Ian McMillan: Our own independence day will come at last

In a pub in Perranporth, I noticed they’d got some of the menu in dual language, English and Kernow, and that made me think that perhaps these islands are starting to drift apart again, linguistically and culturally. Maybe that majority of us who live outside London are once more starting to realise how far away Westminster is, in all kinds of ways.

And now, in a new-ish year, the air is full of independence chatter. The Scots are going to have a referendum at some time in the McFuture, as we might have to start calling it, and that’s got lots of people thinking about slipping away quietly and starting their own governments without anybody really noticing until it’s too late to do anything about it. So, inevitably, the thoughts of Yorkshire Post readers turn to the idea of border controls at Todmorden, white rose flags on every public building and dual language signs everywhere.

Imagine it at Junction 37 on the M1, the turn-off for Barnsley: REYT HERE FOR TARN. GET YERSENS INT REYT LANE NAR. Imagine the confused Swedish tourists. Never mind the Swedes: imagine the confused tourists from Leatherhead!

Mind you, as the Welsh will tell you, the impact of dual-language signs is always diminished by having the English on top. So you see the word School before you see Ysgol and the English has won, every time. If we did ever have dual-language signs in Yorkshire we’d have to have the Tyke-talk printed above the standard words, otherwise there’s no point doing it, reyt? So if the Union, the United Kingdom, really is creaking, straining at points where it might snap, starting to bend out of shape at places where a stress fracture might occur, I wonder why there’s hardly been any mention of that old chestnut Home Rule for Yorkshire lately?

You sometimes used to hear it muttered about in the tap rooms of pubs or in barber’s shops when a few people of a certain age got together to do a bit of mild chuntering and pointing, but it all seems to have gone a bit silent on the Independence For God’s Own County front. I was one of the ones (and you could probably have counted us in ones) who were in favour of that elected Yorkshire Assembly a few years ago; I reckon it would have given us a bit of autonomy and wrestled a little smidgeon of power away from the South East.

In the end it never happened of course, and I’m still a little sad about that, and not just because I was hoping for some real Yorkshire money with John Prescott’s head on. Real Yorkshire money that they wouldn’t accept in Lancashire, of course. More fool them.

There’s definitely something in the air though, and it has a slight whiff of flat cap. I’m not much of a sage and for years I thought the zeitgeist was something you kept pasta in but I predict that, because of the times we’re in, the idea of Yorkshire Independence will soon be creeping up on us once again.

It’ll start with the aforementioned chunterers in those semi-public places, leading to such heated debate that in one or two barber’s shops in former mill towns haircutting is suspended as full-scale debate rattles the windows with its vehemence.

It’ll spread to the letters pages of local and regional newspapers and the hungry airwaves of radio stations that like a bit of a ding-dong before the next set of adverts come on. It’ll suddenly seem that we’re all talking about it, like when we have one of those pot-rattling little earthquakes we sometimes have round these parts and we all tell each other where we were and what we were doing when the ground shook; we’ll all have our opinions about Independence.

It’ll be what they used to call a water-cooler moment and what they now call a trending topic.

The talk will become a low rumble that will become a roar and then a screech. Sales of certain types of Yorkshire goods will go through the roof and it will seem that everybody has a white rose flag in the garden and a white rose sticker on the back of the car.

Political parties will be formed: the Yorkshire Independence Party on the one hand, and the Yorkshire Pudding Separatists on the other. There’ll be excited predictions of a Tyke Spring and a new world order and should it include Middlesbrough? I’m not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing. I’m just saying the times might be changing, tha knows.