The "Project Fear" approach was used successfully in the 2014 referendum and then failed in 2016 because very smart political strategists such as Dominic Cummings worked out how to counter it.
Given that the approach used to achieve the Brexit vote has been documented in great detail I wonder how we'll see them applied in this new referendum?
The approach used to achieve the Brexit vote was to lie about everything and to write off rational reality-based objections as "Project Fear."
Unfortunately in international politics, winning a vote at home doesn't translate to a winning move internationally.
The huge disconnect between how Brexiters think the world works and how the world really works isn't subject to a popular vote or to media spin. It is going to cause the UK - well, England - catastrophic problems over the coming decade.
Like they ever would have gone away even if the vote was over 60% to remain. They'd have demanded a second referendum (and 3rd and 4th and 5th...) until they got the result they wanted.
As Farage said: "In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way. If the remain campaign win two-thirds to one-third that ends it."
I had expected them to wait until 2019 given that's the probable date for the next general election. I think they might be timing this to coincide with Article 70 notification this week. Apart from people's fears about what that will mean, there's a chance of adverse reactions from the markets and business which might focus Scots' minds on what could happen.
They're definitely not bluffing. Clue's in the name.
You may be right, but keep in mind that the SNP managed to take 58 out of 59 possible seats in a recent election. Calling the bluff of someone who can campaign to a result as good as that... hm...
FPTP plays a role, but "entirely"? Winning 40+% per cent of the vote isn't easy in the first place, and directing the campaigning effort well enough to win 58 out of 59 single-seat districts is a rare feat.
Maybe they are bluffing in the sense that their request will almost certainly be denied at this point, and it may very well be they are banking on that.
I certainly think there is a sense that to get a poll on a timeline they want, they need to start pushing now, because they know they can expect resistance.
Possibly. And maybe I'm overstating the chance they'll be refused because of course Theresa May will be aware of that. At the same time I expect the Tories to be ultra-sensitive to the reality of the Brexit vote, where people were also quite certain Remain had it in the bag for very long.
At the same time, note Nicola Sturgeon's statements about how this isn't up to Westminster. Legally, of course, it currently is. But she's setting Theresa May up to use a refusal as a "look how undemocratic Westminster is" if it's refused. Look for attempts to bypass Westminster if it's slapped down - which may be serious, or may also be designed out of expectation they'll cause unfavourable reaction to another Westminster slap-down.
Their massive majority of Scottish MPs also mean they will be able to paint any Westminster refusal as England dictating Scottish issues.
It's very much a lose-lose for Theresa May in any case. If a vote is accepted, then it will be a constant distraction during the Brexit negotiations, for example, where any whiff of results negative to Scotland will be exploited for what it's worth...
This is no bluff, this is a real action. If you want a poker metaphor, this is a raise.
If anyone's bluffing in this environment, it has to be Theresa May; the Brexit plan is far less coherent than the plan for an independent Scotland, it's not clear what cards she might hold that have any value, and her ministers are briefing against her in the Times.
(Note that this isn't just an SNP move – it's the policy of the Scottish Greens as well as other civic groups)
The outcome of the vote could fall either way, but it's certainly not a bluff. Current support for independence is Scotland is around 45-50%; there was a clear indication in the current government's manifesto that a referendum would be held if the UK exited the EU.
> Speaking at her official Bute House residence in Edinburgh, Ms Sturgeon said the people of Scotland must be offered a choice between a "hard Brexit" and becoming an independent country.
Autumn 2018 - Spring 2019 also fits the two year negotiation timeline.
Note that that's before the official start of campaigning. During the last campaign it went from something like 35% to 48%, partly due to how godawful the Unionist campaign was.
I don't even know who they might get to do the No campaign who has any credibility in Scotland. The most sensible option is probably Ruth Davidson, so the most likely choice is someone like Blair McDougall. Labour will probably have to spend all their time trying to avoid letting Jeremy Corbyn say anything on the subject.
Because it's a rather complex issue that was boiled down to in/out. I voted to remain in the end but I can certainly see a lot of the arguments from the leave folks.
Polling 5 years ago was around the 30% mark. It's much closer to 50% today -- Scots are rapidly becoming in favour of Independence. Such kind of change takes place over years/decades rather than weeks/months
The last referendum -- the Scots voted to stay in partially to guarantee EU membership. This referendum will be fundamentally different as it means choosing between the EU and UK something the UK forced on Scotland.
The Union has long operated as internal colonialism; this is just the next step in de-colonising the system.
It'll be interesting to see how often Conservative ministers promise that there will be no border between UK and ROI but there will be a hard border between England and Scotland, despite none of this making any sense.
On the point of internal colonialism: it might have been true once, but certainly not true today.
All of the countries in the union have seats in Westminster, dedicate ministers and committees, as well as their own devolved parliaments. I'd say things are much worse for counties in the North of England, than for the other countries in the UK.
The nature of democracy means the majority rules, which will always be problematic for minority communities. The only solutions I can see are to be more cohesive and unified in opinion, divorce completely, or accept differences as the cost of peace and stability and continue working to improve the balance.
I grew up in the north of England, Cumbria to be exact. My extended family are all in the north of Scotland.
There is no doubt in my mind that the loser in all of this is the north of England. They are repeatedly denied a voice, publicly scorned, and they see all their talent move south or abroad. England is a lopsided country and I don't know how to fix it.
> the loser in all of this is the north of England. They are repeatedly denied a voice
Well, they had their voice, they cast their lot, they were the deciding vote for Brexit. Now they can lie in the bed they made for themselves. No pity lost from anyone up beyond the Wall or down in the South.
People throwing the towel in and blaming others for everything that is wrong is how we've ended up in this political mess. No leaders. No vision. Just pity and blame.
The North of England has consistently been stripped of its talent for the last fifty years. To blame them for wanting change and not being attracted to the same campaign you were is idiotic.
The 200 year-old idea that democracy means majority rules is rather naive. Naive in the sense that it assumes a simplistic model of political dynamics where every voter is an independent agent, and this assumption has not stood up well to history. The impact of political movements and demogogues, as well as economic coercion of the working classes, has shown that it is in fact possible for a democracy to be controlled by minority interests. It turns out that most people are vulnerable to the influence of thought leaders with their own agenda, can be manipulated to act against their interests, and so it can not be said that the majority of voters exercise political agency.
I think it'll take many changes along the lines of: a constitutional convention to patch holes in the bill of rights; restoring financial independence to states so they can act as a check on the power of the national government; and universal basic income to eliminate financial coercion of the electorate. But I'm not convinced that will work, or even that it's possible. There are serious practical and political barriers. I think the existence of private institutions that are "too big to fail" is a very dangerous situation to be in. On the other hand, it's not clear how it's possible to prevent our political process from being captured by special interests while also avoiding descent into tyranny of a different form.
Wouldn't the first step be to abolish the welfare state? That way it eliminates financial coercion of the electorate and stops the viability of r-selection reproduction that resulted in the demographic shift that enables these sorts of politicians in the first place?
> Wouldn't the first step be to abolish the welfare state?
Universal Basic Income is the very definition of welfare state, and the purpose of which is to counter the effect special interests coercion. To abolish it would be to empower the lobbyists and too-big-to-fail corporates
No, I think the first place to start is figuring out how, even assuming you come up with a plan that works, to ever get it implemented it in good faith when both political parties represent a threat to free society. Both sides of the aisle have already been captured, and will never allow legislation that threatens their hold on power. They will eviscerate it with amendments and poison it with riders.
> majority rules, which will always be problematic for minority communities
This is arguably the big problem of the 20th and 21st centuries: not all questions are sensibly amenable to majority rule, and minorities must have rights and protections against discriminatory politics. This tends to grate a bit with the majority, which is tolerable in OK economic times but can be vulnerable to demagogues.
Protection of minorities is baked into the Good Friday agreement. It's also differently baked into the Human Rights Act, which seems to be part of why the HRA is so unpopular in some quarters.
Hi biofox, there are other solutions... for example changing from a democracy to a republic.
As an aside, I think that most people don't understand these concepts because the word 'democracy' is used so much in political rhetoric and in the media that people have taken it to mean a representational system of government. For example the US is not a democracy... it is a republic, while the UK is indeed a democracy (which causes the problems that you mention). Both are still representational systems of government.
To give an extreme example say you have 3 foxes and 1 sheep at a table and all 4 of them represent a country. In a democracy the majority rules, and it would be perfectly legal for the 3 foxes to vote and eat the sheep.
However in a republic, legal limits are placed on the government (think constitution), which has implications for all citizens--but especially minorities. In a republic with a constitution that states that all citizens have the right to life and liberty, those 3 foxes could vote to eat the 1 sheep but that sheep is protected by the constitution. Therefore in that example, the vote would be illegal.
It is no coincidence that the founding fathers of the United States set America up to be a republic and why constitutional matters are so important even today.
Now having said all this I am aware that many believe that the UK has an "unwritten" or uncodified constitution. While I don't outrightly reject this concept, I believe it doesn't give a country a strong ethical or moral foundation because it does not offer clarity or consistency when ethics or morality are legally challenged. Ideally ethics and morality are codified in law so that all citizens know where they stand with regards to the power of their government.
Coming back to the issue of Scottish independence, it could be rooted in the very real problem that most people are nescient--or worse, selectively ignorant--about these issues. Unfortunately in the UK we seem to be perpetually locked in a 'treat the symptoms rather than the disease' scenario.
