UK Breakup: Polls Say England, Scotland Should Be Independent; Segregation Increasing

Polls show English, Scottish want home-rule and their own countries:

The United Kingdom should be broken up and Scotland and England set free as independent nations, according to a huge number of voters on both sides of the border.

A clear majority of people in both England and Scotland are in favour of full independence for Scotland, an ICM opinion poll for The Sunday Telegraph has found. Independence is backed by 52 per cent of Scots while an astonishing 59 per cent of English voters want Scotland to go it alone.

There is also further evidence of rising English nationalism with support for the establishment of an English parliament hitting an historic high of 68 per cent amongst English voters. Almost half – 48 per cent – also want complete independence for England, divorcing itself from Wales and Northern Ireland as well. Scottish voters also back an English breakaway with 58 per cent supporting an English parliament with similar powers to the Scottish one.

The poll comes only months before the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union between England and Scotland and will worry all three main political parties. None of them favours Scottish independence, but all have begun internal debates on the future of the constitution.

So even 300 years of "British" identity could not break rival nationalisms--stoked in part, no doubt, by PC attacks on local identities by diversity fanatics and old-fashioned resentment. A three-century old experiment in forging a new identity has not succeeded, and demonstrates the power that tribal and religious ties carry great value and triumph over "diversity" and "tolerance". These primeval connections supersede decades of ideological conformity under Communism or even centuries of religious uniformity under Christianity or Islam.

Confirming that ancient prejudices still exist and the notion that given a choice, people want to live with those just like them, comes another story from the UK:

The flight of the middle classes from the inner cities is threatening to undo 30 years of progress that has made Britain the best place in Europe for ethnic minorities, the country's race equality chief said yesterday.

Trevor Phillips, the outgoing chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), said increased polarisation and segregation in areas deserted by the better-off was "the great threat" to the development of a diverse and harmonious society.

. . .

"As a nation we are becoming more ethnically segregated by residence and inequality is being amplified by our separate lives," he said.

"The real crisis lies in the areas which the middle-class minorities are leaving behind — areas which are becoming more and more ethnically concentrated and exclusive."

Research commissioned by the CRE for the convention showed that despite the greater number of ethnic minorities in Britain, few mixed. Two out of three people hardly ever choose to meet someone of a different ethnicity in their own homes.

A quarter of Britons want to live in an all-white area and more than half — including those from ethnic minorities — think there is too much immigration. More and more communities were "shut off" and vulnerable to political and religious extremism.

I wonder which communities were especially susceptible to "religious extremism"? Note too how most of the "segregation" is blamed on "white-flight" and is detrimental only to the ethnic minorities, and then says that middle-class minorities are leaving as well.