So that wretched doofus David Cameron won't go down in history as the British PM who "lost Scotland"

Does this make Scots, or anybody else, feel better? You could laugh or you could cry -- don't ask me.

by Ken

As the polls were coming in last night predicting a "no" vote on Scottish separation from the United Kingdom (which as we know now was indeed defeated by 55 to 45 percent, with more than 85 percent of eligible voters voting), Ian Welsh wrote:

I think this vote is a mistake, and I note that having been given a clean vote to leave and a chance to live their own values, but having given in to fear; for me, at least, Scottish complaints about privatization of the NHS and other cuts to the social state will now ring rather hollow.

However, as with Greece voting to have its economy destroyed by refusing to take a chance on Syriza, people are voting their fear and for the status quo.  Older folks seem to want to just hang on, and are unwilling to take chances for a better future and they can’t really believe that their own elites are intent on impoverishing them, and, effectively, in many cases, killing them. (Because that’s what deliberate austerity policies do.)

The Great Complacency will come to an end; but people aren’t going to like how that happens.  Oh well.

I think Ian is utterly correct. But I noticed that when I heard the news this morning on the radio, I felt a certain measure of relief -- a "yes" vote would have involved such a leap into the unknown.

And I think this isn't just fear-driven clinging to the status quo on my part. Or maybe what I mean is that it's justifiable fear-driven clinging to the status quo. Yes, all sorts of changes would have opened up as possibilities for the Scots if they had taken the leap, but does anything in 21st-century history-to-date suggest that any of the good changes would have happened? If we've learned anything, isn't it that all over the world there are rich and powerful (or violent and soon-to-be-powerful) forces lying in wait to seize any opportunity? If I were a Scottish voter, would I have been eager to take that risk?

Or to put it another way: If it isn't the Koch brothers, isn't it just going to be somebody else? There will be some entertainment value in seeing how eagerly PM Cameron fulfills his campaign promises to Scotland -- with all the same concessions presumably going to Wales and Northern Ireland (and, um, England, I guess?) as well. My guess is that by the time the dust settles, the usual elites will have figured how to cash in, with maybe some token kickbacks to rising regional predators.

#