I’m no expert on politics in the UK, but apparently it’s again a possibility. But by realistic I mean could Scotland survive on its own? And should they push for it? (Wish I’d kept in contact with my Scottish relatives to see what they think).
I believe they could easily make it on their own IF they rejoin the EU. Brexit has been a disaster for Scotland.
I don’t think rejoining the EU would help all that much (unless they persuaded the remaining, non-Scotland parts of the UK to rejoin the EU at the same time, which seems unlikely). Scotland leaving the UK and rejoining the EU creates a different kind of border with England that is then more costly to move goods. people and services across - basically they would be shooting themselves in the foot in the same way as the UK did in leaving the EU.
Tourism is a significant part of Scotland’s economy, and the significant majority source of that tourism is the rest of the UK. Make the border into a border with the EU, some of those tourists are going to decide it’s no less trouble to visit some other place in the EU for their holidays.
There is already an open border between Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland . Indeed, all the idiocy and denial of Johnson’s government was about him avoiding that reality, and Sunak eventually changed all the UK to make NI not different. So that applies too in a Scottish Border.
So rejoining the EU is absolutely in the plan, and possible, and survival is definitely possible, even in its beaten down decades low, Scotland is still larger than the bottom five states in the EU COMBINED.
I think it’s an uphill battle, with pretty much all news sources in the UK against it. Sturgeon is down, due to something a bit ropey which is dwarfed by expenses and corruption on the Tory side, but the papers just only seem to care about Sturgeon. I’m absolutely fine with corruption and fraud being prosecuted, but it only seems to apply to the likes of Sturgeon, I want the lot of them done for it.
I think Independence is strong in Scotland. It still is. SNP have been pretty bad at trying to achieve it. With far better messaging, and not being a such a crappy political party, they might well do it. But they’re infected with faux-nanny prohibitionists (alcohol minimum pricing on behalf of the religious lot in the islands) and idiocy traps they keep falling into (the trans stuff).
With clear messaging, they’d have stated that on independence, the SNP dissolves parliament and the party, to form a new government where Independence is not the goal anymore. This seems to be a blocker on a bunch of people who are fine being independent, but not having the SNP in charge of the independent country. This reality might even be true, and the message might even be there, but with such opposition in the media industry, you’d never know. I know a bunch of my friends believe that’s the plan.
Just in case you don’t know, the taxpayer funded BBC was VERY anti independence in 2014, it was blatant and they really didn’t care, breaking their own political bias rules. Presenters were threaten to be fired if they supported it, and debates often were “here is someone anti-independence and someone slightly less anti independence to debate”. It was pretty much the sign of things to come for the lack of criticism of Brexit and the likes of Laura Kuenssberg being political editor (a Johnson friend).
Alex Salmon is an outlier. I pretty much rank him as the type of insane some politicians go when they get brought down. Nobody cares about him. He’s only there because Proportional Representation gets everyone a bit of representation.
Based on polling, there is certainly the possibility;
Generally, Yes (to independence) is polling slightly behind No at (eyeballing it) c. 48% vs 52% but there have been a couple of recent polls that put Yes ahead,(as there have been in previous years). That site also shows the trend since 1979 and that shows that support for independence is much higher than it has been for the last 50 odd years. Note that in teh 2014 referendum, No won 55-45.
The question is, what is going to push that line on the graph higher? It’s been pretty stable for teh last few years, during which we’ve had an SNP government, a terrible Tory government, a Brexit Scotland voted against etc. And still not quite there.
My feeling is that despite constant rhetoric from the SNP pushing for another referendum (in the face of opposition by Westminster), most people and most or at least many independence campaigners, would want to see consistent polling in favour of Yes, and not just by a narrow margin.
Two reasons for this: one, it makes victory more assured; two, it makes teh aftermath of victory easier too. The initial stages of independence will be new territory and fairly rocky, and having a solid majority behind you is much better than having 49% of the population unhappy. Especially given that referendums can be socially divisive, as we’ve seen!
As to whether its realistic in terms of survivability…, it kind of depends what you mean by surviving and what the goal of independence is. For some supporters, independence is the end in itself. It is simply right for the people of Scotland to control their own affairs as a separate nation from England/the UK. Don’t get me wrong - they do believe that Scotland would prosper as an independent nation, but that is a second order question: the point is to be independent and have the opportunity to succeed or fail on your own terms. For others, Scotland is held back by being in the UK and will be better off out and so independence is just a means to an end.
