The other day Alex Salmond set out his stall for an independent Scotland. It was a bravura performance. Had the Scottish people been asked straight afterwards they would surely have voted to break with the UK. Europe teems with politicians hiding from the storms. Scotland’s first minister is that rare thing – a leader intent on changing the political weather.
Britain’s Conservative-led coalition government is in trouble. Popular anger with ever-rising household energy prices has marked a shift in the political mood. Capitalism survived the great crash of 2008, but years of falling living standards have left voters attuned to the flaws of liberal economics. They have spotted that, as in banking so in energy, the market can be rigged to favour the few. They have noticed that senior executives have been unscathed by austerity. They are fed up with politicians who wring their hands. Scotland has long stood to the left of England. Mr Salmond hopes to catch a rising social democratic tide.
Scotland will vote on independence in September next year. If David Cameron’s Conservatives win the UK-wide election in 2015, Britons will then be offered a referendum on whether to stay in the EU. The polls would be separated by time, but the two sets of relationships are intimately connected. Were Britain to fall out of Europe – and it might – Scotland sooner or later would wave goodbye to Britain.