In 2014, 55% of Scots voted to stay. If we are to learn the lessons of the Brexit referendum, you need consensus to enact any major change to people's citizenship rights. Consensus there is not.
Yes - but Brexit has shot away the status quo and is proceeding to remove people's free movement and other rights without consensus. Change is now underway whether we want it or not. Scotland has to pick a European future or an increasingly risky looking English future.
" If we are to learn the lessons of the Brexit referendum, you need consensus to enact any major change to people's citizenship rights. Consensus there is not."
UK citizens were never given a vote on their 'citizenship' rights in the EU.
UK citizens only voted to join the EEC - not the EU. They voted to join what was essentially a 'trade block'. Not a supra-federal state. (UK citizens were not given a vote on the treaty of Rome.)
The French voted against the treaty of Rome - and guess what? Their Parliament enacted it! How's that for consensus?
Same thing in the Netherlands.
In Ireland, they were forced to 'keep voting until it passed'.
Most other countries did not get a referendum on joining the EU.
There was never any 'popular consensus' on the EU as we know it - it likely may never have existed if it were put to referendum.
I would argue that a 'strong consensus' would be needed to have Scottish, Catalonian or Quebec separation - those are parts of nations.
While that might be the case, the resounding pro-remain vote in Scotland at the EU referendum is convincingly a vote for EU membership. It's fair to say that there is a popular consensus that Scotland should be a member of the EU.
This post seems to have become a victim of "disagreement downvoting". Whether or not it's correct I think it's a well made point, I wish the moderation system worked more for contribution than consensus.
And that's before you mention that he left UK with the most mass surveillance-friendly laws of the western world [1], that would've likely been declared invalid under EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights. There May also played a big role in that. And let's not forget about the "porn filter" that includes much more than just porn, and it will soon become mandatory [2].
Cameron also helped Saudi Arabia [3] become the head of UN's human rights council, and who knows what other kind of corrupt deals he made with China. Cameron was really "looking up" to the leaders in China and how they're doing things there, so to me it didn't come as a surprise that he would try to turn UK into West's China (from a surveillance/censorship point of view).
I'm certainly no Cameron supporter but The Investigatory Powers Bill was passed under May's government. It also had no real opposition from Labour. We are still subject to EU law and there has already been a ruling in the CJEU (in December 2016) against the UK's surveillance which will have consequences for the IP Act. And the 'porn filter' (Digital Economy Bill) is still being debated so hopefully something can be done about it.
One could argue that the root political problem is the EU itself.
Nationalist movements are on the rise across Europe: The Dutch are about to give their top choice a pretty hard core 'anti Muslim' guy. The French will have a runoff between Le Pen and probably Macron. The Sweden Democrats are polling at 22%. True Finns have incredible influence. Austrian nationalists lost the presidency by a tiny margin. Brexit. Poland. Danish nationalists form government. Admittedly, Catalonia and Scotland are a different strain.
And a massive division between periphery, core and Eastern Europe on 'existential' issues.
For most of these issue, failure of EU leadership, and hostility and intransigence towards the will of the plebes led to this. It could have been avoided.
'For or Against' - the EU as we know it is dead - it didn't want to adapt - so Europe is adapting underneath it.
I don't think it will break up, but nothing will ever be the same in EU-land.
Those are the numbers for the second attempt, where the first attempt was 50.3% vs. 49.7%, won only after counting mail votes, and that first result got annulled because of challenged vote counts.
>> One could argue that the root political problem is the EU itself.
I would argue it's the politicians. No matter what way you voted it's clear that the campaigns around the referendum were incredibly dishonest. Politicians were largely playing games to further their careers and were willing to say what they had to to succeed. We need to do something to ensure referendums deal only in fact because a large portion of voters have no interest in doing their own research and will vote on lies and propaganda.
Unless she's been very active behind the scenes, and we find out later, I think she'll go down in history as one of the worst British monarchs ever. Even as a constitutional monarch, she has influence and she has some reserve powers, but from what I've seen she hasn't used any of it to prevent the disasters of the past half-century of British history. Yes, if she exercised some of her power it'd probably spark a constitutional crisis and she'd probably be overthrown — but that's her job, to act as a last-chance sanity check when the people, the aristocracy and the government itself have all gone mad.
It's very, very sad. She seems like a nice lady, but she has (apparently) been extremely ineffectual.
Like I noted, maybe someday we'll discover that she's actually been extremely involved, preventing one disaster after another, and that Britain's fall would have been much worse without her expert guidance. I don't expect that's the case, but maybe it'll happen.
I disagree, in that I think everyone's long accepted that the Queen should be "above" or at least apart from actual politics, and therefore intervening would be an unpopular disaster. Ever since King Edward VIII was forced to abdicate, nominally due to marrying a divorcee but secretly due to Fascist sympathies ( https://www.lrb.co.uk/v10/n16/paul-foot/the-great-times-they... ). It's just not her responsibility and no blame attaches to her.
(I'm also reminded of the line from the Australian constitutional crisis, "God save the Queen, for nothing shall save the Govenor-General!")
>> It's also looking likely that Brexit will cause problems for the Northern Ireland peace arrangement.
This is the first time I've felt a border poll in Northern Ireland is a possibility. The recent election resulted in a huge swing in power and a hard border with the south would be devastating for a lot of people regardless of political persuasion. It'll be interesting to see how each part of the UK ends up in 5-10 years time.
It would never happen but definitely fun to consider. It would solve the EU border issue and the NI/ROI border issue. I wonder if NI and Scotland paired would do better economically together than on their own.
Self-determination and post-colonialism only seem to apply away from home. Madrid has a big influence on this because of Catalonia and Basque country, but there are tons of non-self-governing territories[0] which are swept under the rug, or clung to with claws of "economic uncertainty".
It's funny that Scotland lost its (semi-)independence by trying their own hand at colonialism[1].
Thats not true. Scotland would have to apply but Brexit negotiators said the application could even be fast tracked and wouldn't be a big problem for Scotland to rejoin.
>Jacqueline Minor, the European commission’s head of representation in the UK, said Scotland would need to formally apply after leaving the UK, although it could be fast-tracked because it already complies with EU rules and regulations.
Spain are concerned that it might a set a precedent for Catalonia to get independence but if the Scottish independence came about because of the UK leaving the EU Spain will be conformable in allowing Scotland to join.
There is, however, a guarantee that a non-independent Scotland will be part of neither as a result of Brexit.
There's no small irony to the fact that scaremongering around Europe was such a big focus of the Better Together campaign in the run up to the first referendum.
The classic example is usually presented as Spain, due to fears of setting a precedent that the Basque Country and Catalan could follow to remove themselves from Spain.
That was in the context of the 2014 Indyref, with the main point of contention being whether independent Scotland would remain in the EU or be forced to re-apply for membership (and potentially be blocked by Spanish veto).
The context now is that independent Scotland would have to apply, as it will be a successor state of a non-EU member. I think Spain et al. are fine with this since the precedence it sets will be hard for Basque nationalists to follow.
Primarily Spain I think? I couldn't find a good source saying they would block the membership outright but there's an article here which includes some details about which states are opposed the EU negotiating potential membership for Scotland as part of Brexit (I realise that's slightly different to Scotland joining as an independent nation).
Spain is less of an argument now as Catalonia have always been a region of Spain whereas Scotland is its own nation which joined the UK through the Act of Union. It's a different legal precedent.
Also, I imagine that Spain will do what they're encouraged to do by thE EC considering the budgetary reliance.
Hey - if I'm wrong then I'd love to be corrected as I'm currently labouring under the impression that Catalonia is legally a region of Spain and has been part of Spain since around 1469 which was when the concept of what we now know as Spain started.
Not at all wanting a flame-war etc but if I'm wrong then I'd really like to know! :)
Sorry, I now realize my answer could appear to be rude when it wasn't my intention.
The correct year to consider it fully a region of Spain would be 1714, when the Spanish army defeated the catalans and removed most of its state structures/institutions, etc. This article's intro might help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Catalonia
I don't want to bore you with a history lesson that I myself might not know accurately, but I feel the need to say that different namings for the same levels of independence of state structures should be taken into consideration. So saying "Catalonia has always been a region of Spain" is far from the truth or at least it skips a lot of history.
I didn't mean any offence by my statement, I understand that of course Catalan's case for independence is no less valid! I suppose it's really just legal wrangling :)
Spain has just come out last week and said that they are OK with Scotland joining the EU as long as England has signed of on Scotland leaving the UK first and the independence process being completed. The implication being that it would not set a Catalonian precedent as Spain would be inclined to never sign off on Catalonia leaving in the first place.
> England has signed of on Scotland leaving the UK first
England doesn't 'sign off' for whether Scotland is in union or not as that is Scotland's choice, not England's. England acknowledge this and would never say otherwise.
Is that still true? AIUI the Stability and Growth Pact [1] requires EU members to limit their deficits to 3% of GDP, and Scotland's deficit in 2016 was approaching 10% after North Sea oil revenues collapsed. Right now it's only fiscal transfers from England via the Barnett formula keeping Scottish spending afloat, and neither spending cuts nor tax rises are traditional political winners.
Which is not to say it's impossible (as some have, [2]); the EU has turned a blind eye when convenient before and I'm sure will do again. But many in the EU might be reluctant to go that route again after the way Greece turned out.
