Nope, bet me on my word. The UK will not actually leave the EU because parliament will not vote for it. And Scotland will have a second referendum, which they will win. I believe this, so it’s not trolling.
I wouldn’t entirely disagree with you on that point. There is an outside chance this vote will not be ratified by Parliament. If this does happen just watch as the main political parties are wiped-out at the next General Election. Overnight we will see a rise in populist, mostly right wing parties. The dicontent we currently see with EU and elites does not go away with non-ratification of Brexit. Im a libertarian leaver. Im not totally against the populist right, but I just hope it’s a respectable populist right which benefits. However, it may be a rather sinister movement which emerges after the Parliament refuses to ratify Brexit. Ratifying Brexit is dangerous, but not ratifying Brexit is almost certainly even more dangerous.
This would be a good argument if nothing else had changed but the price of oil. But there is no status quo option available now. The question is no longer whether Scotland is better off in or out of the UK, but whether Scotland is better in the UK, or in the EU.
So Scotland is a country of 5m mostly lefty pacifists. The idea of a “war” if Westminster were to simply refuse to hold a referendum is laughable. There’d be protests, that would probably die down eventually.
That being said, do I expect that Westminster will outright refuse a referendum on Scottish independence? I don’t. The British Parliament, for better or worse (actually I’d say worse) has accepted the idea that it needs to hold referendum on matters of national importance (albeit it held one on remaining in the EEC in 1975 it did not actually hold one on joining, which Parliament had done unilaterally.) It has also accepted the concept that it will respect the results of referendum, even though under Britain’s concept of Parliamentary supremacy Parliament is no more bound by a referendum than a newspaper poll.
So I think as long as the devolved parliament of Scotland makes a reasonable request for a vote, one will be had. And I think most political powers that be in Britain, and its people, will view a change in EU membership as a valid change in circumstance making it a reasonable request. If Britain had remained in and the SNP called for another referendum in say, 2020, simply to “get another bite at the apple”, I think political sentiment in Westminster would block it under the concept that you can’t just keep holding independence referendums over and over a gain every few years for the hell of it, but that isn’t the present situation.
So that being said, if the Scottish parliament asks for one, they’ll get one. But I wouldn’t guess the timing would be super soon on when it’d be held. There is a powerful political argument that the Westminster Parliament would be acting appropriately to delay it until after matters related to Brexit are resolved.
Without that, the Scottish voters have no clear understanding of the consequences of their vote. Further, I think SNP has to question holding a vote in the current economic situation. The present EU transfer payment scheme simply would not come close to replacing the financial benefits for Scotland remaining in Britain–the only way Scottish independence was going to work, with the juicy social welfare state promised, was with booming North Sea oil. Without that, the money just isn’t there.
I think the EU is also going to be loathe to make the Brexit “adversarial.” Leaders of countries like France and Germany do have to contend with some populist sentiment in their own countries to not simply kow tow to Britain. They’re going to make Britain pay a price for leaving–i.e., they’re not going to get the status Norway has (all the benefits of being in the EU but no political say in the EU and its policies) unless it agrees to Norway level concessions–which would mean agreeing to the free movement of peoples and other things that Brexit specifically campaigned against. But at the same time, there will be tremendous business pressure to try to maintain as good a trading relationship with Britain as possible. Business loathes change, and the business community would respond pretty negatively to EU leaders trying to entice Scotland to fracture away from Britain during the Brexit negotiations. I think Scotland is going to have to wait til this plays out to actually get a referendum, and I also think the SNP is going to take the economic realities at that point in time into consideration before calling for one.
FWIW back during the Scottish referendum I opposed it–not the vote for independence, the referendum and its nature itself. I opposed the EU referendum as well. To me, the idea that matters of such national importance can be decided by a simple 50%+1 referendum is just shocking. There is no protection at all built in to that structure to protect from the “inflamed passions of a transient faction.”
As much as I respect the Westminster system of government, and wish we had many of its features in the United States in order to avoid the gridlock we constantly have, these binding 50%+1 referendums are madness and not part of the historical good governance that comes from the Westminster system. A properly functioning constitutional government (and Britain has a constitution, just not a single written one that is protected against a simple Parliamentary majority) must have some sort of mechanism to protect from the surges of transient factions. Britain’s best defense is that in the Westminster system such a faction would have to get a majority in Parliament. But it removed that defense willingly when it started holding these referendums, it’s true madness.
Both the Scottish vote of 2014 and the EU vote should’ve (in my opinion) not happened at all. But if they had to happen they should’ve required something like a supermajority vote of Parliament to pass the referendum legislation, then a supermajority vote of the people for the affirmative option in the referendum to prevail.
