Why are some people enjoying the possible break up of the UK?

Great Debates
81

The consequences of Scotland joining the EAA might reduce any concern about travel and work mobility. If they did not get that the Scots would find themselves in an impossible situation. The visa restrictions on nationals from outside the EU/EAA are severe, as anyone from the US will discover if they try to obtain a work visa in the UK. I would guess that the UK Free Travel Area would be extended from the UK and Ireland to include Scotland, otherwise there would have to be border controls such as there are with the EU free travel area.

However, the EAA is not the EU and Scotland would be cut off from participation in the decision making process within the EU which has important economic implications. Norway and Switzerland are well off countries who prefer to remain outside the EU. The same is not true of Scotland. Scotland does not have a huge sovereign wealth fund nest egg like Norway, not has it cornered a profitable part of the banking and pharmaceutical market like the Swiss.

Similarly using the Pound may be convenient, but Scotland would have to accept that they have no say in the management of the currency. That would be a bit of a turn given that UK economy was from 1997 to 2007 run by a Gordon Brown and later Alistair Darling, both Scots who are rather keen on retaining the Union.

The acceptance criteria for accepting nations into the EU is meticulous and would take some time to complete. It would be dependent on a lot of constitutional issues being resolved - the terms of the divorce. Moreover, if Scotland has an easy accession to the EU that will encourage The Catalans of Spain to press their case. This is a very sensitive issue in Spain and they will try hard not to let this particular Pandoras box be opened.

I would not assume that the matter of North Sea Oil fields is as clear cut as the SNP imagines. There is the not inconsiderable matter who paid for the infrastructure to extract the oil in the first place and that was clearly the UK tax payers as a whole. Moreover, where do you draw the line of the border out into the North Sea or should this asset be divided up on a per capita basis, consistent with how it was financed?

All of this would have to be resolved and this uncertainty will also be taken into consideration by the Oil companies when making decisions about future investment.

There is also the big question of the National Debt and how much Scotland should inherit. There are different ways to work this out. None have been agreed.

The issues just go on and on with no clear answer.

The agreement so far is for only one thing: that Scotland should vote on the question of Independence.

That will either give the authority (or not) to the politicians to start negotiating to come to agreement on a whole raft of issues.

This will keep them occupied for some considerable time.

The Scots will probably make their minds up influenced by both sentiment and whether they think they will be better off economically. However, there is no getting away from the fact that they are a small country next to a larger country at 5.3 million, they are just 8.3% of the UK population and are thus overshadowed, not least economically. Independence means giving up a great deal of political influence in the UK for a chance to follow the rather rosy future painted by the SNP.

Though I am sure, independent or not, Scots will still find the road to England an attractive one for the ambitious and those with enterprise and talent.

The countries will remain close, whatever the outcome.

82

They’re going to shrink by over 90% but become a larger welfare state because of (rosy) projections of oil revenues generated on (currently) UK-controlled oil fields.

I’m not too sure how this is going to work, but if they want to do this so they can keep all the Loch Ness tax revenue to themselves, that’s fine. It’ll be interesting to see them try and I, who does have Scottish ancestry (as well as a Scottish Terrier), wish them well.

83

Hang on, so the only adequate reason for the Scots to secede is because the government has to make some budget cuts, and they don’t like it? Who’s to guarantee that Scotland won’t ever have a recession like people have experienced in the south? Also, it’s a pretty broad brush to stroke the Better Together campaign as a side which is actively promoting the idea the Scots hate the English. Again, more of the same narrative of which is if you’re a Unionist = bad.
Why do you have to have to be independent to change the political or economic focus of the country, how about staying in the Union and shaping it in a way which benefits both England and Scotland.

84

I never said it was the only adequate reason. :wink:

No-one. But Alex Salmond has stated that his response to a potential recession would be different, and the Scottish people are allowed to believe that.

I never said that either. I said it would be foolish of them to ignore the political ie. not sentimental background to the process. I stand by that comment.

