Quango - Separating the Separatists

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Last week, at the height of the Eurozone crisis, Silvio Berlusconi was asked to give his blessing to another round of austerity measures that Italy needed to go through in order to stop suicidal bankers turning Europe's pavements into one big meat patty. The continent's leaders were alarmed, then, when Berlusconi's coalition partner threatened to veto the austerity bill. Mainly because no one even knew that Berlusconi – for so long the alpha silverback gorilla of Italy's political jungle – even had a coalition partner. Incredibly, the ignorant wider world learnt, that coalition partner was in fact Umberto Bossi, the head of a far-right party. And not just that: they were full-blown separatists, who felt that the top half of Italy didn't need the bottom half one bit. The world wondered whey it had never been made aware of the ongoing liberation struggle in Italy. Then QUANGO wondered about what other hopelessly obscure liberation struggles were playing out on the planet right now. Turns out there are quite a few… PADANIA

The term 'Padania' was basically unknown in Italy until the early 90s. That was, until the leader of the Lega Nord [Northern League], Umberto Bossi, started using it, to refer to the Po Valley, whose cities include Milan, Venice, Verona and Genoa. Bossi's gang want full separation of that chunk from the rest of Italy. The nation is a relatively young one, its disparate kingdoms and city-states only coming together in 1861, and as such it's a far more regionally loyal place than most outsiders understand. Bossi's mob have already done all the fun stuff, like selecting a flag and an anthem, culled from an opera by Verdi which refers to the passage of Hebrew slaves into Egypt. Futility rating: Not that futile, actually. Already, 45% of Northerners say they support independence for the Padania region – that's a larger chunk than the percentage of the British public that would like to leave the EU. That figure rises to 55% by the time you get as far north as Venice. Then the world would have to stop referring to Italy as a boot and see it more as a hi-top. ALBERTA

Everyone knows about Quebecois separatism: they speak French, they hosted a poor quality Olympics, it's obvious they need to go and go now. But there are other parts of Canada that have been less visibly trying to sling their hook for years. Amongst them is the province of Alberta – the rectangular, prairie-filled bit of land two thirds of the way to the left of the country. Albertans are generally more economically conservative, less socially liberal and altogether less cuddly than their compatriots. This has led to a marked movement within the province to piss off the rest of Canada, which reached an apex in the 1980s, when Canada had a Francophone liberal Prime Minister, who seemed to be rather liberally re-distributing the province's massive oil and gas reserves to the rest of the nation. Of course, the proposition that tends to get floated more commonly than going it alone – it's so lopsidedly-created, it would just look weird on maps – is that Albertans should effectively fork off with the rest of Western Canada to split the country in two. Futility rating: Pretty futile – its glory days are over, and the idea's just a rotten dream in the skulls of most Albertans, though it does still command minority support in more rural areas. LAKOTAH

The Dakotas. Two states in America that no one outside of America can ever pin down on a map. And also, the heart of a proposed homeland for a good swedge of the remaining Native Americans who are genetically resistant to smallpox. Russell Means – a Sioux Indian nationalist – is the most passionate advocate of the ideal of Lakotah: a planned state stretching through North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana. Means and his supporters point out that this is the land they were promised in an 1851 treaty with the US government. What's even funnier is how deadly serious their campaigners are about that – they went to Washington in 2007 to announce that they were unilaterally withdrawing from the United States, and would shortly start levying taxes on the Lakotah region.

Futility rating: Hmm… how can I say this without upsetting the good people of (the non-existent nation of) Lakotah? If the State Department didn't piss themselves laughing when they announced their independence, they may have done when the Lakotans later stated that international powerhouses Finland, Ireland and East Timor were 'very interested' in their declaration. They were also expecting Russia to acknowledge their existence. But Putin never called back :( ORANIA

Afrikaaners like nothing more than to pursue their cultural independence. They fought one Boer War and one glacial 40-year struggle against the inevitability of African nationalism, in order to have the right to walk into an Afrikaans bar, at an Afrikaans time of day and hear nothing but Afrikaans being spoken. So it is that a group of radicals and dreamers have plotted the town of Orania – technically a massive farm in the middle of the desert which only sells plots of land to fellow-Afrikaaners. The plan is to get 100,000 people there within the next 40 years, making them a significant voting bloc within the Northern Cape province, then use that political leverage to secede from South Africa entirely. They've chosen as their frontier-state a place which is essentially just rocks and scrub-grass in the hope that no one will miss it. The downside is obviously that it is just a bunch of rocks and scrub-grass. Futility rating: Futile. Given how historically unpopular Afrikaaner nationalists have made themselves, they're not exactly going to have the UN knocking on the South African government's door going "Let these poor dispossesed wretches go." I predict very few candlelight vigils in Trafalgar Square. MORAVIA

Czechoslovakia: why did it have to disappear? It looked so good on maps – this big kidney of a thing curling snugly round Austria like it was spooning it. Sooooo cute. Still, since they split up in 1993, the Czechs and Slovaks have both prospered so well from their divorce that they've got separatist fever. The Moravians view the Bohemians – who they dub 'the Czechs' – with suspicion. Though the two sub-nations have been yoked together since some wanker called Prince Bretislaus took it over in 1055, Moravian separatists like the Moravane Party can't help themselves from humming that old Dandy Warhols standard: “Bohemian? Don't Like You”. Futility rating: Pretty futile. I think the general consensus is that that part of the world has enough countries already.

SCOTLAND

Not many people have heard of this tiny northerly nation, but the weirdo foreigners who live in it feel that they have a separate ethnic identity involving a mini-series called Taggart and the 1982 World Cup, and are determined to allow it to be as separate as possible by casting off the colonists who've given them so much love and affection over the years and were always there when they were down, and gave them extra pocket money through the Barnett Formula, and just really, really thought we could make things work… and…

Futility rating: Futile. They'd simply never make it on their own. It'd be like dressing a toddler in a suit and expecting him to run IBM. In their heart of hearts they know this, and pretty soon they'll come running back to mummy. You'll see.

Previously: Quango - Whip It!