The general feeling is that this vote will now succeed. However, I think it's now almost certain that if Scotland does vote to become independent they will be forced to take the Euro as currency. Westminster said this would be the case with the first referendum but few believed it. Now voters in Scotland must believe it, given brexit. I think this will influence voters very strongly - and I think the issue of currency will be a central issue (if anybody other than the SNP can be bothered to campaign - the Westminster Government will have their hands full with brexit negotiations, so I doubt Scotland's independence will be top of their agenda)
While I understand the truth that staying in the Pound is important to Scottish voters, I don't understand why. The Euro seems like a very close substitute to the Pound. They're both strong, largely un-inflated currencies that a sovereign Scotland will not control.
But that doesn't seem to be what they want. I agree about being skeptical of being a small, relatively powerless country in a currency union with a much larger economy, but that's the case for them regardless of whether they're on the Pound Sterling or the Euro.
But my point is that they don't want their own currency. Also, the EU won't let them have their own currency. So given that that's off the table, the Euro is as good as the Pound for them.
Sure, I started to read about economy, and I think I have now a good understanding about how the system works. That changed my mind.
It's my believe now that my country just give away a very important part of their sovereignty (maybe the most important) to entities that have not our best interest in mind. I would not be against the Euro if I though that the people in charge is on my side.
As an example (even if I'm not greek), we have seen the ECB just closing the Greece bank system when they are supposed to protect it.
>> While I understand the truth that staying in the Pound is important to Scottish voters, I don't understand why.
I've always heard the argument that things are more expensive in the Euro. I know people in countries where they switched to the Euro and salaries remained the same while prices of goods went up. I'm not sure why this happens (or even if it's true) but it's a reason a lot of people are against losing the pound.
My Grandma was saying this a lot. With some economic headwinds and constant (but not outsized) inflation comparing against a nostalgia currency that stopped inflating years ago, it's exceedingly easy to blame the Euro for making things more expensive.
Adopting it often makes central bank policy more challenging. An outright "Euro makes goods more expensive" statement is an oversimplification though, don't take it at face value and always ask for objective inflation data relating to the particular country in question.
It seems way more likely to have been the case in economies that were previously on a weak currency (like, say, Italy) than ones on a strong one (like, say, Scotland).
The currency question definitely needs straightening out, but Scotland will not immediately be forced to join the Euro; in fact Scotland can't formally join the Euro without spending two years in the ERM and meeting the convergence criteria with its own currency. Since meeting those criteria is pretty optional (and hard work!), joining the Euro can be postponed indefinitely.
Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Sweden are the members of the EU which have not joined the Euro because they don't meet the convergence criteria.
(My personal preference is to ditch the silly "shared" pound idea but define a Scottish Pound pegged to the GBP and using the existing notes as a transitional currency. Much as Ireland did.)
They can't stop Scotland from keeping the pound. They can stop Scotland from issuing its own notes valid in the remaining parts of the UK, but there is no way for the UK government to unilaterally decide that Scottish businesses and persons can't use GBP - they will have no jurisdiction over them if Scotland becomes independent.
Forced by currency speculators. New currencies are always strained, and given an independent Scotland would be close to bankruptcy anyway, a fully-pegged currency would be (how do I say this) difficult.
As I've said above they won't act as lender of last resort and they won't set monetary policy with regard to the needs of Scotland. A currency peg can be broken, though it is embarrassing and usually very expensive during the period you try and defend it - see "Black Wednesday".
Sticking with Sterling wouldn't even allow the option of crashing out of the monetary peg if needs be. I think you'd see an exodus of financial institutions' head offices down to London. An independent Scotland simply couldn't afford to bail out a large institution in Sterling, or even if it let banks fail couldn't afford the economic hit because its debts would be denominated in Sterling. Iceland was able to devalue by 60%, Greece wasn't able to.
The point of the currency debate is that it has consequences with whichever choice is taken. Separately applying to join the EU saying "yes I know I have to join the Euro, but I'm not actually going to do that" isn't the best strategy in the book. France may get to pull that kind of thing, but they're already in the tent.
Several valid points there, but none of them are relevant to what I pointed out, which was simply that if the Scottish government decides they want to use GBP, nobody can stop them (short of invading, I guess).
What vidarh said. Country A can use country B's currency without any consent; lots of countries do this. Some of the more volatile countries use dollars unofficially as "hard" currency for big purchases.
Oddly - European nations that don't use the Euro are generally much better off: Norway (though not EU), Denmark, Sweden, UK.
In hindsight, the UK's decision to not join the Euro is widely accepted as smart.
The Euro is effectively a 'hard Germany currency' that has entrapped the periphery of Europe into a monetary system that massively favours the Germans. Maybe it could have worked out - but from 2000-ish to 2008 - world bankers assumed the Euro meant 'collective risk pooling' so the periphery countries loaded up on cheap debt. But when the crash happened - we discovered there were going to be no bailouts - leaving the periphery with a massive balance sheet problem, and the total inability to manage monetary policy - or rather - they're stuck on a 'strict currency' which favours Germany who already had several advantages.
But I agree, if Scotland does go indy, then it may very well introduce a pegged currency, which makes sense as something temporary.
This is not entirely true. The Netherlands, Austria, Luxembourg, Belgium and France for example fare just fine with the Euro.
The problems you mentioned (and some non-Euro countries being better off) are caused by structural problems in those countries, which are only tangentially related to the common currency. From an economic point of view those countries probably shouldn't have adopted the Euro so quickly in the first place but were allowed to do so nonetheless for political reasons.
We don't fare just fine with the Euro. By having fixed exchange rates between countries, the only remaining economic variable that can be adjusted, is employment. (It doesn't matter if it's public or private employment). This is why the EU tells France and other countries to reduce the number of public employees, and why France has been losing one 1000-employee enterprise every day since the introduction of the Euro.
And the countries you listed are not the only ones in the Euro, think about how Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece are faring with the Euro! It's worse than a war!
Well, Eastern European countries are growing much more rapidly than the others.
But they are definitely different - they were closed economies, way behind, and there's advantages to their having the Euro (should they get it). Which is different from Greece/Spain.
Moreover, they want to be in the Euro :) the Swedes, Danes, English etc. chose to not use it.
Anyway, it's not so difficult to see why to have the flexibility of adjusting your currency, independently of the rest of the system, to suit your current situation is a good thing.
Scotland already has three banks issuing their own bank notes (backed by GBP on deposit in their vaults). Independence wouldn't change that, except that the names on the notes would have to be changed from Pounds Stirling.
Those banks also have access to the Bank of England as a lender of last resort and the international market's backing for the UK's current economic policy. Scotland has a fairly developed financial sector, the currency issue is a lot more complicated than "pick one".
Pegging your currency to another when you don't have the fundamentals to match it tends to be of interest to George Soros, especially when you don't have much in the way of foreign currency reserves to defend it.
> Those banks also have access to the Bank of England as a lender of last resort
Can you imagine a future where the independent Scottish government could arrange a similar deal with another financial institution, to cover them until ECB took on the role?
> Pegging your currency to another when you don't have the fundamentals to match it tends to be of interest to George Soros
Given that the European Central Bank doesn't act as a lender of last resort for individual banks (and really doesn't like being for the Eurozone, cf Greece) it isn't going to step in to cover Scotland. So you're either looking at another Government or perhaps one of the massive re-insurers, can you imagine what the insurance premiums would be on that arrangement?
The much more likely alternative is that the Bank of Scotland and Royal Bank move their HQ to London. Standard Life (and therefore Aberdeen Asset Management) probably as well. Not all their staff will move, but their profits will and some highly paid staff will go. That will in turn have an impact on the nascent FinTech sector.
> the European Central Bank doesn't act as a lender of last resort for individual banks
I do think they'd buy independent Scottish treasury bonds & then the independent Scottish government can use the proceeds for emergency lending. Isn't this how the German banks are covered?
If Scotland were in the Eurozone yes. Getting them to do that while applying to join, while also potentially giving none too subtle nods and winks that you don't actually intend ever adopting the Euro is stretching credibility.
Bulgarian or Bosnian currencies as well as many central African ones are pegged to Euro since the times of German mark and French frank. And suggered no "Sorosian" attack so far.
Small correction: the money is backed by GBP in Bank of England vaults (sent from Scotland). That would have to be transferred north if Scotland decides to create a National Bank.
* The Scottish economy is about 50x larger than Montenegro, so "fairly small" is relative. Similar-sized Denmark, Sweden and Norway have their own currency, let alone tiny Iceland.
* The EU and ECB aren't particularly happy that Montenegro is using the Euro without being a member anyway...(see your wiki link)
Scotland has about the same population as Norway or Ireland — 5.4 million — not Montenegro (0.62 million). GDP on the order of US $245Bn, 40-50 times higher than Montenegro. (And, geographically, 70% of the land area of England).
Politely, you might want to check your assumptions: I submit that if Norway can run a currency, or Ireland (which joined the Euro after running its own free-floating currency for multiple decades) then Scotland should be able to.
I'm presuming to the public the currency debate will be fought by politicians on more of an emotional level for example romanticising the Pound.
On the other side graphs of the Pound dropping in value after the referendum results is also quite powerful especially if the SNP frame it as leaving a sinking ship.
"The general feeling is that this vote will now succeed."
Polling for almost a year (see Wikipedia) indicates that it will not succeed - there's only one of more than a dozen or so polls that puts independence ahead - and then only by one point. 'Remain' are ahead by 10 points in the rest.
The easy trump card to play is the fact that Spain and others (Belgium) will not allow Scotland to join the EU, even if they do - it will take years.
An 'independent Scotland from an independent UK' is a huge pile of risk for people to stomach.
