Separatism: it can be good and it can be bad, but it is what it is

No matter what words you want to use, voting for an independent Scotland means separating from the rest of the UK.

Readers, help me out here. I used the word separatist' on Twitter todayto describe the Scots who intend to vote for independence in the referendum in September.

It's the word I usually use to describe them alongside unionist' for those who intend to vote against independence and for the union. One side wants to stay in the union and one side wants to separate from the rest of the union so they seem to me to be the best short had descriptive words for everyone's end goal.

Today, however, a few people got really very cross. I was told that calling people separatists is a bit like calling them racists. I was told that it is an "inaccurate" word. That it is "unnecessarily emotive","highly charged", and "pejorative."

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I don't get it. How can it be any of these things? Voting for independence is voting to leave the union. Nothing wrong with that (as long as you do it for emotional not economic reasons) but it does make separation a perfectly good word to use. So I pushed back on it.

What's wrong with it, I asked. Finally one of my followers told me it was too hard to explain on Twitter.

Hmmm. A few months ago I wondered here why the SNP were making all this quite so complicated.Right now, Scotland is effectively a member of five unions: a union of the crown; a defence union (Nato); a monetary/currency union; the European Union; and a fiscal union.

If you listen to what the SNP say you will see that in the main they say want to keep the first four and only to turn the dial on the fifth (fiscal independence, as Mark Carney has made as clear as possible, is not possible without monetary independence). But that isn't really going to be possible post a yes vote (which I why I am pleased to see that a plan B to sterling is now being worked on).

So here's why I think that Scotland's separatists don't like being called separatists: the word makes it clear that voting yes doesn't mean voting for a tad more fiscal devolution (as I imagine the SNP might like the undecided to think), it means breaking or at least heavily negotiating to stay in most of the other unions. It means separation. Separating can be good and it can be bad, but it is what it is.

PS Regular readers will know that I am generally a unionist (hard not to be when you are born in Ireland, part educated in England and married to a Scot) but with occasional sympathies towards the romance of the separatists. But you can read my interview with the firmly separatist Angus Tulloch here.

PPS One person told me on Twitter this morning that they preferred to be called a civic nationalist'. This seems to me to be the political equivalent of the now famous phrase conscious uncoupling' a euphemism used to make what is actually happening seem rather less dramatic than it really is.

Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.