So the definition of success will vary according to what people are aiming to achieve. I don’t think independence would fail in the sense that in 50 years time Scotland would ask to rejoin the UK or anything like that. It could fail in the sense that various measures of national wellbeing could decline relative to rump UK, for example (e.g. median wage purchasing power, life expectancy). But any predictions about that are a) incredibly sensitive to starting conditions in teh sense of relationship with EU, the divorce settlement with the UK, what actual policies our first independent governments adopt and b) pretty much impossible to make anyhow.
Relatedly, @Smid raises a good point, which is that we don’t actually know what the politics of a newly independent Scotland would be. The SNP is a broad church (as we are discovering right now!)* and there are various economic and social fissures that will likely fragment it once the common cause of independence has been won. I feel that is a structural weakness for the independence movement and that in some ways it would be better if tehre were a number of parties with shared goal of independence but visibly different policies so that people were clearer on what that first governmetn might look like.
*Yousaf resigned today.
Fair enough - I don’t personally have any qualms about the idea, assuming it can all be done, and there is a mandate to do it - one of the key issues with brexit, IMO, is the borderline nature of the referendum result, and the ‘leave’ contingent dishonestly treating the referendum as binding, after the fact.
If independence for Scotland requires the compliance of the public in any significant way (or could be set back by the actions of disgruntled ‘no’ voters), it’ll help if the decision for independence is a significant majority.
With respect to Scotland joining the EU and borders within the UK, I don’t think the NI situation sets a strong enough precedent. Ireland was already in the EU, and so the EU made the border a big part of Brexit negotiations; there’s a also a long history of peace talks, treaties and international diplomacy which serve to make the EU/NI border a salient issue for many parties, up to and including the US. And of course the geography means that alhtough the NI/EU border is open, there are checks and controls between NI and GB still.
It’s a long time since Scotland’s border with England has been a matter of international concern. Scotland is currently outside the EU and can’t therefore expect the same level of diplomatic commitment to its concerns as a current member. The EU might offer to go to bat for Scotland as it did for Ireland, or it might say that membership for Scotland is dependent on there being a hard border with the UK. It gets to pick and choose in a way it didn’t with Ireland. And absent the specific and knotty issues with Ireland, it is in the EU’s interests for borders to be actual borders.
And this isn’t even getting into the currency questions related to EU membership, which currently involves at least a gesture or two in the direction of joining the euro.
I’m not saying definitely not, just that it’s not a sure thing.
Interesting the result of the 1979 Independence vote in Scotland was 52 to 48, for the Yes, but thatcher put a much higher mandate on the target. So that grates a fair amount.
The reality is Scotland has been in managed decline for 40 odd years now, and it’s old people and junkies who live there now. The NO contingent are basically the Tory voters, which ties heavily towards a football team, Rangers, and Protestant religion, Even at that, I know Rangers supporters who are pro-Independence, To me, if you want someone stupid, choose a Tory, so that shows the side of the debate on this one.
Young people are also very pro-Independence, so a matter of time on that one.
And yet Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia have all joined in the last twenty years, with multiple land borders and splits and such. I do wonder why this seems to be so complicated to people.
Pretty much out of the UK, into the EU would be the plan. Would the EU be against this? Absolutely not, Scotland is far closer aligned to Europe than England has been, and I don’t think anyone gives a crap about being in the Euro or not.
I think there’s an inevitability of Scottish Independence. Even when governments friendly towards the Scots (given the last 14 years there has been a government which really has not given a crap about them), Scotland hasn’t really got much out of it. Just a slap in the head and a “be grateful”.
Young people will hopefully be more flexible about changes that arise from independence, as well as more energetic in making it work.
Well, yeah, it’s very simple. When these countries join the EU, all their borders with non-EU countries become the new borders of the EU, with full enforcement of the Single Market, Customs Union, and EU immigration policy.
The idea that once Scotland is in the EU then Dutch exporter will face customs charges, sanitation checks and goods inspections on a lorry coming off the ferry at Dover but they can avoid them entirely just by sending their lorry via Rosyth and M74 does not seem very plausible. There are a lot of very good reasons for the EU to think that is a bad idea they don’t want any part of, against which “but Ireland” is probably not going to cut it.
What is the equivalent of the Good Friday Agreement that would prevent a hard border for Scotland?
And yet they can do exactly this via the Republic of Ireland at the moment.