With the UK faring economically well since Brexit (I know A50 has not been triggered, but investors have already priced in what they know, and A50 is a sure thing) - this is not the 'Brexit horror' story the indyreffers wanted.
I would also point out that these things can fatigue on people, and that after a while, even soft Nationalists see the tactics of separatists.
The SNP said the last referendum was a "once in a lifetime" event - and that was 4 years ago. 'The situation has changed' - surely - but nevertheless, it makes them look rather without credibility on the surface of it.
Spains issue was that Scotland was separating from an existing member state, and that had implications for them. If the UK isnt part of the EU then the implications and objections are reduced.
The political ramifications are identical - it's not a technical issue.
Spain is desperately afraid of Catalonia departing - and the nuance of 'we left the EU before we joined' won't matter to the voters. Scottish separation and ascension to the EU would carve a crystal clear path for Catalonian separatists, and give massive wind to their sales.
To the above commenters point - no gov will likely ever come out and say it, but there's no reason for Spain to support Scottish ascension, and every reason to be against it.
> Spain and others (Belgium) will not allow Scotland to join the EU
It's very likely that Scotland won't remain a EU member (as a successor of a EU member), but no government has said they would veto Scotland's application. The media mentions about this topic are vaguely-worded, to make it sound like it's about Scotland ever becoming an EU member (which it's extremely likely to achieve) versus avoiding having to apply (which is probably not going to happen).
> The easy trump card to play is the fact that Spain and others (Belgium) will not allow Scotland to join the EU, even if they do - it will take years.
That argument played a lot better before the Brexit vote. The choice is now between "definitely out of Europe, possibly on bad terms" versus "hopefully rejoining Europe, possibly with interim deal".
Personally I expect Spain to accept an independent Scotland as leverage against Brexit Britain - note that this way Spain would retain the right to fish in Scottish waters. But all of these are "forward-looking statements".
If a Labour government had lost 20% of the value of the £ along with threatening to expel financial services from London the news coverage would be rather different. I don't think it has all been priced in yet, because we don't know exactly how bad it's going to be.
The UK isn't "threatening to expel financial services from London". That is some quite astonishing reality reversal.
The EU is threatening to legally force people to move to Europe from the UK if they want to continue selling services there. Neither the UK nor the financial services industry wants that, for obvious reasons. If it happens, it'll be the EU doing it, not a British government.
.. but the British government is the one triggering Brexit. It's a one-player game of chicken. The UK government has had plenty of options to say they want to try to retain financial passporting.
"Starting a chain of events which will likely lead to financial services having to move out of London", then.
I think it's a big change. The idea of Scotland leaving the UK was a non-starter when the UK was in the EU. The Spanish and other countries with separatist regions would never have allowed it. Now that the UK is leaving Europe (something the Scottish people did not vote to do), there is stll substantial risk in leaving the UK (which is a much bigger trading partner with Scotland than the EU) but also a great opportunity to attract all of the English companies with exposure to a hard Brexit - from financial services to manufacturing, this could be an awesome opportunity for Scotland should England push for a hard Brexit and be left trading on WTO rules with the applicable tarrifs.
I think we'll need to wait and see on this one. A collapse in currency value has masked some of the longer-term issues that leaving the single market will raise.
but nevertheless, it makes them look rather without credibility on the surface of it.
I can't agree with this. The current Scottish government was elected with a manifesto indicating that a second referendum would held if Scotland was removed the EU.
> this is not the 'Brexit horror' story the indyreffers wanted.
I think its going to kill a lot of people when they see 'Brexit horror' not materializing. The UK has a powerful economy (number 5 in the world) and as such can certainly work out beneficial trade deals alone. Its not a Greece-like mess that benefits from the Euro and the Euro's backers. Without the shared currency and having a land border with other EU nations, its questionable if the benefits are worth it. At least, they come with liabilities.
I certainly see the various pro EU political argument at work here and many have validity, but the economic one is fairly weak sauce. If anything, the UK has a stronger negotiation position as its own entity, assuming they play their cards right. If Scotland wants to go independent then fine, but using brexit as an excuse is very questionable.
>even soft Nationalists see the tactics of separatists.
I wonder how many separatists are being honeydicked by Russia. Russia has been funding separatists and far-right political parties in the West for its own gain for quite some time now. Perhaps people are starting to see through their ultra-tailored Facbook newsfeed, hysterical yellow journalism, legitimately fake news, and other biased media. I suspect the Trump win the US is showing people that yes, an electorate can go crazy with outsiders and extremist policies, but that doesn't mean that's actually good for the electorate.
Ignoring Spain's own separatist fears, the EU members probably are fairly wary of any separatist talk right now, especially after seeing what happened in Crimea, and don't want to encourage it and certainly don't want to signal that separatism is a quick way to EU membership. Not to mention NATO membership, are the Scots ready to invest 2% of their GDP into defense (nearby $4bn)? We've probably moved towards an anti-separatist attitude in the West for the foreseeable future due to recent events. According to the guardian, the yes/no spread is the same was it was in 2014, so the idea that Scotland has become more separatist is questionable:
Between August and December last year we polled over 3,000 Scottish adults and found yes to Scottish independence on 46% and no on 54% – just a fraction different from the result two years earlier.
Looks like India's recent growth have edged them out, but I just want to point out that's why, not because the UK is falling. Its just India is, finally, catching up to the rest of the world. This is good news for India and doesn't take away from the UK. Also, remember we're talking about an economy of merely 65m people that chimes in at 6th.
UK GDP growth fits in at almost 2% which is where the USA sits at as well and typical of later-stage capitalist countries. EU darling and once economic powerhouse France is at .3%. Spain is only recently getting out of negative growth, for comparison.
UK GDP growth is almost entirely due to financial services and legal sectors in London, who just received the official notification that London is no longer the banking center of Europe.
Yet somehow everytime I see these fairly dramatic predictions about the US losing its petrodollar and the dollar collapsing or banking moving to $other_country, $cryptocurrency, etc or everyone switching to the Yuan or Ruble, etc they are almost always wrong.
I think you're dismissing how powerful inertia is in the financial sector and how the EU needs the UK and as such will work out agreements to keep things going. London wealth and banking is most likely very safe. Remember, London as the premier financial center of Europe predates the EU by a few hundred years. It is not an outgrowth of EU membership.
London is still the banking center of Europe. Trade cuts both ways too: the EU needs the companies and people based in London. Cutting themselves off from their own financial center won't be pain free.
Furthermore, given the 99% fall in oil revenue since the previous referendum, the Union dividend (£9bn / year) and a deficit of 10% GDP, and state aid rules within the EU, the economic case for independence has dwindled, to put it mildly.
Politically, the case for independence is on the downside; both Theresa May and Ruth Davidson have higher net satisfaction rates than Sturgeon in Scotland, and the likelihood of a general election before EU exit is getting higher every day, but for other reasons. Peak Sturgeon has come 2 years too soon.
It's probably worth noting that the Scotsman has historically backed the Union and their audience are very pro-union, and generally pro conservative.
As I understand it, the poll which they based that article on didn't even ask the same question for each of the leaders, so the final results can't be seriously compared.
There was an IPSOSmori survey to that tune in mid-September. It was contradicted by a following YouGov poll in November where Sturgeon was seen as doing better.
And of course "doing well in her job" doesn't matter much if 38% of Scots vote SNP vs 16% Tory voters (from the Yougov survey).
There are almost continual attacks on Sturgeon from Unionists in Scotland (and from England) - read any of the comment sections on the BBC (it doesn't even have to be about Scotland...) and you'll see a lot of hate for her - everything from claims that she's making a power grab for herself, to calling her one of the krankies. It's a sad state of affairs. Having said that, I think most people would agree she's one of the few British politicians delivering clear leadership at the moment, and for whatever reason, people don't seem to like that coming from her.
I've not heard much, if anything positive about May, but Davidson is generally highly regarded, even if very few actually vote for the Tories in Scotland.
Please note that the BBC is a UK-wide broadcaster, and takes comments from everyone — anecdotally, a lot of the anti-Sturgeon comments on twitter, reddit, etcetera[1] come from English nationalists. Scotland-bashing has never really gone out of fashion in England and there's been a marked upswing in its acceptability since the Brexit referendum[2].
[1] I avoid the BBC comments like the plague, for the same reason I avoid the Daily Mail.
[2] I was born and grew up in England; I've lived in Scotland for the past 22 years.
I believe the Tories size as opposition party was from an election before Brexit (and Trump obviously, this is also a referendum on him and his administration whether or not its explicit). Just how popular are Ruth Davidson and her party now?
They're doing better now as a party than before Brexit, but not for the reasons you might think.
The Labour party have traditionally been very strong in Scotland - the Labour party was a party for life, and many people only every voted Labour. However, this has all changed over the past year, as they have effectively self-imploded to the point of uselessness. I cannot overstate how much of a breakdown there has been within the Labour party, and people who had previously only ever voted Labour are now voting differently.
I'd argue that much of the Conservative party's gains have come from people who will simply no longer vote for Labour, rather than a move towards the Conservatives themselves.
Current thought within the SNP is moving towards building an economic case for independence which is not dependent on North Sea oil revenue. That reliance was seen as a weakness in the previous campaign, and there is awareness of that within the party.
Given that the cybernats have taken to denying GERS, despite those being the figures the last White Paper was based on - and the Common Weal proposed Scotland not having to pay pensions to balance the books, I wouldn't get your hopes up.
The clue is the quiet dropping of demands for Full Fiscal Autonomy over the past few years. There isn't close enough savings to made from things like Trident to enable even a credible deficit to be run. The level of spending cuts / tax rises required will be of the level that only an IMF intervention normally brings - far, far beyond anything Osborne did over many years.
