In Scotland's 'No' Vote, an Emphatic 'Yes' for Change in Britain

Edinburgh, Scotland: Scotland chose decisively against independence Thursday, but it was not a vote for the status quo in Britain.

The debate over regional and national autonomy set off by the Scots has just begun, and it promises a significant constitutional shake-up in the United Kingdom, which remains intact but by no means fixed or unchallenged.

While the outcome was met with tremendous relief from Downing Street and Buckingham Palace to Brussels and Washington, Britain was also awakening to the realization Friday that it had agreed to grant the Scots considerable new powers to run their own affairs. Prime Minister David Cameron now faces a broader debate over the centralization of power in London, uncertainty over Britain's place in Europe, intense budget pressures, and fissures within his own Conservative Party as he heads toward a general election in the spring.

Nearly 45 percent of Scots voted to abandon the United Kingdom forever, and the rest voted for a more powerful Scotland within the United Kingdom.

The victory of the "Better Together" camp was ensured late in the campaign when all three main political leaders from Westminster - Cameron, Labour Party leader Ed Miliband and Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg - jointly promised "extensive new powers" to the Scottish Parliament over taxing, spending and welfare, while also pledging to continue the budget allowance Scotland gets, a generous allowance per capita compared with what the rest of Britain receives.

Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister, who led the independence fight, called for reconciliation Friday and then, visibly dejected, announced he would step down in November. But he made it clear that Scotland would hold the party leaders to their promises, which Parliament must turn into law, even if the three parties have not quite agreed on the details.

Cameron was faced with criticism from his own Conservative Party about the blithe manner of the promising and the possible expense. More interesting, perhaps, many legislators said that if Scotland received still more power over its finances, it was time for England to gain more, too. Some even suggested a separate English parliament, like the ones in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

One of the great anomalies of the British system, as it has developed, is that England is subject to the laws of Parliament in which Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish legislators vote. But Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own parliaments that rule, without any English say, on many important regional matters.

Cameron on Friday vowed to fix that, saying: "We now have a chance - a great opportunity - to change the way the British people are governed, and change it for the better."

He gave no specifics but said: "Just as Scotland will vote separately in the Scottish Parliament on their issues of tax, spending and welfare, so too England, as well as Wales and Northern Ireland, should be able to vote on these issues."

And all that, he asserted, "must take place in tandem with, and at the same pace as, the settlement for Scotland," with draft legislation supposedly ready by January, which is considered unlikely, given that it must be negotiated with all three main parties. But few expect such important legislation to be enacted before the general election in May.

Cameron also has an eye on the general election, his own restive party, the rise of the English nationalist United Kingdom Independence Party to his right and, to his left, the uninspiring performance of his opponent Miliband in arguing for continued union in Scotland.

Cameron clearly sees another advantage to an English parliament. Given his party's relative strength in England, it would tighten the Conservatives' grip on power even with left-wing Scotland, with 41 Labour members of Parliament, remaining in the United Kingdom.

The vote in Scotland also has implications for Britain's membership in the European Union. Scotland is adamantly pro-European, and should Cameron remain prime minister after the May elections, he has a better chance to win a 2017 referendum he has promised on British membership in the European Union with Scotland voting.

Mujtaba Rahman, European director for the Eurasia Group, a political and economic consulting firm, said that "a 'no' vote does not mean no change."

The promises of decentralization "made by London to Scotland to secure the "no" victory will lead to claims for similar powers from Wales and Northern Ireland," he said, "forcing constitutional changes to how England is governed, either through a new national parliament or strengthened federal entities."

Alistair Moffat, a Scottish historian, said: "What lies ahead is a federal Britain."

Peter Hain, a Labour legislator who has served as secretary of state for both Wales and Northern Ireland, said "the genie is out of the bottle" on constitutional change.

"We need to recognize the reality that the United Kingdom should have a federal political structure with a constitutional arrangement which defines the demarcation of powers between Westminster and the rest of the United Kingdom," he told Reuters.

But it would be an oddly unbalanced federalism, given that England represents 85 percent of the population, as the consulting firm Oxford Analytica pointed out Friday.

It is not clear that the English want an extra layer of government and generally have preferred to be run from Westminster, resisting regional councils and elected mayors. That attitude might be changing, but it is also possible that the government will come up with less radical ideas, such as simply providing more money to the local authorities to deal with broader issues or creating special England-only committees in Parliament to examine laws that affect only England, and not the "Union," as the United Kingdom is called.

The larger question, of course, is what the "Union" means in an age of decentralization and incipient federalism.

Cameron has always had problems articulating what "British values" are, beyond decency and fairness. Even Gordon Brown, the former Labour prime minister and a Scot whose exhortations to reject the referendum played a role in its outcome, has called for a "statement of national purpose."

Jason Cowley, writing of "A Shattered Union" in the New Statesman, sees deeper centrifugal forces at work "cleaving the United Kingdom." He cited "the end of empire, deindustrialization, the decline of cross-border working-class solidarity, the weakening of Protestantism and of the trade unions, as well as a general anti-politics, 'stuff them' attitude."

What can save the United Kingdom from becoming the United Nothing, as one Scot put it, may be exactly what Scotland has secured: maximum regional powers.

Salmond, "whose political mission from the outset was to break the Union," writes Cowley, "might end up creating the conditions in which it could be remade and thus saved."

Others were less optimistic. Matthew Parris, a former Conservative legislator, wrote in The Times of London that "the Union is dead," killed off by decentralization.

"To survive, the Union had to be an affair of the heart, and the heartbeat started faltering decades ago, at devolution," he said.

But "the pulse failed" when Brown "carelessly, disgracefully promised 'nothing less than a modern form of home rule' for Scotland, and the three panicking Westminster party leaders, whose nerves had failed, backed him."

More autonomy for Scotland is practically independence, Parris said, and "must lead to home rule for England." And that, he said, not only implies an English parliament but an English government, too.

A federal Britain may be the result, he concluded, "but the Union is lost."