| Quoting koruman (Reply 49): Manchester's aviation future might be quite dependent on the outcome of the Scottish independence referendum. David Cameron made another disastrous intervention yesterday, telling the Scots that they should stay British because London is the jewel of the British Isles. It's significant because each previous such intervention has lifted the independence vote by a couple of points from its original hopeless position. If it gets close to passing - even above 40% - then independence becomes inevitable within the next 5 years. And that's where Manchester enters the equation. An independent Scotland would value the same things - free comprehensive healthcare, free tertiary education, robust social safety net, no user-pays system - that the people of northern England and Wales value highly but people in the southeast do not. At which point it is not at all hard to forsee a Crimean solution, in which northern England and Wales secede to join Scotland because the alternative is endless Conservative government from the southeast. And suddenly Manchester Airport finds itself at the centre of the nation's largest conurbation of 6 million people in the northwest including Leeds and Sheffield. So I find myself wondering whether Manchester might just find itself within a decade as the national airport for a new nation of Britain Minus The Southeast. |
The previous New Labour government had plans to introduce regional assemblies and elected mayors in the large Northern City Regions that could have lead to more power and visibility in the globally connected world however lacklustre and perhaps a little political naivety in the North East scuppered those.
One things for sure the Northern English Regions would never join an independent Scottish State.
No the thing is the English in particular and many in Scotland are fundamentally democratic however remain in the believe that Westminster remain the central seat of government. Federalism is not in the national mind set -Queue the general and in my view largely misguided to the point of plain wrong views over Brussels/Strasbourg.