'Cybernats' are not really representative of anything important, and I think it would be better to focus on the plans published going forward.
I'm an ardent supporter of independence, but I don't doubt for a second that it will be difficult to build a strong economic case – in no small part because of the level of uncertainty we are currently dealing with. But I'm quietly confident that the independence movement will have learned a lot from the previous campaign and will avoid making mistakes it perhaps made in 2014.
I am Scottish from birth- I spent nearly my entire life living in the middle of England.
The English are very angry about this and are touting Sturgeon as a crying "remoaner". They believe that they had a referrendum recently and therefore it's just "keep trying until you get the result you wanted".
If you're a person with that in mind I have a few things to say:
1) the UK being a member of the EU was something sorely needed, but people consider it a trade union deal and not anything else. Therefore they use the argument that the EU has changed enough to warrant leaving.
2) Scotland largely voted remain last time because it was immediately evident that the EU would not allow Scotland to join- since Spain and the remaining UK was in strong favour of vetoing entry. This has fundamentally changed.
3) Now Scotland will not remain in the EU despite voting overwhelmingly to remain. Leaving the EU now would be the antithesis of "the will of the people".. so you can't say that "they voted, get over it".
I'm rather sour on the whole experience regarding Brexit, there has been a _lot_ of smug mudslinging from the leave side, and they've already tried to scapegoat the remain campaign as being "not with the program" and subsequently sabotaging the leave campaign.
Also worth noting that a major point of the anti-independence campaign last time was that Scotland would get to stay in the EU if they stayed part of the UK.
It isn't 'racism' technically, you're right. Perhaps more like a mild form of bigotry. You might strongly disagree, but the SNP routinely phrases independence like this:
Scotland will be "fairer" if it is independent i.e. the English who keep outvoting us are nasty and "unfair" by nature.
There are lots of quotes from people like Salmond and Sturgeon along those lines. What they mean is "we disagree with the dominant political viewpoint in England" but what they say is that the English are morally defective and the Scots, morally superior. That's merely irritating when it's a left wing/right wing party political campaign, as people can change their political party quite easily. When it's phrased in terms of ethnic origin, that crosses the line.
There are lots of political arguments that don't involve ridiculous generalisations about entire populations. Look at Brexit; the arguments revolved around business regulation, local decision making and relieving the pressure of mass migration on social services. None of these things involved describing all Europeans as bad/unfair/etc - not even the immigration part.
I think you are using semantics to avoid the deeper issue. Call it what you like: there were plenty of documented examples of anti-English speech, intimidation and outright violence towards English people in Scotland during the Scottish referendum, and the SNP certainly didn't seem to try very hard to discourage the more wild eyed elements.
Scotland's economy will be wrecked by leaving the UK as there will no longer be the massive transfers of tax revenue from England to Scotland as at present under the Barnett formula. It seems like plenty of Scots hate everything about from the UK apart from our English pounds, which they are quite happy to keep sticking their hands out for. Good luck without them!
That is a shallow and reductive approach to a rather complex constitutional issue.
I don't doubt that there was strong anti-English sentiment among some groups in Scotland in 2014. However, there are always extreme elements to any political movement - the mainstream campaigns were open and constructive, and in my opinion it's a weasel argument to complain that "nothing was done to discourage" anti-English sentiment.
Now in reality, it's hard to make a solid argument conomic case for Scottish independence. The sums can work out, but it will likely mean belt-tightening until the Scottish economy develops further. But the short-term economic outcome is not the only metric by which success can be measured.
I seem to remember plenty of noise from the SNP about how Brexit would/has unleashed racist forces, but apparently the same argument doesn't apply to Scottish independence because it's not possible to be racist towards the English.
I'm not sure I could support the view that the two referenda are directly comparable in that sense. There has been no noise from the Scottish government about 'too many English here' or anything like that - rather more along the lines of everybody being welcome in a self-determining country. Contrast that with the dog-whistle EU campaign, with the 'new border with Iraq' leaflets (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C2XwDAEXUAE597E.jpg) or the whole 'breaking point' billboard campaign (http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/scalefit_630_noupscale/5...) - these are mainstream campaigns, and I didn't encounter anything even close to this yellow in the Scottish referendum.
There will always be a hardcore of extreme views in any political campaign, and it's important for the mainstream to denounce this where it's out of line. But we can't take the extremes and use them as a basis for comparison in that way.
Yellow? Does that mean cowardly or something else?
I don't see the problem with those communications - they reflect the truth! There are hundreds of thousands of economic migrants - don't tell me they are all refugees, because the evidence simply does not support this - that once in the EU are able to make their way to Calais etc. with little difficulty. These migrants come from a culture that is very different to our own and many struggle to adapt (e.g. the New Year rapes in Cologne, news of which suppressed by the German media with complicity from BBC and other international sources). Don't we have a right to be concerned about the prospect of thousands upon thousands of immigrants arriving specifically due to their background, if their culture is one that is in some parts actively hostile to our own way of life? I have to say when either side lines up to spread propaganda it's scary, and regarding Brexit the consensus and weight of propaganda was definitely coming from the establishment Remain cohort.
One question that never seems to get answered by Remainers is the question of how many is too many - they are desperate to tell us about how immigration is a net benefit to the economy etc. To take this to its logical extreme, why then don't we just abolish all border controls and invite anyone to come? Because surely all immigration is a net benefit! We all know this is a ridiculous idea. With that agreed, the question is just about numbers. For some reason that's a debate the left seems to be terrified by.
I imagine Spain will do as directed by the EC given that the Catalonia argument isn't analagous to Scotland.
I'd strongly disagree with your comment about the SNP being racist but obviously it's a sensitive subject. I view it as being about getting the right deal for Scotland.
> given that the Catalonia argument isn't analagous to Scotland.
Can you expand? They seem quite similar to me (but I have no close interest in either, so my view may be simplistic). Very much not trying to start a flame war here, just curious as your comment surprised me.
So Catalonia has always been a region of Spain whereas Scotland is a sovereign nation which consented to joining the UK through the Act of Union. It's only part of the UK by a statute rather than inherently being part of the 'country'.
That's why Britain is referred to politically as the United Kingdom as it's a union of countries.
So for Catalonia to get independence, they have a much tougher argument as they're not a sovereign entity and it'd be much closer to a secession rather than Scotland pulling out of a treaty as would be the case here.
I think your logic is flawed. You have selected an arbitrary point in history, i.e. establishment of Spain as a sovereign entity, and used that to determine that Catalonia are not a sovereign entity. Couldn't you just as easily rewind your point a few years before establishment of Spain and say ok, Catalonia is a previously sovereign entity that was absorbed into Spain, and they merely want to revert to their previous situation?
Quite apart from that, the fact is that history is never as clean as your argument suggests. If people in a certain area begin to develop their own separate conciousness, feelings of separateness, culture and so on, there comes a point at which imposition of rule by an external power becomes tyrannical.
Good luck to Catalonia, and good luck to an independent Scotland. I'm sick of the ingratitude and whinging from north of the border. I don't think I'm the only one that wishes we could have a referendum in England to boot Scotland out first.
I've had that point corrected in another comment, so that's a fair position to take. I didn't intend to overly simplify a complex historic background.
I understand the sentiment of 'whinging Scots' and find it to be a real shame. Many of us are big fans of our English neighbours despite wanting independence. I guess it's a difference of opinion and always a very sensitive topic.
Either way, I'm sorry it's caused you to feel resentful of Scotland. Hopefully we can all reconcile our differences in the end.
SNP are explicitly pro-Immigration. As you'd expect - the population in a large chunk of the land area of Scotland is worried about the effects of depopulation eroding small rural communities.
From their website:
The SNP believe that immigration is essential to the strength of our economy and adds greatly to our cultural fabric. We propose a fair, robust and secure immigration system that meets Scotland’s social and economic needs.
Therefore we will seek, as a priority, the reintroduction of the post study work visa, so that those we have helped educate are able, if they so choose, to make a contribution to our economy.
They would technically be considered "people" of the same race, but also Scotland hasn't been Celtic for a long time!
The original inhabitants of Great Britain were Brythonic + Pictish (of the Celts), but in Scotland they were squeezed out by the Gaelic (also of the Celts) tribes (including the Scotti) crossing the Irish Sea into the west, the Norse crossing the North Sea and expanding into the isles from the north, and a rotating cast of invaders from the south: Romans, Danes (the Angles of Jutland and the Saxons), Normans (the Norse by way of Brittany in France), and English (a strange hodge-podge of remnants of various invaders).
Last I heard, Scotland would have to join the queue of applicants to be considered as a new EU member and no one in Brussels (definitely anti-nationalistic) wanted to encourage Scotland in this move. Spain would undoubtedly veto this given their strong stance against Catalan independence. They could be out in the cold.
Commented a few times on the Catalan point but I don't think it's as big an issue as it's made out to be.
Rajoy will likely follow the direction set by the EC and also, Catalonia is a different situation to Scotland. The former is a region of Spain whereas Scotland is already a sovereign entity and would only be withdrawing from the Act of Union, not seceding from a country.
Edit: Also, it's already a choice between 100% being out of the EU if we stay in the UK, or at least having a shot of joining the EU which could be more likely in the backdrop of Brexit negotiation.
I'm extremely excited for it. There's a huge amount of division in UK politics, and in Scottish politics.
