Scottish referendum: Scotland votes ‘No’ to independence

BBC News

Scotland has voted to stay in the United Kingdom after voters decisively rejected independence.

With the results in from all 32 council areas, the “No” side won with 2,001,926 votes over 1,617,989 for “Yes”.

Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond called for unity and urged the unionist parties to deliver on more powers.  

Prime Minister David Cameron said he was delighted the UK would remain together and said the commitments on extra powers would be honoured.

Mr Cameron said the three main unionist parties at Westminster would now follow through with their pledge of more powers for the Scottish Parliament.

“We will ensure that those commitments are honoured in full,” he said.

He announced that Lord Smith of Kelvin, who led Glasgow’s staging of the Commonwealth Games, would oversee the process to take forward the commitments, with new powers over tax, spending and welfare to be agreed by November, and draft legislation published by January.

The prime minister also acknowledged that the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland must have a bigger say over their affairs.

And he promised a solution to the West Lothian question – the fact that Scottish MPs can vote on English issues at Westminster, and not the other way round.

The result became a mathematical certainty at 06:08, as the returning officer in Fife announced a comfortable No vote.

Shortly afterwards, Mr Salmond said he accepted the defeat and called for national unity.

He said the referendum and the high turnout (nearly 85%) had been a “triumph for the democratic process” and promised to keep his pledge in the Edinburgh Agreement which paved the way for the referendum to respect the result.

He told supporters: “The unionist parties made vows late in the campaign to devolve more powers to Scotland.

“Scotland will expect these to be honoured in rapid course – as a reminder, we have been promised a second reading of a Scotland Bill by March 27 next year.

And the First Minister said: “Whatever else we can say about this referendum campaign, we have touched sections of the community who have never before been touched by politics, these sections of the community have touched us and touched the political process.”

In a rallying call to his supporters, Mr Salmond urged the Yes voters to reflect on how far they had come.

“I don’t think any of us, whenever we entered politics, would have thought such a thing to be either credible or possible,” he said.

He also claimed the campaign had put “a scare and a fear of enormous proportions” at the heart of the Westminster establishment.

“Today of all days as we bring Scotland together, let us not dwell on the distance we have fallen short, let us dwell on the distance we have travelled and have confidence the movement is abroad in Scotland that will take this nation forward,” he added.

Balmoral seems very remote and cut off but of course the Royal Family has been following this minutely.

Reaction – one word, relief. Relief that’s it’s over, relief that Scotland has decided what it has.

The Queen undoubtedly, privately would have felt immense sadness had the United Kingdom been split up.

Relief too for her officials who had been starting to contemplate some very tricky constitutional issues.

Once all the politicians have said what they wish to say, I think this afternoon it is expected that the Queen will issue a short written statement.

It seems logical to surmise that after this really quite divisive campaign she will concentrate on the vote, the decision that Scotland has taken, and express the hope that Scotland will now move on.

This margin of victory for the Better Together campaign – 55% to 45% – was greater by about 3% than that anticipated by the final opinion polls. The winning total needed was 1,852,828.

BBC political editor Nick Robinson said that although the result was decisive, the constitutional implications were far from settled.

He said: “The fact that over 1.5m British citizens voted to break away from the rest of the UK, the fact that a majority in Scotland’s biggest city – Glasgow – backed independence, the fact that the Westminster establishment briefly thought this vote was lost, is the reason for that.”

Speaking in Downing Street, Mr Cameron said the result was decisive.

He said: “Now the debate has been settled for a generation, or as Alex Salmond has said: ‘Perhaps for a lifetime’.

“So there can be no disputes, no re-runs; we have heard the will of the Scottish people.”

The prime minister also spoke of the implications for the other nations of the UK.

“In Wales there are proposals to give the Welsh Government and Assembly more powers and I want Wales to be at the heart of the debate on how to make the United Kingdom work for all our nations,” he said.

‘English voices’

“In Northern Ireland, we must work to ensure that the devolved institutions function effectively.”