I never said that, please stop mis-reading my posts.

Yes, but you do understand that Scotland is a rather small part of the UK, and therefore Scots have little power to influence state policy? If, as it seems, Scotland wants to pursue a different economic policy, then it might require full independence. Giving the region considerable self-government within the UK would be another possibility - think of how the Basque Country has largely avoided Spain’s economic crisis thanks to being financially independent.

85

More devolution should solve the problem. Doesn’t have to be independent to extricate more concessions from the central government.

How are they ignoring it? They’ve been relentlessly insinuating that the breakup of the UK would not benefit either side economically, it’s been the core tenet of their campaign. And just to add, let’s say the ‘sentimental’ aspect was important, maybe some people don’t like the idea of taking a pretty good Union, and flushing it down the toilet.

Ah so the tone of the narrative is not anti-Unionist and pro-Independence?

How would it be different? Where are the details. Alex Salmond won’t be in power forever.

86

Sorry, on that point I was making reference to filmstar-en, who seemed to put the independence campaign down to a simple English-Scottish cultural division. As you and I know, there is much more to the campaign than just that.

What narrative? I, personally, have at no point claimed that Unionism is bad.

Pretty much everything Alex Salmond has said in the past couple of years made reference to this. See examples here, here, here or here.

Of course, it is all too easy for politicians to criticise welfare cuts and say that “we’ll never do that”. But we’ve all seen European left-wing parties having to make huge cuts in the recent past, so there really is little reason to believe Alex Salmond. Unless - as I asked upthread - Scotland’s low life expectancy and number of pensioners somehow make its welfare system more sustainable than England’s

87

So what happens to all the Scottish Oil money when the Shetland Islands decides to become independent?

88

Part of this issue is that (as filmstar-en points out) how the oil money is split is going to be a very onerous process. Scotland is NOT going to get all of the oil money as it seems they believe. The UK, of course, paid for the infrastructure and the oil fields would be within the rumpUK’s economic zone (it would also be in Scotland’s economic zone, so there will have to be extensive negotiations).

89

Have the Shetland islands been recognised as a national entity for centuries? Because Scotland sure as hell has

90

The Oil companies paid money to the British Government for the right to drill oil and then paid for the infrastructure themselves. Britain does not own the platforms, the companies do. What Britain, Scotland/Rump UK own is the rights to extraction that they can sell or continue to tax profits from.

No problem there then.

91

If there is a referendum on the Membership of the EU in 2017 as promised by Cameron, and Scotland has left, without Scottish votes I cannot see there being a majority to stay in the EU. Scotland is considerably more enthusiastic about the EU than England.

Here is an interesting thought for Wily Salmond. Currently it is planned to separate in 2016 for historical anniversary reasons more than pragmatism. Maybe it will take longer. Why not wait until the UK votes to leave the EU, and then make a claim for Scotland as a rump UK to retain the UK’s position in the EU.

92

As noted above, it is the oil companies who invested money, the Government merely collects licence fees and taxes. There is a standard procedure in International law to decide the ownership of the Seabed- this has effectively been sorted and is unlikely to cause too great a problem.

One of the problems I have as an Englishman living in Scotland and as a mild nationalist and strong devolutionist is that almost all the ‘No’ to Independence campaign does is not what the title says “Better Together” but “Scotland will be harmed”. This has stoked up anger here and is the main reason why the polls are becoming much closer as time goes on. The ‘No’ campaign is interpreted up here as bullying and contentious- which feeds into Scottish petty nationalism and dislike for English attitudes to Scotland. If I feel it, think what it is doing to patriotic Scots!

93

“Financially independent” isn’t exactly how it works (as my brother loves to expound to anybody who uses the expression) but anyway, I’d written some horrid brick whose TLDR version is: “takes three factors: managing your own money, the expectation that it will be managed properly and people’s ability to communicate their priorities and worries to the managers easily.” People here never bought into the idea that “deficit is good”, for example, an idea which was heartily embraced by other governments who stopped reading before “in some specific circumstances”, and both Euskadi and Navarre (the two Basque regions, for those unfamiliar with Spain’s geocultural puzzle) are small enough that it’s relatively easy to run into some government bigwig in the local bar and give him an earful.