I suspect that there will be the arguments about currency and EU membership which the UK government will lobby to make life difficult for Scotland, but as the pound is doing poorly and we're leaving the EU anyway, there isn't much to lose.
Can London please also seek independence and stop sending huge sums of money to the rest of the UK. I'd even be happy with the Euro or our own currency The London Pound. We might need to ask Donald Trump about building a wall though...
You might not even have to charge people who lived in London income tax, for example, due to the large number of companies based here.
One can hardly blame them. I was a unionist during the first referendum simply because I thought we were stronger together and felt that the Scottish made the UK as a whole more liberal (which, to be clear, is a GOOD thing).
But after Brexit one cannot blame or criticise them for wanting to leave. I want to leave too! If their choice is being part of a fairly progressive EU or a conservative/paranoid/racist English-Welsh alliance then they're better off leaving and trying to gain EU membership.
My only concern for Scotland is that they wouldn't be able to gain (re-gain?) EU membership then would be left out on their own for many years. So I definitely think the Scottish leadership needs to better plan out EU entry relative to the last referendum.
With or without Scotland, England is a sinking ship, better that other countries don't tie themselves to her mask as she flounders.
Really appreciate the well-wishing on it. I would love for there to still be a very open relationship between the two countries. We've got plenty of space up here and a booming tech scene!
Agreed on clarification with the EU membership but I think this is something that the SNP have been working on and that we can expect to see follow-up announcements.
Interesting to see what might happen post Brexit if Scotland does become Independent and stays in the EU. London has been a great place for International companies to set up shop to access the EU market and labor force...I wonder if they will simply relocate to Scotland? England only business matters could also be handled from within Scotland itself.
True but it is a different legal system. London is used because everyone knows and likes the English legal system and the English courts. Scottish courts and the Scottish legal system aren't worse, just different. Wanting to do business with a contract using Scots law is a bit like trying to raise VC while incorporated in Maine. Nothing wrong with it, just not the way everyone is used to. The Scottish legal community has nothing like the density of commercial lawyers or the experience.
Not saying it wouldn't be doable for some businesses. If however your business relies on doing anything new/innovative in a legal sense then that is one reason why London is an attractive to be based. That is a big part of why "The City" is such a force, and legal services are a decent chunk of the UK's service exports.
It's true that there's a lot of advantages to English laws but we see a lot of companies using Scotland anyway for its Scottish Limited Partnerships which have a lot of tax/ownership advantages.
I'm sure there will be considerable debate and potential change to our commercial law if independence goes ahead. To my mind it's a huge commercial opportunity.
Of course the obvious corollary is that much of Scotland's existing banking/corporate HQ sector does far more business in the rest of the UK than in Scotland, and some of those divisions might need or wish to relocate to somewhere in the rest of the UK rather than stay in a newly independent country of 5 million people that hasn't fully sorted out divorce terms with the UK never mind developed trade links with the rest of the world.
Where EU links matter, a newly independent Scotland that might join the EU is a far less attractive destination than many other nations whose EU membership and other trade relationships already exist. Where EU links are less important, London has the considerable advantage of network effect, access to the 55 million remaining Brits under English law and regulations, and by then at least some idea of what its trade policy with the rest of the world might look like. Can't see the SNP wanting to start a corporate-tax cutting race to the bottom either.
Those Scots that (with considerable justification) are very unhappy that the rest of the UK voted them out of the EU with all the uncertainty and damage to trade that entails might want to consider that the same arguments apply to leaving the UK. And Scotland does a lot more business with the rest of the UK than the EU
Can you elaborate on why England is a sinking ship? I ask because you're not the first person I've heard say that, but apart from a referendum 6 months ago, what has changed?
I think the view the pound losing 20% of its value, large-scale cuts to social spending and the economic effects of Brexit yet to be felt create a sense of worry about England's financial future. Also the increase in racist attacks, xenophobia etc.
The social spending cuts came well before Brexit. The worry about the future is always there regardless (do you think Greece, Portugal or Italy are not worried about their future). The increase in racist attacks is sad, but idiots will always use any excuse. The xenophobia, other than linked to the idiots, is hard to quantify because so many people conflate wanting to leave the EU with hating europeans.
Plus the UK is in an extremely weak position to negotiate trade with almost everyone and have a very short amount of time in which to do so.
It is a slow start, but jobs have already started shifting from the UK to other EU member countries (particularly for companies based elsewhere in the EU). We'll also likely see reductions in exports as UK goods cost more for other countries to import than competitors elsewhere, and UK imports from the EU go up in price (due to tariffs) and elsewhere (due to weaker trade agreements).
We also may see "brain drain" as students and highly qualified pros go to countries like Germany, France, Sweden, and Ireland where they can gain/maintain full EU travel/rights/benefits. Gaining citizenship in England & Wales is simply going to be seen as less useful than in e.g. Germany.
Overall we're just on the leading edge of how bad Brexit is going to be, the loss of the GBP's value is the market trying to "build in" projected future weakness. It could take England & Wales thirty years to fully recover from Brexit.
The pound losing its value makes our exports cheaper, and inward investment more attractive. Lavish welfare state spending makes many people in the UK dependent on benefits - there are plenty of jobs out there for those that look, and we should be housing single men that have paid in for 40 years ahead of families of migrants. The increase in racist attacks and xenophobia is mostly unproven, as any crime can be reported as a hate crime, and there is no requirement to prove the hate element; not to mention the efforts of the vested interests/left wing press including the BBC, who are obviously desperate to undermine the Brexit vote by any means possible.
Because "sinking ship" is a line often repeated by the West's globalist media monopolies and, unfortunately, most consumers of opinion are in a rush to agree with their televisions.
"Globalist media monopoly" is a line often repeated by nationalist propaganda chanels and, unfortunately, most consumers of opinion are in a rush to disagree with anything that challenges their world view.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the parent comment about sinking ships. I'm simply pointing out how easy it is to form this type of meaningless rhetoric
>My only concern for Scotland is that they wouldn't be able to gain (re-gain?) EU membership then would be left out on their own for many years. So I definitely think the Scottish leadership needs to better plan out EU entry relative to the last referendum.
Previously they said that if the UK left the EU, and Scotland left the UK, they could take on the UK's EU membership. This seems to be what they're aiming for with saying they want the referendum before the Brexit process is complete.
That said, it's never been confirmed that would actually be allowed, and with the UK government likely to trigger Article 50 this month, I'm not sure the door is even open for that. And given the EU's fairly strict and slow entry process, as you say, Scotland could be left outside of both unions for many years. I'm not sure if they'd even satisfy the EU's economic requirements on their own.
To confirm, I don't think there's any real belief in the party or the wider independence movement that Scotland would somehow 'inherit' the UK's EU membership. The idea seems to rather be along the lines of negotiating fast-track entry into the EU. It's possible that this won't happen, but on the other hand it's worth noting that Scotland is already subject to EU rules and compliance is a much less complex issue that for a country which is entirely outside the EU.
Not to mention Gibraltar - everyone's overlooked this tiny rock, but Gibraltar is entirely dependent on EU freedom of movement and voted very heavily remain. It's not a coincidence that there was a Gibraltar diplomatic mission to the SNP conference, although I'm not entirely clear what they wanted other than solidarity against Brexit.
Maybe Spain would let in Scotland and claim Gibraltar as their own?
Germans are going to face a large hike in their contributions to the EU in the next few years as the UK leaves, as the EU appears to be utterly incapable of actually spending less (despite now having diminished responsibility). That's just not in its nature.
So then Scotland comes along. The best available data says it's an economic basket case significantly worse than Greece. The UK subsidises it to a great extent for historical and cultural reasons that don't apply to Germany. Meanwhile, 40% of Scotland voted out of the EU as well.
If you're German and already questioning whether you should be subsidising lots of low productivity high debt Mediterranean countries, does the thought of waiving the entry requirements and then paying even more taxes to subsidise a new Greece appeal to you?
Don't know why this has been downvoted. It's on topic and not even a particularly controversial line of argument. I'd hate to think downvotes were happening due to prejudice, but it does seem that the left wing wants to suppress differing opinion these days.
There was a brief desire to start an independence movement for London... It might very well happen (starting a group, not independence itself - if that ever happens it'll be decades) if Brexit gets too nasty and Scotland leaves and causes rest-UK to be even more hostile to our concerns.
London independence would surely only come with the complete collapse of the UK. Or it becoming an EU-like organisation. And that's not entirely impossible - there are enough regional independence movements that it's possible to imagine it.
Much more likely, though, is that everyone argues about it for decades and nothing happens.
Is it Schadenfreude to realise that as much as I loathe this that once we hit the tipping point and all the property investors give up on London I'll be able to afford to live there.
Northern Ireland is a very tricky issue. Despite the majority in vote against Brexit, there is an almost 50/50 divide between pro-british unionists and pro-irish nationalists. As far as I understand it, the government in Belfast has been a close cooperation between both sides since 1998. If that cooperation breaks down no one knows what is about to happen, but many fear that the violence of the 'Troubles' might return, a prospect no one but the extreme hardliners really want.
So, I don't think it is as simple as: 'Northern Ireland is quite likely to join Ireland'.
From friends and acquaintances in Northern Ireland, some of the unionists are wondering just why they're in favour of a maintaining a union, when the other side is either against them (anti-EU), or doesn't much care (the perception that people in Great Britain don't follow much news on NI).
It looks like the Cymraeg [language] loving Welsh-nationalists are likely to press for all schools to become Cymraeg language and demand all businesses to move that way too. That should push taxation to new levels, reduce school achievement further, and retard international businesses from entering/remaining in Wales.