Mr Cameron said “millions of voices of England must also be heard”.

“The question of English votes for English laws, the so-called West Lothian question, requires a decisive answer so just as Scotland will vote separately in the Scottish Parliament on their issues on tax, spending and welfare, so too England as well as Wales and Northern Ireland should be able to vote on these issues.

“And all this must take place in tandem with and at the same pace as the settlement for Scotland.”

Alistair Darling, who led the Better Together campaign, said the people of Scotland had “chosen unity over division and positive change rather than needless separation”.

“It is a momentous result for Scotland and also for the United Kingdom as a whole,” he said.

What started as a vote on whether Scotland would leave the UK has ended with an extraordinary constitutional revolution announced outside Downing Street by the Prime Minister.

It throws down the gauntlet to the Labour Party, and hints that we are going to see very big change coming and it had better come quickly.

We always used to be told that if you laid all the economists in the world end to end they still wouldn’t reach a conclusion and I think that could be said often about parliamentary committees and inquiries and commissions.

Well, it can’t happen this time because it’s not taking place in a sealed room with the Westminster parties, the old smug consensus, getting round an argument with each other as before.

This is really taking place in a huge glass house, being watched by all the Scottish voters and by millions of people around the UK.

What the Scottish shock has done is produce a constitutional revolution on a very, very tight timetable. Possibly the most exciting political story in my lifetime.

Mr Darling said the result had “reaffirmed all that we have in common and the bonds that tie us together”, adding: “Let them never be broken.”

“As we celebrate, let us also listen,” he said.

‘Cry for change’

“More than 85% of the Scottish population has voted. People who were disengaged from politics have turned out in large numbers.

“While they have voted on the constitution, that was not the only or perhaps the major issue that drove them to the polls.

“Every political party must listen to their cry for change, which could be echoed in every part of our United Kingdom but had this opportunity to express itself in Scotland.”

Mr Darling thanked his “great team of volunteers” who had worked on the Better Together campaign.

He added: “You represent the majority of opinion. Your voices have been heard. We have taken on the argument and won. The silent have spoken.”

Back to normal

Nick Eardley in Glasgow

Buchanan Street feels very different this morning. On Wednesday, it was full of campaigners, with person after person wearing a badge or top declaring their allegiance.

Yes campaigners were jubilant as they stood outside the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall to hear Blair Jenkins declare his confidence they would win.

This morning, under grey skies, there is no sign of the referendum.

All the Yes badges have gone and posters have been packed away. Not a single person wearing a campaign badge is visible.

Even a pro-independence sticker, put on a statue of Donald Dewar, the architect of devolution, has been removed.

A few people say they are happy at the result. One woman says the nature of the No campaign means its supporters are less likely to be vocal in their opinions.

And it feels that way.

“Business as usual” perhaps doesn’t need the same sort of fanfare. Central Glasgow is back to normal.

Across Scotland, the “No” vote had a majority in 28 of the country’s 32 local authority areas.

Dundee was the first area to back independence. On a turnout of 78.8%, “Yes” polled 53,620 votes to the “No” campaign’s 39,880.

The other three areas were all clustered in Labour’s traditional west of Scotland heartland.

Glasgow, Scotland’s largest council area and the third largest city in Britain, voted in favour of independence by 194,779 to 169,347, although turnout was lower than in other areas at 75%.

West Dunbartonshire also gave its backing to independence, voting 54% to 46% in favour, with North Lanarkshire completing the “Yes” quartet by 51% to 49%.

In Scotland’s 28 other local authority areas, it was a night of huge disappointment for the pro-independence movement.

Hoped for breakthroughs in other traditional Labour strongholds such as South Lanarkshire, Inverclyde and across Ayrshire never materialised.

Edinburgh, the nation’s capital, clearly rejected independence by 194,638 to 123,927 votes, while Aberdeen City voted “No” by a margin of more than 20,000 votes.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-29270441