[QUOTE=BunnyTVS]
And conversely this is why there is support for a separate Scotland in England. During the last Labour government, a number of policies that affected England only, were pushed through with the help of Scottish MP’s.
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Yeah, cuts both ways, doesn’t it? And scores of English Tory MPs who blithely and repeatedly walked through the Yes lobby in the 80s and 90s (pace the poll tax) suddenly realised they didn’t like taking it as much as they liked dishing it out. I don’t believe any politician should be voting in laws that don’t affect his/her constituents. And I’d like a pony and a piece of chocolate too.
I call this the “train ticket” notion of EU membership - as though the UK holds a single membership ticket, which it would hang on to in case of Scottish independence, leaving us weeping and bereft on the platform. Surely Scotland already is part of the EU?
[QUOTE=Markxxx]
And if that was the case, what real difference, would it make as can’t EU citizens move around and work in any country they want?
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Yes, they can. It’s one of the most noticeable demographic shifts in the last 20 years or so. And perhaps it’s one more reason independence isn’t as hot a topic as it once was.
Some restrictions on the new member countries in certain countries though, unless those have ended? I seem to remember, for example, that only the UK and Sweden gave full access to Polish workers.
To be honest, in my experience people in Scotland make a similar mistake to what many in Europe do regarding the UK and many in the US do regarding Europe: they treat them as one monolithic entity with a single political viewpoint. There are people calling for England itself to be devolved with regional assemblies in England. The North of England, for example, can be quite similar to Scotland politically, yet those in Scotland seem to conveniently forget this.
Oh and I’m not pulling this out of my arse. I’m half Scot and have been up there (well, down from where I am these days) often enough and discussed it often enough with people from the region.
According to this pdf in 2004/5 Scotland generated approximately £35billion of revenue. And spent £45billion.
The SNP’s figures claim £12billion per year revenue from the oilfields, which would cover this deficit. As long as:
England didn’t dispute the maritime boundaries. SNP’s figures are based on the assumption that their maritime border is all water north of a line drawn east from Berwick-upon-Tweed. I’m sure there’ll be some in England who (try to) force a new maritime border. Possibly one based on a gradient drawn the the east and westernmonst points of the land border. I’m not saying they’d succeed, but in politics…
Does the UK have any financial investment in the oil fields/rigs. If so Scotland may have to buy the rest out, or offer a cut of the money.
Future developement. How much oil is left? And how long will it last? The SNP have claimed up to 100 years, but wikipedia states that production will drop to 1/3 of current levels by 2020.
Their not overestimating. Then again would a political party exagerate claims to score victory?
North Sea oil is often used as a cure-all for Scotland. And it can be, but only for the immediate future.
One wild card is the EU. It’s quite possible that as an independant state, Scotland could receive increased grants from the EU. But it would no doubt have to make some concessions. One that is likely is adoption of the euro and all the restrictions it entails. I have no idea how something like that would affect Scotland. It’s something that never really gets mentioned
This is a very general question, but I’ll attempt to answer it. First, some small part of the spur towards Scottish independence was seeing how well Celtic Tiger-era Republic of Ireland appeared to be doing. In 2006, Salmond called for an independent Scotland to join the Northern European “Arc of Prosperity”, with Ireland, Iceland, and Norway showing (at the time) how small independent nations could materially prosper. However, Ireland is now a complete basketcase economically so it’s no longer something that I imagine Salmond goes on about.
Anyway, going back a little, we have a somewhat shared history, with populations from Scotland settling in Ireland and vice-versa going a millennium and more.
Culturally, Ireland and Scotland aren’t all that dissimilar either, IMHO. Irish sectarianism is alive and well on the streets of some Scottish cities and in some element of the fanbase of Scotland’s major football teams. Drinking is a cornerstone of both cultures. There’s also the Gaelic cultures of both nations that continue to survive.
For a myriad of reasons, significant physical force independence/republican movements never coalesced in Scotland they way they did in Ireland in the modern era.
There’s a principle in international law that when a state falls apart, the entities that are created out of it do not automatically retain pre-existing membership of international organisations except for the one (if there is one) deemed to be the “successor state”. Any others are deemed “new states” and have to apply to join. Realistically, it’s pretty obvious that Scotland would not be the successor state in this scenario.
There might be something specific in EU law that addresses this, but I seem to recall hearing it used as one of the arguments against Scottish independence.
In the last couple expansions, the existing member states were given the option of excluding the accession states from the labour market for a certain number of years. In 2004 most of them took this option except those you mentioned + Ireland. Many did the same for Bulgaria and Romania in 2007. These exclusions have to end this year, I think, unless a state can show a compelling reason to retain them.
The ability to exclude these workers, which really goes against everything the EU is supposed to stand for, was obviously motivated by fears of a huge influx of them. Those fears are hardly likely to arise in the case Scotland acceding independently so I’d think it would be really unlikely that any country would demand the right to exclude its workers. But it’s possible in theory.
Wouldn’t it only be possible if the rump UK stripped Scots of British citizenship, though? I could see something like that happening a while after independence, but I’d think that citizens of a newly-independent Scotland would probably retain the right to British citizenship at least while the dust settled, which would probably take longer than the exclusion period.
The call for Scottish independance has been around a long while, but I find it ironic that that hugely Great Britain nationalistic Maggie Thatcher has done more for this cause than almost any single person in the last 50 years or more.
