THE STATES AND THE KINGDOM - UNITED?

I feel a sense of depression today off the back of the American election result.  What struck me forcefully during the course of a previous US election result, the one where George Bush squeezed through based on a few hundred Florida votes out of the many million cast nationwide, came back equally strongly yesterday.  And the thing that struck me?  Just how equally divided the population were between two very different ideologies.  It seems remarkable to me, given two alternatives, that the results should come out so close - and in terms of the public vote, as opposed to the electoral college numbers, they were close, 49% plays 48%. 

One would normally think that between two choices in anything that one of those two choices would stand out as superior and thus be chosen by a substantial majority.  Yet the United States divided right down the middle, as near as damn it 50/50, when given the choice of Republican Romney and Democrat Obama.

Let's not kid ourselves that there isn't a vast gap between the competing ideologies. When I was younger I always understood in American politics that the Republicans were right-wing and the Democrats were central-left but that there were no significant socialists in the USA.  Obama has certainly moved the Democrats to the left with his European model of big government, high spending, high taxation and nationalised healthcare.  Class warfare, "soak the rich" and an ever intrusive government seem so far adrift of the "American Dream" of hard work, self-reliance, sound money and small government which made the USA such a great and successful nation.  Yet the country collectively hasn't moved it's vision - just half the nation.  One half has gone down that route but the other half still voted for the short-term pain required to create a sound economic environment that would create long-term growth and lasting prosperity.  Truly the states of America are no longer "United" and the ideological differences between some of these "united" states are truly profound.

That brings me be back to our United Kingdom.  At the last election England voted for a Conservative government. Scotland wanted nothing to do with that and the vast majority of their votes went either to a British socialist party or an even more left-wing Scottish socialist party.  Again a nation which calls itself "United" in name is in fact truly divided. 

Logically the time must come when amicable divorces are needed in both countries.  In 'America' some states could join together to go down the European EU model - with job destroying regulation, high taxes, disincentives to work and economic stagnation whilst other states could stay with their "American Dream" and prosperity.  In the UK a small part of the population will actually have a referendum in 2014 to choose whether Scotland goes alone in a Scottish Socialist Utopia.  The tragedy is that the English have no say in that referendum - one party in a potential divorce that is disinfranchised from the decision that could be a major factor in the future prosperity of the English.  The 2014 referendum should ask the views of the entire UK.  And sorry Mr Cameron, I know which way I would vote!