Category: The United Kingdom and Scottish Independence
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Review, ‘Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot’
Nigel Biggar recently reviewed John Lloyd’s Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot: The Great Mistake of Scottish Independence (Polity Press, 2020) for The Critic Magazine. Biggar’s review, ‘Criminal insanity’, argues that calls for Scottish independence ought to be resisted. In fact, and in step with Lloyd, Biggar concludes that Scottish secession would be more than wrong-headed. It would be criminal. You…
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What the United Kingdom is Good For
Today saw the publication of an essay by Nigel Biggar for These Islands, an organisation dedicated to articulating and promoting an appreciation of the virtues of the United Kingdom. The essay offers an account of three things that the U.K. is good for: the better external security of liberal democracy in Europe, a degree of multinational solidarity of which the E.U.…
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The Legacy of the Scottish Independence Referendum
In an op-ed article for the Easter Saturday edition of The Times, Nigel Biggar examines the impact on national identity of the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence. He reports recent social scientific evidence showing that the steady upward trend of Scots identifying themselves as British continues unabated, and argues that this implies that a large majority of Scots want…
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Scottish Independence Seems Like a False God
Church Times, 05 Sep 2014 Breaking up the UK would not help anyone, argues Nigel Biggar IN A COUPLE of weeks’ time, on 18 September, the residents of Scotland will vote whether or not to leave the United Kingdom (Comment, 2 November 2012, 14 March 2014; Paul Vallely 29 August). One way or another, the outcome will affect all…
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What’s the Good of the Union?
In recent years the rise of the Scottish National Party has called into question the 300 year-old Union of England and Scotland. Nationalists argue that the Scots would be better off with an independent state, and that the Anglo-Scottish Union has had its day. This might be true: after all, nation-states wax and wane, and none is…