I think Britain all but guaranteed its break up years ago when it started doing these referendums in this way. Because you’ve exposed matters of grave national importance to a simple 50+1 election.
The referendum was not legally binding.
It is politically so.
No it’s not, the actual terms of leaving are not known yet, when they are known the majority might want to stay. At that point a government that pushes ahead with leaving would be committing political suicide. Already a significant number of people have changed their minds about the vote and the Leave campaign has admitted they lied about some key issues.
Oh please, stop it. A couple of idiots interviewed by the media and going viral online does not equate to a significant number of people. It is interesting to watch the established media push a narrative.
Which is another thing about it - at least IMO if it’s not legally binding and executable you should not bother holding it.
Politicians lied to the electorate? Really? I’d never have imagined that.
Of course, the Remain camp told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, didn’t they?
Rather more significant than that, the crash of the pound and the FTSE was a shock to a lot of people, and UKIP has rolled back it’s word on NHS funding and immigration.
Our Scots friends will think twice before leaving the UK if they remember what Voltaire? said -
“They have cast off the shackles of tyranny only to wear the name of freedom graven on heavier chains.”
As if on que, Sturgeon now seems to say that Scotland can block theproposed departure as an alternate to a new IndyRef. Obviously, someone at SNP HQ has knocked some sense into her and her team.
Surprisingly, there is a precedent that she could follow. A Statute of Westminster for the 21st century,; there shall be no change in the constitutional position of the UK, unless all constituent parts agree.
But as two of the four constituent parts of the UK have just voted to remain in the EU, would not Brexiters strongly oppose such a principle?
Very few politicians in either of the main UK parties supported Brexit. This allows them a plausible way to save face, Blame Scotland. “Well yes you voted for Leave, but Scotland does legally have the right to veto, awfully sorry”. This would of course cause outrage from the BNP and other nationalist groups, but it would probably be met with quiet relief by a fair number of Leave supporters who have either now changed their minds, or who were voting leave as a protest vote and didn’t think it would actually happen.
Well, no, Scotland doesn’t legally have the right to veto Brexit. The Statute of Westminster 1931, to which AK84 links, says that the UK Parliament doesn’t have the right to legislate for a Dominion, without the consent of the that Dominion. But Scotland isn’t a Dominion; it’s part of the UK itself, and nothing in the Statute limits the power of the UK Parliament to legislate for the whole, or any part of, the UK.
I think what you’d have to do is argue by analogy from the Statute of Westminster. If the principles of democracy and self-determination which underpin the Statute are valid, then the rule enacted in the Statute with respect to the Dominions should apply also within the UK with respect to its constituent parts. But, even if you accept that, it amounts to a political or moral case, not a legal case. There’s no doubt that, legally, the Westminster government can terminate UK membership of the EU without the consent of Scotland, Wales or Nothern Ireland. Or without the consent of England either, for that matter.
The other complication with a second Scottish referendum is the Island Independence Movement coming out of the last one. The Shetlands, Orkneys, and Western Isles asked for their own referendum on independence from Scotland. It hasn’t exactly died down much, and the islands would be asking for three choices as they wanted last time. This time they might get it.
If the islands went for independence, chose the UK rather than Scotland, or went for the Isle of Man deal with the UK, it would carve a hole in Scottish sea rights, including fishing and oil.
Well you can bet that Scotland will now spend the next few weeks having legal experts looking for a decent legal argument which may be in UK law or may be in EU law. Sturgeon has said she is going to fight for Scotland to stay one way or another, as she should considering the overwhelming vote for remain in Scotland.
I’m sure both sides can find legal experts to support their point of view, and Cameron has made clear he will not invoke article 50, it’s up to his successor to do that, which means not until October. If public opinion has changed sufficiently by that time, Scotland refusing assent could be the excuse that the Tories need to back away from actually having to invoke article 50.
That’s absolutely true, I just want to clarify that I did not mean to suggest that the Statute of Westminister applies to this case. I just wanted to point out a precedent in British history. It certainly is one which can be used and the Scottish Government feels is a potential winner, remember even before the Statute, there was a strong convention that the Imperial (as it then was) Parliament would not vote on a matter pertaining to a self-governing Dominion without the consent of said Dominion.
There is a similar convention in place regarding the Scottish Parliament.
Fair enough, but I think this is too late. If you’re going to have a qualified majority or supermajority requirement in a referendum, you need to build that in at the outset. Trying to bolt it on after the event as a way of avoiding an outcome that you don’t like lacks political and democratic legitimacy.