Given the North-South divide in Wales (even amongst Cymraeg speakers) I'd expect the massive demographic differences to push it back to the pre-annexation days where Gwynedd in the North was the central power (due to Irish/Viking immigrants after the Roman exit AFAICT!). Cymraeg speakers in the low-population North will break away and enter an economy propped up by tourism. The South-East is 90% English speaking, has three-quarters of the population and relies on the M4 corridor for a lot of its economy it's staying close to England one way or another.
In short Wales is already starting to pull itself apart. The low-income Welsh people who benefited a lot from EU schemes [eg in The Valleys (S.E.)] voted to Leave though, I don't think they'd try to follow Scotland back to the EU. However there's still an undercurrent of "we were conquered by the English and will hate them forever".
An oft-overlooked factor that interests me is the Crown - what have they got to say about it all. I assume they're keeping their beaks out to ensure they keep Crown money and property but along with all of this it strikes me if they aren't going to retain a political union of "their" lands then there's no longer a regent in even the hands-off sense we have in the UK today.
Why you'd throw off rule of the Queen's government and choose to stay being Her subject is beyond me.
Not sure where the "Northern Ireland is quite likely to join Ireland" is coming from. The longstanding narrow majority in favour of the Union in N.Ireland was heavily skewed towards Leave, and the country's political map is defined far more by sectarian concepts of political identity shaped by decades of hostilities than pragmatic concerns about trade links.
> Northern Ireland is quite likely to join Ireland
I sort of wish that were the case. The reality is likely to be a lot more problematic than "quite likely", and has every danger of becoming quite violent, to boot.
London independence is more likely to be used as leverage for more devolution than to actually achieve independence. Sadiq Khan has already brought it up in support of devolution of more powers to London.
But any kind of devolution for London that makes much difference will end up increasing divisions, and increase the odds the UK fractures further. I have a hard time picturing a UK 30 years from now without imagining a Westminster that has devolved away most of its powers.
Even then, I suspect Scotland will still leave sooner or later, and possibly Northern Ireland too.
Disclaimer: I'm a child of English parents who was born in Wales but grew up in Scotland. I have Scottish and English children, in-laws and cousins. I have a family home in Scotland but I currently live in England. My children live in England and Scotland. Some of us live in Italy.
What a fucking mess of a total fucking disaster. None of this needed to happen and it's a total nightmare for me and my family.
If this goes through the UK is gone totally and both countries could sink.
I have no idea whether I'd get Scottish Nationality without moving there. Similarly, I assume the same goes for my children.
While the future back in the EU looks like it could be good (eventually) for Scotland there is no guarantee that Scotland will match the criteria in the short term and there may be no EU in the long term if Marine le Pen gets her way.
Do I move to go with them? Do I stay here and wait until its too late? Presumably if I qualify to be Scottish so does half of England. What happens then?
As for the economics—they are super-scary—worse than the economics of Brexit as Scotland not only proportionally trades more with rUK than UK does with the EU there is the little matter of £9bn subsidy UK gives Scotland plus other costs that Scotland will have to take on that look like being a £15bn a year shortfall. Imagine what devastation those kind of cuts will wreak on a small country of 5-6m people?
I'm terrified that once the dust settles and Scotland is free of the UK and having to slash services to meet EU entry requirements the whole mood of jolly, liberal, civic nationalism could come crashing down to normal nasty nationalism and people like me and my family who are reasonably well-off with english-sounding accents could soon see bricks crashing through the windows. Similarly, once the IMF and European banks start to dictate spending policy, European immigrants my be less welcome there than they are now. These are fears not predictions but I think they are plausible scenarios—Hungary seems a case in point here.
On the upside, weirdly, we may see a united Ireland come out of this fiasco.
Part of the hippocratic oath is "first do no harm". We could usefully extend that to politicians. The UK government has, in 7 or 2 years depending on how you count, set the UK on a path to destruction -- and it was all very predictable.
That's short-hand of course for the "UK people's democratically expressed will".
FWIW I don't vote conservative, nor support Brexit; but we can't solely blame the elite cabals - as this sort of phrasing tends to do - the demos are complicit.
People were led on by millionaire politicians and billionaire newspaper owners who flat out lied during the referendum. Politicians have been blaming immigrants and "benefit scroungers" for problems which are really caused by austerity. It would be nice to have an informed demos who could look past all that, but we don't right now.
That's because people are comforted that when a majority of people disagree with them and vote for outcomes they don't like it's obviously either because they were misled or manipulated (or they're racists).
>Disclaimer: I'm a child of English parents who was born in Wales but grew up in Scotland. I have Scottish and English children, in-laws and cousins. I have a family home in Scotland but I currently live in England. My children live in England and Scotland. Some of us live in Italy. //
This may be an indication of the problem. To my view your opener should be "I'm a child of British parents, born in Britain and grew up in Britain. I have British children. I, and my children, live in Britain. Some of us live elsewhere in the EU."
Somewhere we've hung on to the the idea that we're a [loose] amalgam of separate nations to which we really owe our loyalty [if any is owed]. Whilst that doesn't seem to be the case in other parts of the world [corrections?]. Which other sub-divisions of single countries compete internationally in sports for example?
I think you may be reading too much into it. I think poster is using those labels to illustrate the issue rather than for the purpose of asserting nationalism.
I would have but that would have made things very confusing: I feel 100% British. My immediate family is scattered around the UK our forefathers were scattered throughout the British Isles—one half of the family was Irish. Even my English parents have Scottish blood somewhere down the line.
Even worse for me, I'm an internationalist and I felt very proud to be part of the EU for many of the same reasons I felt proud to be part of the UK: civic nationalism. The UK was the worlds most successful civic nation built on mutualism between a number of ethnic countries. To break up on ethnic borders and return to tribalism is heartbreaking.
I mean, that's how it's taught in schools, but how well does that reflect the actual history? Certainly it doesn't represent the UK's history with Ireland, which really isn't taught in schools. That's how people like Melanie "wrong about everything all of the time" Phillips can write national newspaper articles in which Ireland has a "tenuous claim to nationhood".
This is kind of the problem, we have all this national mythos that runs up to about 1966 and then stops. And it doesn't bear scrutiny in the modern age. The last attempt at building a national narrative that worked for everyone was the Blair era "cool Britannia", and half a million dead Iraqis took the shine off that a bit.
Not to mention the inward focus of Unionism. Everyone looks towards London, but London doesn't look outwards. Occasionally it dispatches a foreign correspondent to Manchester to report on conditions. The average English person thinks of Scotland little and NI not at all.
> I mean, that's how it's taught in schools, but how well does that reflect the actual history? Certainly it doesn't represent the UK's history with Ireland, which really isn't taught in schools.
How it's taught in schools in UK/England perhaps. In Ireland the history class is all about how England is a horrible oppressor of Ireland. ;)
It's perhaps part of the confusion, and a sign that the states - rather than nations - have become so important that the concepts have been muddled, but I think that what you refer to as a "civic nation" is actually typically called a "state."
"Ethnic countries" - if the states primarily contains one nation of people - ethnically (ie mainly culturally), is commonly referred to as a national state.
National states became a popular concept in the 19th century, possibly because the kings, emperors and other rulers were starting to loose power and had to build their states around some concept. Before that, the kings and the rulers did not give the nationality of their subjects much of a thought I suppose.
«Personally, when traveling abroad, if asked where I'm from, I generally say "Washington DC", not "the US".»
Yeah, I've met people like you. The problem is, this asks from your interlocutor of awareness for internal USA geography knowledge. On the other hand, many of those "from San Francisco" or from somewhere alike expect you to be just "from Europe" instead of "Germany" (or any other national state with its own cultural identity and external policy, for that matter).
P.S.: Try "Franconia" or "Thuringia" instead of "Germany" and see how many bells that rings! Mind you, these are broad regions, not merely cities.
It doesn't need any extra knowledge, assuming people know Washington DC is in the USA. They're no worse off than if he says "the USA".
I often say "London". I don't like saying "England", I consider the whole UK to by my country, but "United Kingdom" or even "Britain" are often not understood, and in any case, "which city?" is almost always the next question.
There are exceptions. If I'm introducing myself to someone with very limited English, like a young child in a developing country, I'll say England.
It happened to me quite a lot to introduce foreign clients to local acquaintances that haven't traveled abroad and don't have much knowledge (or interest) about outside world. Yeah, they heard of Washington (DC), alright, but haven't heard of SF and that caused a scene to my local pals with them being clearly unaware of where that place was and also being a little embarrassed to ask more. US citizens are not the only ones, this also happened with Vancouver and Melbourne. These are indeed prominent cities but not necessarily in anyone's world, and it seems nicer when that "which city?" comes instead of "where is that?"
Vancouver and Melbourne I can understand, but I'm amazed that there are people in the developed world that haven't heard of San Francisco.
That city has been part of the American "brand" for decades; from hippies, free love, Vietnam protesters and gay rights, to the dot-com boom and more recent startups. Add some destructive earthquakes, plenty of American films and music, and the international press whenever a startup does something bad.
It's at least a bit dependent on who is asking. I would expect somebody from Western Europe, Australia, etc to know Washington DC and SF (and London, Manchester, Frankfurt, etc).
I wouldn't have the same expectation of somebody from Asia. Not only is language a possible problem, but there are a TON of large cities in China (and other parts of Asia) I know nothing about.
