A third way for Berwick?

Amusing public debate has resumed on the status of Berwick upon weed, with an SNP bid to recapture the town for Scotland. Such irridentism begs all sorts of other thoughts based on the fluctuating history of the Border. Should it pushed yet further south to its earlier line along the Tyne in the East and Ribble in the West? Or, in a new age of regionalism, should the kingdom of Northumberland be exhumed, with the most Anglo Saxon parts of Scotland - the Lothians and Berwickshire - reunited with England down to the Humber? Scope for such territorial argument is near endless.

A more fruitful approach might be to build on the nebulous legal status of the town. At various times it seems to have existed as a sort of crown colony, neither in Scotland, nor properly in England. This is reminiscent of other parts of these islands that enjoy autmonomy from orthodox governmental status such as the Isle of Man. Could Berwick be established as a kind of Free Port on a similar model? Able to set low taxes to attract commerce and industry to the region? A vision, perhaps, of a mini Hong Kong, a dynamo of prosperity and enterprise that could reinvigorate the neglected fringe of both countries.

No doubt such a proposal would receive short shrift from everyone from the Treasury to the EU to Holyrood. Politicians hate to relinquish power. But it might be an idea usefuly deployed as a counterbalance when our battier tribunes come up with power-grabs based on dodgy historical precedent.