Tuesday 7th February 2012 | 07:00

Rory Stewart: People should remember what they love about the UK

Writing exclusively for PoliticsHome about Scottish independence, Conservative MP Rory Stewart says that people need to remember 'what they love' about the United Kingdom.

We are in danger of losing our country. And we don’t seem to care. A great nation, formed by great people, over centuries, is to be split. Why? Is this Kashmir or the Congo? What historical injustice, what occupation, what crime is it that drives this decision? Surely more than free eye-tests, prescription charges, and a small share in a dwindling oil field? The whole world sees what is magnificent, to be admired and cherished in England and Scotland. But not it seems, ourselves. And I fear we will only understand what we’ve lost, when it’s already gone.

There is a small core of eccentric Scottish nationalists, inventing myths about gaelic and kilts, and a global ‘hi-tech’ economy, and some too who in England, wave St.George’s flags, and spout eighteenth century prejudices. The main talk, however, is about money. The sums are small: the transfer payments from England to Scotland are less than we spend on Afghanistan each year, and any break-up and disentanglement would be tough, prolonged and expensive. The complaints about money – and the claims that England is ruled by Scots, or vice versa – however, reflect a deeper sickness. England fell out of love with Europe, almost as soon as it joined it. And now Britain is in danger of falling out of love with itself. All our grumbles between our nations would seem trivial, easily remedied, if we cared about each other enough to make the effort. But instead there is atmosphere of insecurity, and, indifference. And it is this that may be fatal.

In the end the argument about the Union cannot be about economics, or constitutional details, it must be about nationhood. The Union formed us: all the magnificence, we talk about over the last three hundred years, from every side of the politics – whether it is Waterloo, D-day, or the NHS – we achieved together. The world that preceded the union of the crowns is tantalising: rogue states of buccaneers in earrings, merrie pageants, and persecuted priests, but it is not our world. Our modern world and identity has all been formed in the context of the Union. The enlightenment, our economics, our romances, and half our technology, flowed down from Scotland. The Clyde and Merseyside went together through the industrial revolution. We gained and lost an empire, and won our wars, together.  Our imaginations find solace, dignity and pride in the Scottish highlands. London is our joint inheritance, a city of the world, compared to which all other cities, including beautiful Edinburgh, seem provincial. Our wealth, our institutions, our culture is formed together. Our distinctive British character – that recalcitrant, sportive, ironic, elegant, globe-trotting, no-nonsense - is an amalgam, of two nations, pretty unbearable each on their own, but splendid as a union.

But even friends of mine are deaf to these arguments. They lurch from denying the break-up will ever happen, to taking a sinister, vindictive excitement in the possibility. I sometimes fear that their inability to remember what they love about the union, stems from an inability to remember what they love about their own individual nation. It is tempting to say we need to wake up, show ourselves worthy to inherit this country, and take our responsibilities seriously to past, and future generations.  But it’s simpler than that – we need just to remember what we love about our country, is formed from what we love about each other.