The Queen, like many of her prime ministers, has grown more conservative with age. While celebrating her Silver Jubilee in 1977, she was bold enough to make what amounted to a political intervention, wondering if it was “time to remind ourselves of the benefits which Union has conferred at home and in our international dealings on the inhabitants of all parts of this United Kingdom”.
Thirty-five years later, and during a remarkably similar period of constitutional flux, the monarch clearly feels that diplomatic silence is the best approach. So there were no Delphic words during her recent address to MPs and peers in Westminster Hall, nor has Her Majesty treated her Scottish First Minister with anything other than courtesy.
That does not mean Buckingham Palace is not alive to the prospect of Scottish independence and its repercussions for the monarchy. Conscious of this — as well as the need to reassure public opinion — Alex Salmond has bent over backwards to emphasise that there is no threat to the monarch’s status if Scotland votes “yes” in the referendum in the autumn of 2014.
Mr Salmond attended the Royal Wedding last year, gushes about the Queen’s dedicated service whenever prompted and has even jettisoned an inconvenient policy commitment to holding a post-independence referendum on whether or not Scotland ought to be a republic. It sometimes appears that Mr Salmond and the SNP are more monarchist than the Last Night of the Proms.
The only change would be cosmetic, with the head of state becoming known by what the First Minister claims is an historic title, “Elizabeth, Queen of Scots”. “Not of the land,” he explains, “but of the people.” What the 50 per cent or so of Salmond’s people who believe that an hereditary monarchy has no place in a modern Scotland make of this is anyone’s guess. Republicanism in the SNP is generally of the low-grade variety.
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The present monarch, however, has a long memory. Since her accession to the throne 60 years ago, she has seen nations come and go. Such experience fosters a certain pragmatism, although the secession of Scotland would be closer to home and therefore more keenly felt. And while she will have received her First Minister’s pro-monarchy message loud and clear, there would still be logistics to consider.
Although Mr Salmond often harks back to the period between 1603 and 1707, when Scotland and England shared a monarch but not a parliament, as illustrative of what he has in mind, he alludes to a country that no longer exists.
An independent Scotland would probably need a governor-general, just as the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland did post-1922. Sure, Australia and Canada also have such representatives, but many Scots might balk at being treated like a former colony.
The Queen arguably remains the most successful Unionist politician in the United Kingdom, respected (if not always hugely popular) in all four home nations. A “yes” vote in 2014 might disrupt her coronation vows, but if an independent Scotland wants her as its head of state, then she is hardly going to say no.