Brown: Say no to borders within Britain
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Your support makes all the difference.SCOTTISH OR Welsh independence would create races of "foreigners" within Britain, the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, suggested last night. Mr Brown mounted a passionate defence of the union in a speech to a conference on "new Britain" at the London School of Economics.
"No citizen of Britain should be a foreigner in Britain, no neighbour a stranger in Britain," he said. "No barriers, geographical, social or cultural, should stand in the way of opportunity for every citizen of Britain."
Mr Brown drew on the findings of a survey on Britishness carried out for the conference to illustrate his case against Scottish or Welsh independence. More than eight out of 10 people in Scotland and almost nine out of 10 in Wales believed it was important for England, Scotland and Wales to work together to be a strong force in the new global economy, he said.
"The reality is not simply that we share a common island, a common language and a common history but a broad range of defining values - a commitment to openness and internationalism, to public service and fair play, to creativity and inventiveness, to democracy and tolerance," he said.
The MORI poll, commissioned by left-of-centre economics think-tank, the Smith Institute, found that the National Health Service was seen as more "British" than the Army, BBC or the House of Commons. The NHS was viewed by 71 per cent as the country's best asset, way ahead of any other national body. Just 33 per cent believed that the Commons was Britain's best asset, with 36 per cent for the BBC and 51 per cent for the Army.
The survey also found that 67 per cent of Scots and 65 per cent of Welsh respondents described "Britishness" as important to them, with most supporting the idea of a United Kingdom.
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