England must be resolute and save the Scots from self-destruction

Everything was supposed to have been sorted out during the Old Year. The Scots had voted against independence; surely that was that. Alas, not so. Early on, those campaigning for the Union had hoped to win by a crushing majority and bury the issue for a generation. One might have assumed that a 10-point margin, even if not crushing, would be good enough for a decade. Judging by his dejected visage in an early photograph, Alex Salmond appeared to concur. Yet any Nationalist dejection barely lasted 10 hours.

In her Christmas message, the Queen called for reconciliation among Scots. Her Majesty is right. That is vitally necessary. But it is not going to happen. Scotland is hopelessly divided between the Nationalists’ insufferable triumphalism and the Unionists’ moral implosion. The losers are behaving like victors: the winners, as if they had been crushed.

It is worth making a brief excursion into philosophical piquancy. In 1765, Jean-Jacques Rousseau met David Hume in Paris. A man of immense good nature sustained by a stoical Tory scepticism, Hume was one of the glories of the Scottish Enlightenment. Neither he nor his Edinburgh nor that Enlightenment could have existed without the Union. But Rousseau achieved the almost impossible. He disrupted Hume’s equability. Hume thought him the blackest character he had ever met.

As well as giving paranoia a bad name, Rousseau propagated the doctrine of the General Will: democratic fascism. If a majority is set on some course of action – or rather, if the dictator manipulating them has made up his mind – they are entitled to regard this as the sole legitimate political position and to write dissenters out of the script. Thus Robespierre during the Terror; Hitler after he was elected to power.

There are no guillotines or concentration camps in Scotland. But even though most Nats have never heard of Rousseau, they are his disciples, behaving as if anyone who does not share their version of Scottishness is not a proper Scot. During the campaign, there was a great deal of physical intimidation. The moral intimidation continues, and so far, we have seen little in the way of counter-attack. The Scottish Unionists have been pathetically wet.

Today, it seems as if the only political argument in Scotland is the struggle between the Nats and Labour for voters in the Central Belt, many of whom live on benefits, most of whom used to be unthinking Labour supporters. Enterprise Scotland, aspirational Scotland, hard-working Scotland: all are being ignored in a competition for the support of those who, if offered a job, would run a mile.

Indeed, there might seem to be so little distinction between Labour and the Nats that they could easily join forces. As no one else is using the label at the moment, why not call themselves National Socialists? But there is one important difference, which was implicit in Gordon Brown’s campaigning rhetoric. He would like the Scots to exploit more devolved powers to create socialism in Scotland, while staying in the Union so that Scots MPs could also vote to impose socialism on England.

There is only one way to deal with all this and bring Scotland to its senses. The English have to show some backbone. At present, it is assumed that as soon as the Scots make a demand for additional powers – devo max – England is obliged to capitulate. That is nonsense. As long as Scotland is part of the Union, the English are entitled to prevent the Scottish government from implementing crazy policies – because otherwise, England will have to pay the bills.

If the Scots wanted to reduce corporation tax and income tax, financing this by cuts in welfare spending on the able-bodied, while also adopting educational reforms that would make Michael Gove look timid, a devolved Scotland could aspire to the intellectual leadership of Europe, as during the Scottish Enlightenment. None of that is on the agenda. Instead, we would have a high-tax, high-welfare Scotland in which the teachers’ unions ran education.

It would also be a Scotland in which one of the world’s great wild places would be under threat from class warfare. The Scottish Highlands are a symphony of sea and loch and river, of moor and rock and mountain. It is as if a divine alchemist had transmuted grandeur into landscape – a landscape which nourishes splendid human beings. Stalkers, ghillies, keepers: the Highlands creates men who harmonise humour, toughness and moral depth, and make bloody good soldiers.

That said, nature costs money. Over the centuries, this marvellous wilderness has been preserved by old money and by new. It has always been easy to make a small fortune in the Highlands. You just have to start out with a large one. But the Nats and their allies cannot bear private ownership. They are determined to destroy it, whatever the consequences. So they are proposing land reform, which would break up the large estates, plus an adjustment of inheritance law along French lines. A Scottish “Code Napoleon”, enforcing equal distribution of inherited property, would finish off anything that land reform had allowed to survive. No one would be willing to invest money in the Highlands. As the Scottish economy crumbled, a government of urban socialists would be running out of cash to spend on welfare. Anyone naive enough to believe that it could replace the beneficence of the Highland lairds would be complicit in an ecological disaster.

If the Scots were indulged with devo max, the Highlands would be blighted. The Scottish financial sector – still an indispensable part of the Scottish economy – would migrate to England, as would the great majority of entrepreneurially minded Scots. Anyone with any get-up-and-go would get up and leave. Under devo max, the English would find themselves subsidising Scotland’s ruination.

That is unacceptable. At the end of the Referendum campaign, in an atmosphere of near-panic, English politicians allowed themselves to be bounced into Gordon Brown’s vow, which amounted to giving the Nats all the devolution they asked for, even if that meant turning Scotland into a separate – and wretchedly governed – country. But there is an alternative. The Tories should announce that after a necessary period of calm consideration, they have decided not to devolve any powers that would not be sensibly exercised. If the Holyrood Parliament regarded this as intolerable, it could call another referendum. But this time, there would be two differences. First, although no great harm was done by allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote this year – they were often wiser than their elders – it was a silly experiment that should not be repeated.

Second, there is no reason why the destinies of all Scots should be determined by any future narrow majority for independence. Any portions of Scotland that vote “No” and are contiguous to England could stay in the UK. So could other areas, as long as they were large enough, as could Orkney and Shetland, under a Channel Islands arrangement with London.

As a result, an independent Scotland would probably lose financial services revenues from Edinburgh, oil revenues from Orkney and Shetland and whisky revenues from the Highlands. A duty on Irn Bru would not be an adequate replacement. Although the dole junkies of the Central Belt would be consumed with rage, they would not be half-witted enough to vote for independence if there were no means of paying their benefit. If it should turn out that I am over-estimating their intelligence, let them go.

Traditionally, Scots pride themselves on hard-headedness. In recent years, that has often taken the form of a hard hunk of bone stretching from ear to ear, inflamed by political hysteria. England ought to come to the rescue: to defend Hume from Rousseau: to save Scotland from self-destruction.

Janet Daley is away