim that by first light we will be a different country whatever the result. The English Question up till now has been a growl; by breakfast time it will be starting to roar. It’ll be a question of England Arise.

I’m pretty tense. Slightly jumpy. Can’t relax to any degree.

Come back to the Green Room to join Kate Williams, Polly Toynbee and Simon Jenkins to find Peter Kellner on the screen up in Glasgow elaborating on the final poll YouGov published after the ballot closed (it’s now 11.35pm).

No 54% Yes 46%

Peter says YouGov detected (a) a slight shift to No; and (b) that No voters seemed more determined to turn out. I relax just a tad.

At midnight, sitting in the studio with Andrew and Kate waiting for the programme to switch to us, the Technical Director suddenly roars in. The lights have gone out on the terrace of the Palace of Westminster. ‘The BBC has paid good money for those to be kept on,’ he curses, with feeling, and rushes out. A few minutes later they come up again. He’s made a call.

Say much the same as I did to Jim Naughtie in my first session with Andrew Neill. News has come in that HMQ will release a written statement at 3pm this afternoon. Stress the significance and novelty of this – no precedent. Not like HMQ and general elections in which HMQ has a choreography that is understood – only sending for a party leader when its plain who can command the confidence of the House of Commons.

Dave Gray comes up on the screen from the Pickaquoy Centre in Kirkwall. Looks as if the Orkney count might be the first to declare. In the event it’s tiny Clackmannanshire, north of the Firth of Forth, at 1.28am:

35,410 voted; 88.6% turnout

Yes: 16,350 46%

No: 19,036 54%

John Curtice comments in the Glasgow studio that the expectation was that Yes would ‘have done somewhat better than this in Clackmannanshire’.

Polly Toynbee and Simon Jenkins are in with Andrew. Polly comes up with a very good line:

We don’t have a constitution. You have a lot of barnacles and no boat.

Andrew is on great form but emitting little spurts of fury when whoever is controlling Scotland Decides chooses to go to a reporter in a counting centre to repeat what Andrew regards as obvious instead of coming to us in Westminster (Kate Williams and I were sitting with him for nearly an hour before the cameras switched to us).

At 2.03am Orkney declares.

14,907 voted; 83.7 turnout

Yes: 4,883 33%

No: 10,004 67%

Andrew comes into the Green Room and says: ‘Well, it’s all over. It’s becoming an English story now.’

We talk about the YouGov poll on 2 September; how it changed expectations and set new benchmarks, as did the one in The Sunday Times on 7 September. Owen Jones, who’s waiting to go on, describes it as ‘the most influential opinion poll in history’.

There’s lightning and heavy rain over the Palace of ­Westminster. We wonder if this is God showing he’s a unionist.

When the Controller finally turns the cameras on Simon Jenkins, he says, cutting against the grain as ever, that if it’s a No ‘Westminster will shut up shop’ rather than go in for recasting the constitution.

Owen Jones says he wants a constitutional convention. Simon says he wants it too. Andrew disagrees with Simon – there is a head of steam building up. Simon says it’s a tragedy for England that the union is still in place. Owen: ‘There’s a need to rebalance the British constitution’. Simon: ‘It just isn’t going to happen now’.

2.43am. Shetland declares

15,620 voted; 84% turnout

Yes: 5,600 36%

No: 9,951 64%

2.55am. Relief setting in – I hope not prematurely.

Michael Gove says the Conservatives don’t want to go down the route of an English Parliament. Jim Murphy [who shortly after the referendum was to become leader of the Scottish Labour Party] says the decision in Scotland can’t go unremarked in England and elsewhere.

3.00am. Western Isles declare.

19,739 voted; 86% turnout

Yes: 9,195 47%

No: 10,544 53%

John Curtice says this is probably the most disappointing result for the Yes campaign so far.

Andy Marr interviews Ming Campbell at the final count centre in Edinburgh. AM says he’s heard the Yes campaign are conceding in West Lothian. Ming says it would be ‘political suicide’ for the two main parties now to do nothing. ‘Politics will not be the same again … Some kind of federal solution for the whole UK is inevitable … Scots MPs continuing to vote on English health and education matters now untenable … House of Lords reform would be part of the package’.

I scribble: ‘A consensus is building up to carve out an English Parliament inside the Westminster House of Commons.’

Jim Murphy, as impressive as he has been throughout the campaign, says we’ve got to make a success of whatever has been decided in Scotland.

3.35am. Inverclyde declares.

54,601 voted; 87.4% turnout

Yes: 27,243 49%

No: 27,329 51%

Robert Peston tells Andrew that if it’s a clear No vote, sterling will bounce back.

3.54am. Renfrewshire declares.

117,533 voted; 87.2% turnout

Yes: 55,466 47%

No: 62,067 53%

3:55am. Dundee declares.

93,500 voted; 78.8% turnout

Yes: 53,620 57%

No: 39,860 43%

Brian Taylor says it looks like a No outcome. It had to be bigger than that in Dundee. Andy Marr says don’t be too definite, even now. Huw Edwards says it’s still perfectly possible that it will be a Yes.

The results now pour in. No need to wait until the big one.

4.51am. Glasgow declares.

364,664 voted; 75% turnout

Yes: 194,000 53%

No: 169,347 47%

At 4.56 Nick Robinson says: ‘The UK is surviving. There will not be an independent Scotland.’ John Curtice agrees with him. It’s still 54/46 overall at the moment. Nick wonders if the SNP will join all the other parties in a discussion of the next tranche of devolution.

6.09am. Fife carries No across the line.

I’ve done my last burst with Andrew (push the need for a convention or a Royal Commission; also suggest that what we have seen about the brittleness of the union could be ‘no end of a lesson’, as Kipling wrote of the Boer War). He and his team are about the decamp to College Green and I am to go to New Broadcasting House and Today.

Big Ben is at 6.16am when the taxi cab carries me past what is now a tent city on College Green on a slightly damp, faintly misty September morning brightened up by pure relief.

Today studio with Evan Davis. 7.06am, PM comes out and delivers his Downing Street Declaration. Here’s the text:

The people of Scotland have spoken. It is a clear result. They have kept our country of four nations together. Like millions of other people, I am delighted. As I said during the campaign, it would have broken my heart to see our United Kingdom come to an end.

And I know that sentiment was shared by people, not just across our country, but also around the world because of what we’ve achieved together in the past and what we can now do together in the future.

So now it is time for our United Kingdom to come together, and to move forward. A vital part of that will be a balanced settlement – fair to people in Scotland and importantly to everyone in England, Wales and Northern Ireland as well.

Let us remember why we had this debate – and why it was right to do so.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) was elected in Scotland in 2011 and promised a referendum on independence. We could have blocked that; we could have put it off, but just as with other big issues, it was right to take – not duck – the big decision.

I am a passionate believer in our United Kingdom – I wanted more than anything for our United Kingdom to stay together.

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Table of contents

• THE KINGDOM TO COME
• Preface: A Union Man
• Contents
• Introduction: Thoughts from South Ronaldsay: Hope, anxiety and the shadow of Orwell
• Part one
• The result: the view from Westminster
• The constitutional building site & the Kingdom to come
• Mutual flourishing?
• Part two
• Referendum diary
• Epilogue
• Maps in the mind
• Notes
• By the same Author