One of Britain’s savviest politicians, who visited the U.S. , hypothesizes on success when discussing possible independence for Scotland.

Ask a pundit who Britain’s savviest politician is, and there’s a good chance the name that comes back won’t belong to someone who haunts the halls of power here in London. Instead, the accolade might well go to Alex Salmond, the head of Scotland’s semiautonomous government in Edinburgh.

Last year, voters north of the English border gave Salmond’s Scottish National Party, or SNP, an astonishing majority in the Scottish Parliament, instantly transforming the political landscape and turning First Minister Salmond into one of Britain’s most powerful leaders.

Salmond, 57, immediately set about pursuing his and his party’s fondest dream: the death of modern Britain — or the birth (rebirth, they insist) of an independent Scotland, no longer yoked to England and Wales.

Now Scots look set to decide whether they want just such a divorce after more than 300 years of togetherness. Salmond’s administration and the British central government are hashing out the final details of a referendum on independence, most likely to be put before voters in 2014.

Salmond, whose feisty and folksy manner has endeared him to many of his fellow Scots, is to arrive in the United States on Tuesday for a weeklong visit. He spoke to The Times recently in London.

Polls have rarely, if ever, shown a majority of Scots to be in favor of full independence. So why insist on a referendum now?
 
Polls vary, but independence regularly is the most popular option of three options that are usually offered to people. One is no change from the current situation; second is what’s often called devo [devolution] max, or fiscal autonomy; and the other is independence....

But the U.K. government is clearly not willing to offer devo max or fiscal autonomy as an option. So I suspect ... a lot’s going to depend on people who support economic powers for the [Scottish] Parliament but find that the U.K. government’s stopping them being able to move forward.... I think people in these circumstances would want a change.
 
If Scots vote yes, how quickly could an independent Scotland be up and running?

The vote’s in two years’ time, 2014. We would anticipate that the elections in 2016 would be the elections for an independent parliament....

We have a parliament functioning already.... All that’s happening is that instead of controlling 60% of spending in Scotland, we’d control 100%. Instead of controlling 12% of revenue in Scotland, we’d control 100%....

It’s much easier to bring about that transition ... than it would be if you were effectively starting from scratch.
 
If Scots vote no on independence, do you think that, politically, you will have set back the independence movement for at least a generation?

I’ve always tried to hypothesize on success rather than failure, so let’s just leave it at that.
 
Can you name any ways that Scotland has benefited from being part of Britain?

Undoubtedly in the last 300 years there have been a variety of things which I’m proud of Scotland being part of — a Britain that resisted Nazism in Europe in the 1940s, for example.... [But] you don’t have to be part of Britain, the British state, to have joint endeavors....

In international engagements, I think the action in Libya was justified, proportionate and successful, whereas the action in Iraq was illegal, disastrous, all-consuming in human life and human treasure. We would’ve taken part as an independent country under United Nations sanction in the first but we wouldn’t have taken part in the invasion of Iraq.

Independence is about the right to choose, the right to choose what you do and who with.
 
Is it possible to be a true and proud Scot yet still believe that it’s better to be part of Britain?

Yes. My late mother, for example, was a proud Scot who, though she did vote SNP in her latter days ... for most of her days she didn’t. Of course it is. I’ve never suggested anything to the contrary.
  

 
Los Angeles Times
 
 
08.10.2012