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Disuniting the kingdom

By P.K., D.D.M. and K.N.C.

Who can claim what if Scotland secedes

JAMES BOND and the actor who first portrayed him, Sean Connery, get to be claimed by an independent Scotland. Likewise, James Watt, the father of the steam engine that powered the industrial revolution, can no longer be a source of British national pride. He goes to Scotland too, as do Adam Smith, David Hume and (arguably) J.K. Rowling. From Nobel Prize winners to the number of listed buildings, breaking up the United Kingdom also means divvying up the cultural patrimony.

The cost to Scotland of separation is estimated by the British Treasury at £1.5 billion, for establishing a federal government, national public services, regulatory agencies, diplomatic representation and the like. However, there are also rich bragging rights at stake. Britain can claim ten times the number of Olympic Gold Medal champions at the Summer Games, though Scottish pride can boast of nine champs in the Winter Games, compared with 14 for the rest of the United Kingdom.

A less great Britain loses a quarter of its territory and almost all of its mountains. Scotland lays claim to the ski resorts (and, sadly, a bit more of the rain). It gets some of the oil in the North Sea. But for actors, athletes, tourism and treasure, the kingdom comprising England, Wales and Northern Ireland holds a generous lead. Among inventors, Scotland gets John Logie Baird who devised the first television, while England lays rights on Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web. The 18th century poet Robert Burns goes north, Shakespeare, Dickens, the Brontë sisters and others stay south. Among politicians, the Scots can claim Gordon Brown; the rest of Blighty gets Churchill. In music, Annie Lennox and the Bay City Rollers have to hold their own against England’s Bowie, Beatles and Stones.

Yet where Scotland particularly shines is in the most important domain of all: data-visualisation. Though Britain’s Florence Nightingale gets much credit, the father of the line graph, bar chart and pie chart was Scotland’s William Playfair. And as for The Economist itself, though sometimes hailed as a paragon of Britishness, we would be claimed by the world’s potentially newest nation, having been founded in 1843 by James Wilson of Hawick, Scotland.

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