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John Fund with background on the vote for Scottish Independence.
The new YouGov poll on Scotland’s September 18 vote on independence shows “yes” in the lead for the first time, by a narrow 51 percent to 49 percent. The reason British politicians are now scrambling to offer Scotland more powers is that until now YouGov had been the poll showing the least support for separation.
British treasury secretary George Osborne has quickly promised that within days Scottish voters will be offered “more tax powers, more spending powers, more power over the welfare state.” He pledged that “Scotland will have the best of both worlds” by avoiding “the risks of separation” while acquiring “more control over their own destiny.” For many Scots, the last-minute offer lacks credibility for its lateness. Moreover, the offer comes after several hundred thousand votes have already been cast by mail.
Supporters of independence say that if Scotland goes it alone, British prime minister David Cameron will bear most of the blame. Jim McColl, one of Scotland’s wealthiest businessmen and a backer of independence, criticized Cameron in this vein when he spoke recently to the Independent. If Cameron had accepted Scotland’s offer to have a third question on the ballot that offered Osborne’s latest proposals, McColl said, “then that is what we would have got — everyone would have voted for more powers, but remaining part of the U.K.”
But Cameron insisted on a single “yes” or “no” ballot question that would force Scottish voters to make a clear choice, reflecting his belief that most Scots would flinch from a complete break. Indeed, at the time when the referendum was negotiated in 2012, a full 63 percent of Scots opposed outright independence. …
… Prime Minister Cameron insists he would not resign from office should Scotland vote itself out of its 300-year-old union with Britain, but there would be enormous public pressure for the “man who lost Scotland” to leave.
That would be an added bonus to Scotland’s independence, since increasingly Cameron — with his milquetoast views on the EU and his enthusiasm for climate-change regulation — has less and less of a claim to being a true ally of liberty. His departure would give British conservatives a chance to elect a new leader who might have a chance of limiting the number of votes lost to the thriving United Kingdom Independence Party and keeping Labour out of office. That could be a so-far-unexplored silver lining of Scotland’s “yes” vote for independence.
A negative view of the proceedings from Nile Gardiner.
Next week’s referendum on Scottish independence has largely flown under the radar screen here in the United States. The cable news networks have devoted little attention so far to the issue, as the Isil threat in the Middle East continues to dominate international coverage. There has been no polling conducted on the Scottish question in the US, and it is doubtful that many Americans outside of the Washington policy bubble or the financial milieu of New York are particularly exercised by the outcome of a vote taking place over 3,000 miles away.
They should be concerned, however. What happens in Scotland will reverberate on this side of the Atlantic, and not for the better. Here are five reasons why Americans should be nervous about the outcome of next week’s vote if Scotland votes for independence. …
Paul Ryan gets a look from Matthew Continetti.
“We can fix these problems,” Paul Ryan tells me. He’s referring to the sluggish economy, the rising cost of living, broken immigration and health care systems, burdensome regulations, and stifling tax code. What would it take? The Republican Party has to win the Senate in 2014 and the White House in 2016.
Easier said than done. Especially when conservatives face an enemy inside their own party: the GOP consultant class.
“Everyone calls it ‘the Establishment,’” Ryan says. “That’s a loose word.” What he has in mind are Republican ad makers, lobbyists, public relations guys, media consultants, speechwriters, pollsters, retired officials, and fundraisers—the hundreds of thousands of Washington operatives who make a living from center-right politics.
Affluent, secure, beholden to the bipartisan conventional wisdom that avoids social issues and ideological fights, they are alienated from and hostile to the conservative base that keeps the GOP in business. These are the real takers (a term Ryan now abjures).
“The consultant class always says play it safe, choose a risk-averse strategy,” Ryan says. “I don’t think we have the luxury of doing that. We need to treat people like adults by offering them alternatives.”
Only by forcing voters to choose, he says, can you “win the kind of mandate you need to fix the country’s problems.” The alternatives are drift, aimlessness, inertia, and hoping that liberals will somehow doom themselves.
Fat chance. Presidential politics do not favor a GOP that has lost the popular vote in five of the last six elections. Ryan points to other obstacles, such as the rising share of minority voters and the Electoral College “Blue Wall.” His conclusion: “We’re in a tough place.” …
David Harsanyi says the federal government is the greatest threat to our liberty.
Local governments are pocket-sized hotbeds of tyranny. The only way to stop them is by promoting a stronger federal government. So says Franklin Foer in the New Republic.
Here’s the kicker of his piece:
“Centuries ago, in the age of monarchs, the preservation of liberty required constraining the power of the central state. In our era, protecting rights requires the opposite. Only a strong federal government can curb the autocratic tendencies burbling across the country. Libertarians worry about the threat of local tyrants, too, but only abstractly. In practice, they remain so fixated on the perils of Washington that they rigidly insist on devolving power down to states, cities, and towns—the very places where their nightmares are springing to life.”
Nearly everything is wrong with this paragraph.
More on the Rotherham, England story. This time from the NY Times.
It started on the bumper cars in the children’s arcade of the local shopping mall. Lucy was 12, and a group of teenage boys, handsome and flirtatious, treated her and her friends to free rides and ice cream after school.
Over time, older men were introduced to the girls, while the boys faded away. Soon they were getting rides in real cars, and were offered vodka and marijuana. One man in particular, a Pakistani twice her age and the leader of the group, flattered her and bought her drinks and even a mobile phone. Lucy liked him.
The rapes started gradually, once a week, then every day: by the war memorial in Clifton Park, in an alley near the bus station, in countless taxis and, once, in an apartment where she was locked naked in a room and had to service half a dozen men lined up outside.
She obliged. How could she not? They knew where she lived. “If you don’t come back, we will rape your mother and make you watch,” they would say.
At night, she would come home and hide her soiled clothes at the back of her closet. When she finally found the courage to tell her mother, just shy of her 14th birthday, two police officers came to collect the clothes as evidence, half a dozen bags of them.
But a few days later, they called to say the bags had been lost.
“All of them?” she remembers asking. A check was mailed, 140 pounds, or $232, for loss of property, and the family was discouraged from pressing charges. It was the girl’s word against that of the men. The case was closed. …