Some time in the early hours of Friday week the tallies from Scotland's 32 electoral areas will be aggregated in Edinburgh, and a result will emerge. With a weekend poll showing a narrow majority for independence there is now a strong possibility Scotland will vote to break up the union in the most dramatic constitutional earthquake in the United Kingdom since our 26 counties went their own way in 1922. An upheaval that would shake up not only Scottish politics, but those of the rest of the UK: from the internal dynamics of the divided Tories, threatening the prime minister's own position, to the galvanising of demands for radical regional devolution, to an unsettling of the Westminster-Stormont and London-Dublin relationships.
It is to be hoped that, at First Minister Alex Salmond’s side on Friday week in Edinburgh, if the Yes materialises, will be our Minister for Foreign Affairs, Charlie Flanagan, first to shake his hand and congratulate him. First to promise fullest diplomatic recognition and political support for the new state from its first international ally, one that has been down this road, which understands the enormity of the challenge, but which can say with confidence “been there, done that . . . and it’s not by any means impossible, whatever they say” .
Ireland has been reluctant, despite its history and what one might suppose to be an instinctive sense of shared experience and vocation, openly to support that Yes campaign. In part that reluctance is driven by an understandable and perhaps justifiable wish not to be accused of meddling in the UK’s internal affairs. In part it is the product of an unstated calculation that our interests would not be best served by independence: concern about a new competitor for inward investment and the increased likelihood that the rest of the UK would leave the EU, concern that the now-comfortable Dublin-London relationship would be upset . . .
Despite such reservations on our part, Dublin should be prepared at least to say, based on our experience – not least 50 years of currency union with the UK – that independence can indeed be good for Scotland. We should applaud enthusiastically the reach of the extraordinary debate that has touched every corner of the country, and support an independent Scotland’s right to be part of the EU. To that end we can promise to work to forge the same political will among EU states that enabled German reunification against countless technical and political objections.
It may not be easy. It may be costly in terms of a new administration, duplication of institutions, and over-optimistic assessments of economic resources. And sovereignty in this interconnected globalised world can never be absolute. But Scotland’s desire to forge its own direction should be supported.