“The left-wing case for Scottish independence now stands at the heart of the referendum battle, because it is ‪Labour‬’s core support that offers the only route to victory for the ‘yes’ camp. Strategically, this reliance on left-wing nationalism is both a strength and a weakness for the proponents of independence….
Scottish ‪‎independence‬ will not enable Scotland to evade Thatcherism; Thatcherism has already happened to Scotland. The question that left nationalism raises is whether the slow, difficult task of building a more social democratic Britain out of this new economy is best served by the creation of a new Scottish state – a state that would have an overwhelming incentive, like Ireland, to cut business taxation to gain a competitive advantage over its larger neighbour – or whether, as the Labour tradition suggests, collective action co-ordinated across all of the nations of the United Kingdom presents the left with the best prospects of success.” (to the full article- open access)