This strange idea that this only exists because of the troubles in Ireland, and isn’t related to the CTA (Common Travel Area) over 110 years old, continues here, but let’s just go with that for the moment.
A hard border in Scotland to England, is a far simpler concept, geographically, it’s two or three major roads and a few villages, with the geography helping out (why a border with likes of Sweden and Norway is simpler, for instance). It also doesn’t have the historical implications of strip searches, your wife being felt up and you being shot by British soldiers, which brings up riots, burning buses and explosives that Northern Ireland has.
If needs be, a Scottish border could be implemented with far more ease than a Northern Irish border. It will also likely be trying to stop the English coming in, because a lot of the Northern English aren’t that fond of, and been treated well by, the Southern English, and may want to join.
A few points as a Canadian of Scots ancestry (which is, to be honest, a hefty chunk of us in the GWN. It’s been said that there are more Scots in Canada than in Scotland, but I digress).
Scots are still rightfully pissed at England for Brexit. The Tories, in their attempt to sway the Scots during the 2014 referendum, made a big deal of “If you leave, then you’re taking yourself out of the EU, and you’ll lose all the great trading advantages of being in this terrific bloc.” How much it swayed the voting public, no one can say, but that referendum failed narrowly. Then a year later Cameron called the EU referendum, barely campaigned in favor of staying in, and enthusiastically yanked the U.K. out of the EU anyway. The Scots feel like they got screwed with their pants on over that one, and Johnson’s intrangience over even allowing another Scotttish Independence referendum (“Nope, one and done, that’s all you get for a generation.”) has deepened the rift.
They’re also kind of stuck by the changing fortunes of the environmental movement. If memory serves, one of the arguments supporting a free Scotland was their large reserves of North Sea oil, which would be a big boost to their economic standing. Now that the world is trying to go green, that’s much less of an enticing offer, particularly for the young.
Also, Hamza Yousef just today stepped down as Scotland’s First Minister. Things are going to get very interesting again.
Basically, it’s a mess. Emotionally I’m very much on the side of breaking up the U.K> as it stands: reunify Ireland, let the Scots do what they want, and Cymru am byth. But from a practical viewpoint, Alba might want to stay put for a while, and at least see if Starmer can right the tilting ship of state at least a ltitle bit. We’ve seen nations vote to shoot themselves in the face repeatedly in recent years (Brexit, Trump, and Canada’s soon going to elect a party whose leader just got endorsed by Alex Jones) but I really hope Alba doesn’t follow that trend.
That implies that is the reason for lack of a hard border in the island of Ireland.
It is not. The main reason there is no hard border, is because it was incredibly hard to do, with incredibly ludicrous suggestions from the Brexit loons on the ideas, drones, electronic checks. The Good Friday agreement really wasn’t anything to do with the lack of hard border. It was a shit show, incredibly hard, the border runs through a whole bunch of villages.
Apologies, I spelled Humza Yousaf’s name wrong in my previous post.
I saw an excellent show narrated by Martin Clunes about Scotland. He seemed to admire their wish to be independent as kind of a passion and ideal. He mentioned even more striking their tight community - so fascinating about Scotland!
I can imagine several member countries voting against Scottish membership for different reasons. Hungary could vote against to piss the others off. Spain could vote against because it could be a precedent for Catalonian independence, specially if the governement happens to be a conservative one at the moment of the voting. Spain is the only EU country (I believe) that has still not recognized Kosovo’s independence precisely for this reason.
In general I believe that Scottish independence is possible, but improbable for the time being. I would say it is about as realistic as Quebec’s or Catalonia’s independence – the improbability stemming from different reasons for each of these territories.
And speaking on a personal note as a part-Catalan: if we ever gain independence it will be for the wrong reasons, at the wrong moment, under the wrong circumstances. I can imagine the same §&%! happening in Scottland. I know too little about Quebec to speak about them.
Realistic?
Sure.
But the SNP model, of moving under the EU instead of the UK, is I think, predicated on the superiority of being in a trade alliance rather than a nuclear armed military confederation (even though they say they will ask to join NATO). This will make less sense as the EU moves to being more of a military alliance, as seen here:
EU aims to shift European arms industry to ‘war economy mode’
It’s a bit convoluted to compare the likes of Catalonia or Kosovo, small states of larger states, with a country which has been in a Union (agreed, and equal), a full country which existed before England, a country which has it’s own law system, with breakaway states.
Of course Hungary will complain. Hungary always complains. Hungary also folds.