First published in Time on 28 August 2014

The Scottish National Party is one of the most attractively crafted nationalist movements in history. It has cloaked itself in progressive liberal language; it claims to be in favor of higher immigration; professes great friendship for neighboring nations; is anti-militarist; and instead of focusing on the past, champions “the future.” But in the end, like all nationalisms, it has a reactionary core. It assumes that one people–the Scots–are somehow, although they would never state it, intrinsically separate and superior; and that the answer to their problems is to cut off a group of fellow-citizens, and treat them–the English, Welsh and Northern Irish–as foreigners. All the bewildering, appealing and contradictory claims of the Scottish nationalists ultimately rest on this foundation.

Take their manifesto. The SNP, the main party behind the Yes Scotland campaign, has avoided any discussion of identity and has tried to make the referendum into a party political campaign, emphasizing economic policy. Its manifesto focuses on a pension guarantee, adjustment to housing benefits, and a lower corporation tax rate. But none of these proposals requires independence to become law. Some could be implemented immediately by the existing Scottish government. All could well be introduced by a Labour government in London, should the left-of-center party win the next election. The only challenge is to convince all British voters, not just Scots, to vote for such policies. 

But this not what the Scottish Nationalists have in mind—apparently because they believe that political attitudes are permanent, fixed aspects of national character. (They call this idea – —that political views coincide exactly with ancient borders -—”civic nationalism”). Their solution is, therefore, to simply exclude the “English”—the nationalists’ tendency is to refer to all other Britons as the “English”—from voting by changing the electoral boundaries. This is gerrymandering on a national scale. In order to achieve more “progressive” policies in areas such as welfare and taxation policy, they wish people to renounce their citizenship and create a new country. Not only is this bad democratic process, it misrepresents the reality of broader British political attitudes.

There is no evidence in social attitude surveys that the English are—as nationalists like to suggest—more xenophobic, reactionary and right-wing than the Scots. England and English thinkers have shaped and continued to define most of the progressive policies in Britain from feminism to civil rights and the environmental movement. Scotland is in many ways less “modern” than London, which has become one of the most rapidly changing, cosmopolitan, and global capitals on earth (7% of Scots were born outside the U.K., compared to 37% of Londoners).

Which is why, for all the talk about the future and progressivism, the nationalist project is in fact reactionary. Nationalists blame Scotland’s problems—which are almost indistinguishable from the problems of most Western democracies—on their relationship with the rest of Britain. Instead of trying to harness the potential of a diverse, connected, and rapidly expanding London, they treat London as a threat—and attempt to segregate and protect themselves from it. Instead of continuing to share national resources and assets with fellow-citizens, they hope to achieve their utopia by scapegoating the English, treating them as foreigners, and keeping the resources—particularly the North Sea oil and gas reserves that have long benefitted all of Britain—for themselves. In short, their response to the fundamental problems of a 21st century democracy is try to try to shut the complexity out by drawing in their borders.

The United Kingdom can be improved—it needs much more local democracy, it needs to rediscover a sense of seriousness, and it would benefit from a new written constitution—but it retains great strengths. The three-century-old union between different nations is unique proof of the power of solidarity, tradition, and democratic process. And there are good economic arguments for remaining together. In the end, however, the referendum is about identity: should people continue to be both Scottish and British, or become only Scottish?

For two months now, thousands of English, Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish have gathered on the Scottish border at Gretna. They are bringing rocks, which they have collected from every corner of the United Kingdom, and are piling them in a giant traditional stone cairn, in honour of the Union. The cairn records its builders’ respect and affection for their fellow citizens, and demonstrates that different nations can build together in a single country. Such structures have been built on both sides of the border for more than six thousand years. The building of the cairn may be an ancient tradition but it is a far healthier and more truthful response than nationalism to the challenges of the modern world.

What will it mean to wake up next week and find that Scotland has left, forever?  Bewilderment, certainly, loss, grief. But we cannot know how we will feel until it is lost: until it is too late. We have spent three or four hundred years, as a single family: everything in our language, our culture, and our identity is a product of that family.  We are four nations that have evolved together.  If that family is torn apart, we will be bereft, unmoored, in ways we cannot begin to imagine.

We would start by losing the very name of our country – the United Kingdom refers to the Union between the Kingdoms of England and Scotland. What is the name for a disunited Kingdom? What will it feel like for the first time, to drive into Scotland on holiday and be stopped at, a border post? To watch lawyers and consultants grow rich through splitting our assets?

Will Scots move to Cumbria to pay lower taxes, or English move to Scotland for benefits? What fortunes will be made by accountants, as companies work out the costs of doing business with a new country with different regulations? How much will we pay international bankers to advise on the division of the debt? And what will investors make of us, when all this is going on?

Those are the easy questions. It would be a messy, ugly divorce, and we would waste a decade and a fortune, in squabbles that will become ever tenser, ever angrier and more resentful, as the blame is apportioned and reapportioned between us. But the negotiations would end.

Our identity, however, our family of nations, would never heal. Take the millions who have worked for the British Army, or the British government, or the millions with mixed English and Scottish ancestry. We never had to think about what our country was, and wasn’t – we were serving Britain regardless of whether we were in Cornwall, in Aberdeen, or in Iraq. Neither a Scottish father, nor an English mother, was a foreigner. But split our country and who are we serving? What will happen when our countries disagree? Which country would we follow? Which army would we join?

And would we ever feel the same way about England or Scotland alone, as we feel about Britain? Will we unleash a defiant and shrill English nationalism, insisting on superiority and differences? How long then would Wales stay? And will we not always feel as though something were missing in our new country, as though we carried a phantom limb?

Only a week remains. The polls currently show that Scots will vote for separation. But it is very close: a point either way. The views of a few thousand people will decide the future of millions. We must help them see the Nationalists for what they are: pessimists about Britain, who hope to shut out the challenges of the age, by shrinking the country, putting up artificial borders, and retreating from the diversity of the United Kingdom. They offer a dream only of being with people like themselves. And it is a false vision. The strength of Britain – and of any family – lies in difference, being challenged by other people and other nations, learning from each other, and becoming – like any family – much more than the sum of our parts.

In the end, Scottish voters need to be convinced only that Britain is a country, of which they can be proud. A country with a brilliant future. And that is something that even those of us who do not have a vote can demonstrate. We are the heirs of a country that has been four hundred years in the building. We cannot let a country that our ancestors sacrificed for so long to build, simply drift away through apathy, complacency and indifference. Instead, let us prove that when our country was at threat, our citizens were still prepared to stand and work together. Scottish Nationalism is a narrow, reductive, withdrawal. But Britain can always offer something larger, more capacious, more diverse, more powerful, and more imaginative.