It’s her policies that were hated across Wales, Scotland and Northern England that have done more to create the desire to leave the union, and the reality is that England itself is pretty much a city state with policies being much more about one region with little regard for the rest of the country
I don’t think it’s really a case of the UK “stripping” citizenship from anyone. An independent Scotland would naturally have its own citizenship, and it would be absurd for all of those citizens to also be British citizens; that’s having your cake and eating it, besides anything else.
Irish independence from the UK offers us a poor example, because of both the initial constitutional relationship with the UK and the very different model of British “citizenship” then in force. Instead, I think the independence of colonies will provide the template: Scotland will presumably define its citizenship by a mixture of ancestry and residence, perhaps giving affected people a period of time to disclaim that citizenship in favour of continuing solely as a British citizen; while Scottish citizens with close links to places in the rump UK will be allowed to retain dual nationality.
Scotland will not automatically join the EU. The SNP claims otherwise, but they are wrong. Similarly, any projections of post-independence Scottish revenue based on oil are also likely to be inaccurate. As mentioned, there’s absolutely zero reason that the rump UK would not push for maritime boundary changes with the threat of an EU veto being their trump card. I’d be pissed off if during negotiations the rump UK didn’t wring Scotland dry and spit them back out.
It’s reasons like this why full independence would be a disaster for Scotland. Any negotiations would take potentially decades to settle, with the rump UK holding all the trump cards, in the meantime virtually every company that does business within the EU is fleeing Scotland, lest they be cut off from their main market.
I think it would be absurd to suddenly declare that people who have lived their entire lives as British citizens, or who chose to be naturalized as British citizens, and who lived for many years in the United Kingdom should simply cease to be British citizens because of Scottish independence. Every realistic outcome for a referendum still leaves millions of people against independence. Why should they be deprived of their legal right to citizenship if independence happens? (Probable) EU membership and the precedent of how Irish citizens are treated under immigration law make it less of a concern, but I don’t think it goes away completely. Someone who’s considering moving from Carlisle to Lockerbie shouldn’t have to fear that they’ll lose their nationality in a few years if they move. I’m sure lots of nationalists would be glad to burn their passports, and they should certainly be allowed to if they want, but I just don’t see the utility in taking them by force from everybody else, certainly not right away.
Maybe twenty or thirty years later, it might make sense to start allowing peoples’ citizenship to expire if they don’t really use it, but this isn’t the kind of break that will just happen suddenly, after which the two countries and peoples will behave as if they’ve always been independent from each other. The process of divvying up the population into two fairly-discrete groups is realistically going to take decades to achieve, and it probably won’t be complete until every single person alive at independence is dead, and maybe even their children too.
If history is any indication, and it always isn’t…but…usually there is a set period for people in effected areas to choose citizenship. Like when France lost Alsace-Lorraine or the Schleswig dispute between Germany and Denmark.
There is a time period allowing people to choose and leave if desired.
The “rump” or successor state is really a matter of who wants what. Serbia and Montenegro clearly were what was left of Yugoslavia, but the UN wanting to punish Serbia said, “No you can’t declare yourself the successor.” Clearly Slovenia, Croatia, B/H and Macedonia LEFT Yugoslavia.
Russia was a successor state because it was too big to be told what to do.
Kosovo set a precedent and since the UK said, it was OK for a country to declare independence unilaterally, by recognizing Kosovo, so Scotland could do so as well. It would be hard to justify not allowing it.
I’m English, living in Edinburgh and married to a Scot but my job is still in London. Fortunately I am able to work from home much of the time. As far as I see it I take a good salary from the City State of London and spend it in Scotland. If Scotland took on income tax powers and tried to penalise me then I would have to think seriously about moving south. If I stayed I would certainly wish to remain a British Citizen and again if that effected me negatively I suspect again I would have to leave.
I’m totally against Scottish independence. I really cannot imagine it the implications but fortunately suspect I will not see it in my lifetime - nor do I think it an inevitability as recently stated by the loathesome Alex Salmond. As others have opined earlier, I suspect most Scots are pretty comfortable with the current arrangement and will fear rocking the boat.
Salmond is not fool but he is a particularly unpleasant type of Nationalist - forever creating false dispute with Westminster over irrelevancies and wraping himself in the Saltire at any opportunity.
He is an economic illiterate (recall his “celtic tiger” bandwagon - how did that work out SNP?)and his party, ironically whilst wanting independence from Big Brother down south, are fanatical centralizers of power - undermining local democracy at any opportunity. Forcing local authorities to freeze their Council Tax is only one example.
The 90lb gorilla in the room is the budget deficit - how would that be shared out between the rump of the UK and an independent Scotland, given that much of it went to the rescue of the Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank of Scotland? How would an independent Scotland have managed in prevent them going under?
Scotland is a super place to live but it’s politics stink.
Just a nitpick, but the Scottish Parliament does already have some power over income tax. It is has the power to vary the basic rate of income tax by +/- 3 pence in the pound. This was the power granted by the supplemental question in the devolution referendum. It’s never been used.
Salmond has apparently promised dual citizenship for everybody who wants it (not that the Prime Minister of an independent Scotland would have any way of making it happen).
Actually, the powers-that-be within the international community have been firm in their insistence that Kosovo has not set a precedent. It’s supposed to be “sui generis”. Terrorities with a similar de facto separate status (Nagorno-Karabagh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria etc) have been told this in no uncertain terms, so it would actually be pretty easy to justify not allowing Scotland to secede.
In fairness, I don’t think he actually did “promise” it - that’s misleading reporting on the part of the Telegraph (shocker). Obviously the governments of both states would have to agree to allow it. What he seems to be saying is that the Scottish government would do so, and the rump British government should as well.