Newcastle will make a pitch to Scottish businesses frightened by a Yes vote to move to the Northeast of England, the leader of Newcastle's city council has said.
"If there is an independent Scotland I am not prepared to see Newcastle simply become a distant remote outpost of a London-run government," Councillor Nick Forbes told The Irish Times.
"If that means we are more assertive about the opportunities for business location then that is something that we will be doing," said the Labour leader of the council.
He said he had been approached by one Scottish-based bank, who said "it wasn't entirely fanciful that they would move a significant part of their operations out of Scotland south of the border"
Some businesses currently located in Scotland “might feel that they want to move out of an independent Scotland because they prefer the security of being part of a larger Britain,” he said. “Newcastle in those circumstances will be well placed to be the headquarters of organisations which are currently based in Scotland,” he said.
The Northeast’s quality of life will be “attractive for those who might be concerned about what is happening in Scotland but don’t want to decamp as far away as London. “Edinburgh is only 90 minutes away by train, it is within easy commuting distance,” said Mr Forbes, who has pushed for extra powers for English cities from London.
Opinion in the Northeast is still sour over the Scottish Government’s intervention which seized a major investment by Amazon away from Scotland to Dunfermline at the last minute.
“It was clearly decisive,” said Mr Forbes, who said the Northeast’s then-existing industrial development authority, One North East believed that “had it in the bag for the Northeast”.
The Northeast of England made a mistake in 2004 when it rejected a Labour offer of a regional assembly: “I think people will look back at that result with hindsight as the wrong result for our region,” he said.
“We could have been the first properly-devolved region within the UK, with our powers to restructure our public services and grow our economy. We are now on the back-foot as a result,” he said. Too many people in England have not paid enough attention to the referendum campaign, believing that “it won’t have much consequence”, or “let’s see if they can do it.
“I think that ties into that slightly arrogant English attitude that you sometimes come across that nobody could survive without England,” he went on. “It is not a particularly attractive trait, but it is that slightly smug English complacency that means that often we don’t see things until it is too late,” he said.
The problem is fuelled by London’s dominance: “It feels like a city state already. Once you are inside the bubble it is very easy to assume that the boundaries of the world are inside the M25, or that London is a stepping point to the world.
“I keep reminding people that England’s eight biggest cities outside of London are more than 28 per cent of our economic activity, which is more than London and we have more population,” he said.
A Yes vote would pose questions for the English: “Scottish people have an identity, Scotland has an identity whereas English people tend not to, or if they do it tends to have negative connotations.
“One of the reasons why the Scottish debate has got so many legs is because being Scottish is seen as being a positive part of one’s identity, whereas being seen as English isn’t necessarily seen as a positive thing.
“I hope we can rediscover a positive vision of what it is to be English. Sadly more of the connotations are based on petty nationalism and racism,” he told The Irish Times.
