Writer believes a vote for Scotland to leave the UK would have energised the nation for years
Everywhere outside of London is like a “third world” country, according to the novelist Irvine Welsh.
The writer said he considered it a “disaster” that Scotland did not vote for independence in 2014.
The Scotsman, 65, who wrote Trainspotting, believes a vote to leave the UK would have energised the nation for years.
Speaking to an audience at the Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival at The Albert Halls in Stirling on Saturday night, Welsh said he did not think there was “much of a future for Scotland”.
Referendum was a ‘disaster’
Asked for his views on the referendum a decade on, Welsh said: “I think it was a disaster really that we didn’t quite have the bottle just to push through and go for it.
“I was in Dublin the other week. I think it was Monday and Tuesday night I was out and it was absolutely teeming and rammed. And if you look at Edinburgh or Glasgow now on a Monday or Tuesday night it’s just tumbleweed.
“I was in Leeds a few weeks ago and Leeds used to be the club capital of England, and now it’s just dead. There used to be 36 clubs in Leeds and now there’s two that are open.
“And it’s like London is just absolutely buzzing and thriving and heaving and the rest of Britain is like a third world country now in comparison.”
Welsh’s comments come almost 10 years to the day after the referendum on Scottish independence which was held on Sep 18 2014.
People in Scotland were asked “Should Scotland be an independent country?” with 44.7 per cent voting yes and 55.3 per cent voting against an historic change.
He added: “I think that had Scotland become independent, the surge in energy, the building and the infrastructure, the money coming into the country, the novelty of it would have energised the place for a good couple of decades.
“I think afterwards it would have fallen into the same kind of trap of that whole kind of neo-liberal empire, but I think we’d have had a couple of really good decades of economic growth and some kind of idea of the future.
“Now I don’t think that there is much of a future for Scotland.”
Welsh also told the audience his theory that people are now divided into “total b—ds and mugs”. He said most opt for the former as there was at least some reward.
Welsh related to crime writer
On Saturday, he spoke alongside Louise Welsh, a fellow crime writer, to discuss their latest novels.
Thirty years after Trainspotting, Welsh’s latest book, Resolution, sees the return of his maverick investigator Ray Lennox, the troubled anti-hero of his TV-adapted crime series, this time set in Brighton.
Louise Welsh, who is professor of creative writing at the University of Glasgow and best known for her bestseller The Cutting Room, has been praised for her latest thriller To The Dogs, which has been described as a “headlong dive into Glasgow’s criminal underbelly”.
The pair, two of Scotland’s most acclaimed novelists, also revealed they are related.
Irvine, turning to Louise, said: “We are distantly related. I think my great-grandad and your great-great-grandad were the same person, yeah?
“The funny thing is our mums were really good friends. Through the family connection they kind of became really good pals.”
Last year the author blamed Scotland’s drug death scandal on the country’s lack of independence.
He said Scotland not having “control of our own destiny” and being “on the margins of British society” was a factor behind the crisis. Scotland continues to have a far higher rate of drug-related deaths than other European nations, including other parts of the UK.
