Romanian Journal of European Affairs (Jun 2008)
ON THE THRESHOLD OF INDEPENDENCE? SCOTLAND ONE YEAR AFTER THE SNP ELECTION VICTORY
Abstract
In 2007, marking both the tercentenary of the Anglo-Scottish Union and the tenth anniversary of the successful Devolution Referendum, the May elections caused a political earthquake, breaking the nearly five decades of hegemony of Scottish Labour at the national and, even more emphatically, at the local government level and ushering in an SNP (Scottish National Party) minority government at Holyrood. Was this the proof that devolution did not, as George Robertson had claimed, ‘kill Nationalism stone dead’, proof that it was, rather, a stepping stone, or a ‘staging post’? If the latter, where to? Just underlining that devolution, pace Ron Davies, was a process rather than an event, part of what Henry McLeish calls the ‘evolution of devolution’? Towards greater autonomy or towards regaining Scottish independence as a sovereign nation-state?
