Medhaj News: Scotland has voted against ending its 307-year-old union with England and Wales, with the Scottish National party conceding defeat in the historic referendum.
Medhaj News had predicted such a result in an earlier story, where even the class and the social contours of the No votes were spelled out.
Read here: SCOTS VOTE IN INDEPENDENCE REFERENDUM: WORKING CLASS HOLDS THE KEY
Here are the results:
Scots began voting in an independence referendum on Thursday to decide the fate of the United Kingdom, after opinion polls showed hundreds of thousands of them were still agonizing over whether to stay with the 307-year union or back secession.
But in the final count it seems that class polarization has won the day but in ways not predicted by most analysts. Although Dundee and Glasgow show more of a Yes vote, yet this does not imply that working class went with Alex Salmond.
Areas like Dumfries and Galloway, East Renfrewshire, East Lothian, Edinburgh house the traditional Scottish gentry and a large part of the working class who have moved from big cities after recession to such areas due to Thatcherite right wing, anti-working class policies. These policies have hit Scots hard with industries shutting down and jobs plummeting. The Yes vote was banking on a good show in precisely these areas; but the retrenched element among the working classes saw the pro big business slant in Alex Salmond’s Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) and decided to vote No overwhelmingly, often crossing the 60% mark.
Edinburgh, which represents the young Scottish voters also voted No. The Edinburgh vote shows that the message a Yes vote would mean the dominance of Tories and reactionary forces in UK, which would impact Scotland negatively even if it became an independent nation, was understood by the young people of Scotland.
It is ironical that the United Kingdom has been saved not by chest-thumping right wing reactionaries-- in short the British ruling class that sees itself as the custodian of British values, British crown and the British Union and goes out of its way to whip-up xenophobic, chauvinist English nationalism to justify morally indefensible and economically disastrous wars in the Middle East—but by pro-people, anti-war old Labour Party forces and Leftist like George Galloway. Most of the Left/Communist organizations of Scotland were with the No vote.
It is obvious that after saving the UK, Labour Party and Leftists will ask also to rule UK from now on beginning the next General Elections in Britain. Tories were against the Yes vote; but secretly they were wishing for an independent Scotland, which would have given them undisputed sway over the rump UK. But this has not happened as the working classes, Asian minorities and young people have formed a coalition behind Labour-Left that promises to change British politics decisively in the coming days.