We are not the only country with that problem. It is the dilemma of Canada, Spain and many other countries that are multinational countries in which there is no agreement on where sovereignty lies or on the foundations of the constitution. I am not suggesting that you have to dig all the way down to the foundations to get a consensus on the basis of sovereignty, because you will never get that. What you can do is put that aside and, in the meantime, talk about institutions that work.
I said that the issue of independence was settled; I meant that it was settled for some time into the future—otherwise why have a referendum—but it is not settled for ever. It never will be settled. Even if Scotland became independent, we do not really know what independence would mean and whether we would have our own currency and so on, so there is a whole area of uncertainty there. There are issues that we will never agree on, so we should just put them aside because most of the time they do not matter. That is pragmatism, but principle also comes in, because we have to have institutions that can work in the medium term.
In Canada, they have had two referendums and they have never settled the question of sovereignty for Quebec. However, their institutions are working pretty well because, between referendums, they agree to disagree on sovereignty but accept that, in the meantime, they need to get institutions that work. In Quebec, there has been a strong concentration on institution building. Their attitude is, “We may not have sovereignty, but we will use the powers that we have more effectively.” In Canada as a whole, there has gradually been a greater recognition of diversity and a greater recognition of Quebec. Canada has done things such as sorting out its fiscal equalisation system, which is a huge challenge everywhere; getting agreement on safeguarding the powers of the two levels; and safeguarding provincial powers against federal encroachment.
In those cases and in Scotland, although there is a difference in principle about whether there should be independence, it seems to me that we are looking at two ways of getting to the same destination. There is a broad consensus that Scotland should be self-governing in one way; there is also a broad consensus that it should not be an old-fashioned nation state, because we are going to be part of the European Union, we may have currency union, and there are the six unions that Alex Salmond talked about, of which we would keep five. Therefore, although there is this difference in theory, there is a lot more common ground than you might think from looking at the referendum debate. In that sense, it is the politicians who are obsessed with theories and we academics are often the ones who talk about practical things that can be done, even when people disagree on basic principles.