[The prime minister
spoke shortly after Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish National Party and
the first minister of Scotland ,
who led the campaign for secession, conceded defeat in an address to cheering
supporters. “I accept the verdict of the people,” he said. “And I call on all
the people of Scotland
to accept the democratic verdict of the people of Scotland .”]
a
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| Leon Neal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
EDINBURGH Scotland United
Kingdom
The outcome was a
bitter blow to those who had mounted a hard-fought campaign spanning two years
but reaching back into centuries of shared history. The result also showed the
depth of Scottish support for secession, with 45 percent of voters backing the
creation of a sovereign state.
While opinion polls
before the vote had forecast a contest too close to call, the “no” campaign
opposed to independence secured some 55 percent of the ballot, according to the
final results, swinging the United Kingdom back from what pro-independence
campaigners had depicted as the cusp of a historic breakup with incalculable
consequences for Britain’s place in the world.
Mary Pitcaithly, the
chief counting officer for the referendum, said final figures showed the
pro-independence camp securing 1,617,989 votes while their opponents took
2,001,926, representing a turnout of almost 85 percent.
“The people of Scotland
have spoken and it is a clear result,” Prime Minister David Cameron said
outside 10 Downing Street
in London . “They have kept our
country of four nations together. As I said during the campaign it would have
broken my heart to see our United Kingdom
come to an end.”
He went on to say
there could be “no disputes, no reruns” of the ballot and it was now time “for
our United Kingdom
to come together and to move forward.”
The prime minister
spoke shortly after Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish National Party and
the first minister of Scotland ,
who led the campaign for secession, conceded defeat in an address to cheering
supporters. “I accept the verdict of the people,” he said. “And I call on all
the people of Scotland
to accept the democratic verdict of the people of Scotland .”
Mr. Salmond stressed
that, even though the anti-independence campaign had prevailed, some 1.6
million Scottish residents had voted to end the union, providing what he termed
a “substantial” bloc of support to press for new powers promised by political
leaders in London .
“Scotland
will expect these to be honored in rapid course,” Mr. Salmond said. And he
qualified the outcome saying that Scotland
had decided “not at this stage to become an independent country,” implying that
he would pursue his longstanding dream of a sovereign state in the future.
Leaders of Britain ’s
three main parties, shocked by the strong showing of the independence campaign
in recent weeks, had scrambled to offer Scots more devolved powers if they
remained part of the United Kingdom .
Mr. Cameron said new
laws would be published by January to redeem the pledges, speaking of a “new
and fair settlement” that would affect all four components of the United
Kingdom — England ,
Scotland , Wales
and Northern Ireland .
“We now have a chance
– a great opportunity – to change the way the British people are governed, and
change it for the better,” he said. As for the promises of greater powers for Scotland ,
made by Mr. Cameron along with the leaders of the Liberal Democrat and Labour
parties, he said: "We will ensure that they are honored in full.”
But he referred
specifically to the longstanding and often contentious issue of whether England
should have greater parliamentary control over affairs that affect it
exclusively.
“We have heard the
voice of Scotland
and now the millions of voices of England
must be heard,” Mr. Cameron said.
Before dawn, after a
night of counting that showed a steady trend in favor of maintaining the union,
Nicola Sturgeon, the deputy leader of the pro-independence Scottish National
Party, effectively conceded defeat for the “yes” campaign that had pressed for
secession.
“Like thousands of
others across the country I’ve put my heart and soul into this campaign and
there is a real sense of disappointment that we’ve fallen narrowly short of
securing a ‘yes’ vote,” Ms. Sturgeon told BBC
television as the votes showed strengthening support for the “no” campaign.
Shortly after Ms.
Sturgeon’s comments, Edinburgh , the
capital of Scotland
and seat of its Parliament, reported a huge gain for the “no” camp, with more
than 194,000 voters rejecting independence, compared with almost 124,000 in
favor. Glasgow , the largest city in
Scotland , had
voted in favor of secession by a smaller margin.
The decision spared
Mr. Cameron a shattering defeat that would have raised questions about his
ability to continue in office and diminished his country’s standing in the
world.
But while the result
preserved a union molded in 1707, it left Mr. Cameron facing a backlash among
some of his Conservative Party lawmakers. They were angered by the promises of
greater Scottish autonomy that he and other party leaders made just days before
the vote, when it appeared that the independence campaign might win. Some
lawmakers called for similar autonomy for England
itself, and even the creation of a separate English Parliament.
The outcome headed off
the huge economic, political and military imponderables that would have flowed
from a vote for independence. But it also presaged a looser, more federal United
Kingdom . And it was unlikely to deter
Scottish nationalists from trying again.
President Obama had
made little secret of his desire that the United
Kingdom remain intact. Britain
has long prided itself on a so-called special relationship with the United
States , and Britain ’s
allies had been concerned by, among other things, Mr. Salmond’s vow to evict
nuclear submarine bases from Scotland ,
threatening London ’s role in the
West’s defenses.
As the vote
approached, the margin between the two camps narrowed to a few percentage
points, and at one point, the “yes” campaign seemed to have the momentum.
That was enough to
alarm the leaders of Britain ’s
three main political parties. In a rare show of unity, they promised to extend
significant new powers of taxation to Scotland ,
while maintaining a formula for public spending that many English voters saw as
favoring Scots with a bigger per capita outlay.
Alistair Darling, who
had led the “no” campaign, told supporters that the vote had reaffirmed the
bonds underpinning the United Kingdom .
“Let them never be broken,” he said, calling the outcome “momentous.”
“We have taken on the
arguments and we have won,” he said.
