The Scottish Independence Referendum: Quo Caledonia (Angliaque)?

Abstract

The Scottish independence referendum has now come and gone. Two years (or 307) in the making, the public debate was at times uninformed and glib, and marked occasionally by scaremongering, but it rose latterly to an admirable degree of maturity of substance. It was certainly spirited. Voter turnout, long an embarrassment in the United Kingdom at all levels of government, was an enthusiastic 84.6 percent. It attracted the interest not only of the usual suspects (the Catalans, the Basques, the Bavarians, the Québécois) but globally: Edinburgh was visited by a team of campaigners from Okinawa come to observe the event.