94

I thought it was all about cultural differences and a desire for self-determination. Have I been misled?

95

Shetland and the Orkneys are provinces of Norway that was pawned to Scotland in 1468-1469. There is a clause in the contract allowing them to be redeemed for 210 kg of gold. Denmark-Norway tried to redeem them a number of times before Scotland entered the Union. Scotalnd avoided the issue.

However if things in an independent Scotland go badly pear-shaped economically, it’ll be interesting to see what their government says if the islands argue their own right to self-determination. (And entirely incidentally, joining up with the one of the richest countries in the world)

96

Yes: when cultural differences are large enough, you get a nation. The Shetland islands, as far as I know, have never been considered one. If you allow anyone to call for self-determination at any point, you’ll soon have streets or neighbourhoods becoming independent. Hence the national threshold I talk about.

97

Who decides what “large enough” is? Could it be that those on Shetland and Orkney consider those differences to be much larger than you do? If so, who is right?

98

That’s why I drew the “being recognised as a nation for centuries” issue. Scotland was a mostly cohesive, independent entity since the 9th century up until 1717, and still today it is widely recognised as a country - one that forms part of a United Kingdom. For me, the status of Scotland as a nation that can ask for self-determination is obvious.

Orkney and Shetland, on the other hand, having never really been independent nations, have been controlled from Scotland for four-and-a-half centuries.I personally don’t see what common history, what contrasting culture, they could use as justification for an independence referendum.

But aye, I understand that this is a very subjective issue

99

The Oil also belongs to the Oil companies, for governments it is a source of tax revenue.

How ownership of this asset is to be divided, well that is by no means as clear as has been suggested, there are different international boundaries for different purposes.

The SNP are running a very upbeat, positive campaign that proclaims the world of heavenly delights that will await an independent Scotland.

The ‘Better Together’ campaign warns of the dangers and is thus perceived as negative.

I don’t think any messages coming from south of the border would be regarded with anything but suspicion. The Scottish Nationalists love to play the ‘canny Scots don’t need the patronising English’ card. Hence the better together campaign is being led by senior politicians from the other parties in Scotland.

All that can really be done as far as the rest of the UK is concerned is to simply wait and see how the vote goes. Leave it up to the Scots to argue the points. The SNP has only recently managed to gather enough electoral support to persuade Cameron that a vote on Independence was appropriate.

How much of that support was is due to a belief in their policies and how much is down to the collapse in faith in the other parties in Scotland, I tend to think the latter. But generally in the UK, people are pretty fed up with the main parties and this favours radical single issue parties like the UKIP in England and the SNP in Scotland. This is the SNP’s big chance and Independence seems to be all they talk about.

What they will do for an issue if the vote goes their way, is anyones guess.

100

I am afraid you are wrong. The oil does not belong to the oil companies, it is a territorial asset owned by the state on whose territory it occurs. The state licences companies to search for and extract resources, charges licence fees and taxes the structure of the companies for operating on their territory. The oil extracted under licence is the property of the companies, but the oil itself is a national asset. There is currently complete agreement on which oil and gas fields lie in Scottish and rump UK territory- it is a matter of international law. IIRC Scotland has about 2/3 of the removable resources prior to the consideration of undersea fracking which is the next stage of energy extraction.

Current polls show the gap between yes and no narrowing by the month and there is quite a vibe here for voting yes- the Better Together Campaign has managed by its fear tactics to alienate many people who were previously neutral.

What is clear to me is that the result will be close in 2015. What is also clear to me is that a further 5-10 years of Tory rule (likely according to current polls) in the UK might well lead to a second bite of the cherry between 2017 and 2027- especially if the UK messes up its relationship with Europe- there are few Scots who do not appreciate what the EU has done for Scotland.