As a Scot I will be voting for independence in the spirit that you and your family will be welcome to live and work in Scotland, not certain what the claim to passports will be but if half of England qualifies then all the better (not really sure we if we wouldnt want the entire of England to qualify).
As for the economics I am not too worried. A 15bn shortfall sounds exaggerated but hey given the worse case Trident is a 205bn cost that dissapears and it is not the only one. rUK doesnt fund Scotland out of some kind heartedness, Scotland has a solid industry and a government that has shown to use its income to prioritise social services and an independent Scotland within the EU immediately becomes an extremely attractive place for all those international companies looking for a nice place to base their EU trace (a lot of which may just need to drive up a few hours from England)
True but that's been known for a while - and afaik there hasn't been a definitive "oil will run out in 20xx" answer. Main thing hurting right now is the global slump in oil price hammering the North East - to be fair all of this does suggest that Scotland needs to focus on diversifying into renewables and tech but that was always the plan. It's just kinda irritating that this has come up now as it's a convenient stick to beat the pro-EU left with.
All current economic statistics about Scotland are baed on origin. Anything made in Scotland is counted as part of Scottish economy, even if it travels to England to be exported—that is counted as a Scottish export even though it left via an English port.
The difference after independence would be that the export would occur at Carlisle rather than Felixstowe.
Most of the "Thatcherism effect" of the 19080s can be directly attributed to North Sea oil. If you remove that money from the economy Thatcherism was a contraction until the banks boomed (though that was mostly post-Thatcher).
Not any more—they are currently running at a net loss. the rest of the UK are subsidising them to be decommissioned and for staff to be made redundant.
The economics are very disputable - the UK doesn't do regional apportionment of tax collection other than (just now) income tax, so not everyone believes the GERS number of £9bn.
And now it's even more disputable with Brexit: what farm subsidies will Scotland recieve, for example? What's the future cuts scenario for the UK? What happens if the rUK starts mass deportation of EU nationals? Parts of England are a few Daily Mail stories away from burning down Polish or Pakistani corner shops.
The UK had its opportunity to choose inclusivity and openness, and instead England voted for reactionary panic. I think it's hard to underestimate how much work the SNP have done in declaring ethno-nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment unacceptable, and pushing those sentiments to the margins in Scotland despite the media.
(English-born Edinburgh resident SNP member here, btw)
I think that's nonsense. The GERS figures were accepted beforehand by the SNP themselves, and they're the best available. Even if they're out by 10% that's still a massive financial hole Scotland is looking at. Of course nationalists will now decide that the figures are inconvenient and so must be wrong, but their track record on economics isn't great - their prior plan involved building their fairer, kinder Scotland on the back of oil revenues which are now gone (and they ignored the decommissioning costs anyway).
The UK is not "a few Daily Mail stories" away from burning down Pakistani corner shops, Pakistani immigration having nothing to do with Brexit whatsoever of course. That's the kind of ridiculously over the top drama that lost the referendum, and it boils down to a form of racism itself: a belief that white English people are just horrible and ignorant, in defiance of all the facts (the UK is one of the most racially diverse countries in Europe).
Finally, I don't know what kind of independence campaign you remember, but the SNP I know practically defines itself through racist hatred of the English. Their entire argument for an independent Scotland seems to boil down to "we hate the awful Tory voting English".
> the SNP I know practically defines itself through racist hatred of the English
This is in direct contradiction of my experience of being English (RP accent and all) at Indyref events and the SNP conference itself. There's maybe one or two fringe old guys who are actually anti-English and everyone else finds it embarrasing and is genuinely friendly.
Not gonna deny that my support for the SNP is heavily influenced by my large dislike for tories. Seems like an awful stretch to call that racism though.
I see some negative news about brexit plan execution, so I still think it might be possible to revert or avoid a total crash (if it occurs, maybe the world has some cards up his sleeves and things will reorder nicely) ?
Aside: It interests me that you sign yourself as English and call yourself a unionist. I'm British by nationality through official designation and consider all of the UK to be my home country.
Also the English-Welsh alliance. The counties that we call Wales have been annexed to the lands of the English Crown, as were Yorkshire or Cornwall (say), for a millennium or so. It saddens me that this has to be thought of as an alliance - by a unionist - when in fact they're simply arbitrary groups of counties in a single kingdom.
Segregationists, nationalist, protectionists, or whatever, appear to be winning the battle in pitching each of us against the others rather than us [humankind] uniting as people towards mutual good.
That said I agree with your sentiment, why would those Brits in Scotland sit on the sinking ship when offered a place back on dry-land with their fellow Europeans.
> Aside: It interests me that you sign yourself as English and call yourself a unionist. I'm British
I don't think that's interesting in the context of this discussion, it's shorter that "I'm British but not from Scotland".
The interesting thing to me is that it's only we English who feel the pressure to identify as 'British', say 'UK', et al. - Scots say so, Unionist or not.
It's a funny outcome after centuries of 'England' being used to refer to the whole union (and even the Empire, I believe) - but it changed some time in the last century or so, and now "you must get it right or you'll offend Scots!" is instilled into us in schools such that we even err on the side of UK.
The EU have already shown to be very amenable to an independent Scotland joining the EU in a timely manner (https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamieross/eu-officials-are-discussi...). The process will be clarified however I dont think either side expect Scotland to get left in the lurch here
"My only concern for Scotland is that they wouldn't be able to gain (re-gain?) EU membership then would be left out on their own for many years."
Why? How?
Scotland would easily fulfill the requirements to join pretty much right away and the EU needs good news and would be able to sell that as something positive, so they have clear incentives to make it happen ASAP. Scotland also would be a net contributing country.
"The argument upon which Spain bases it opposition to Catalan and Basque self-determination is a clause in the Spanish constitution which forbids them to have independence referendums. There is no such clause in the British constitution forbidding Scotland from holding an independence referendum. When Scottish independence come about, it will be legal, it will be constitutional, and it will be negotiated with and recognised by Westminster.
Spain doesn’t recognise the independence of Kosovo from Serbia because Kosovo declared independence unilaterally, an independence which isn’t recognised by Serbia and which Serbia claims is contrary to the Serbian constitution. But Spain does recognise the independence of Montenegro from its union with Serbia because Montenegrin independence was permitted by the constitution and is recognised by Serbia. Unionists only ever cite Kosovo, never Montenegro.
2013 puts that in the context of the 2014 Indyref, where the Spanish were against the possibility of independent Scotland being considered as a successor state of the UK + thus automatically gaining EU membership.
Nowadays the context is on independent Scotland applying to join as a non-EU member, which no one has made any objections to.
Oh, please. With or without Scotland, England remains in the lead or on a par with the other most advanced countries in the world in most areas. Of course it has it's problems - like everywhere else - but the downturn that was forecasted to begin immediately after a leave vote has not materialised, with the UK economy proving remarkably resilient in this post-leave/pre-Article 50 period. If we judge it by the wisdom of crowds, I don't see a massive exodus of immigrants leaving the UK in fear of a downturn post-Brexit - in fact the opposite - I seem to encounter more and more immigrants everywhere I go in England, so no doubt they judge that your sinking ship is preferable to life in Spain, Poland etc. If you want to see a sinking ship, look across the EU where there is mass unemployment, suppression of free speech in support of mass immigration, a failed currency resulting in destructive economic imbalances, social dislocation due to lack of integration of migrants, free movement for terrorists and criminals, nepotism, all ruled over by an unelected and unaccountable elite in Brussels.
England is still one of the most important economies in the world. Better not hope she goes down, or everyone gets poorer.
Thanks for the downvote instead of challenging any of my points! People just try to suppress differing opinions instead of engaging with them these days. It's sad. We can only learn by talking. Are disagreements really so threatening to your echo chamber?
Firstly, the Grauniad is hardly an unbiased source these days, sadly. Secondly excuse me if I'm sceptical about the predictions of economists. Thirdly, your second source trots out a tired myth of remainers - that leaving the EU means we will not be able to fill low skilled work. It means nothing of the sort - it just means that we can choose what low skilled workers we let in, and if we want to continue to offer EU citizens seasonal work in the agricultural sector, nothing about Brexit prevents that. Fourth, your third source contains only predictions about the return of Polish citizens. Finally, your fourth source reflects a mixed picture - headlined 'Net migration to UK falls sharply after Brexit vote', we then find the following comments later on:
'Home Office figures show that the number of EU nationals in Britain who had their applications processed for UK residence documents to secure their individual status more than doubled from 92,289 in 2015 to 201,287 in 2016. More than 140,000 were successful.'
'Work continues to prove the main driver for near-record levels of immigration, particularly from within the EU, whose citizens accounted for 180,000 of the 294,000 who came to Britain to work in the year to September'
..so overall, far from a conclusive rebuttal of my points.
> the Grauniad is hardly an unbiased source these days
The surveys in question were compiled by Markit.
> we can choose what low skilled workers we let in
You seem to have missed the point: they don't want in, they are already leaving:
The June 23 referendum vote to leave the EU has already affected Gorton’s business: About 10 of his Eastern European employees have gone home.
“They were coming to us the next day and saying, ‘Crikey, this is not good for us, we’re not wanted in the U.K.,”’ he said. “Within a week of the vote, we saw people leave and go back to Poland and Lithuania. Ever since then, it’s become a lot harder to find the people we need.”
> your third source contains only predictions about the return of Polish citizens
Based on trends already observed.
> your fourth source reflects a mixed picture
Because it covers the period in the year to September, i.e. only 3 months after the referendum vs 9 preceding it. The trend break is quite visible in the chart:
> the Grauniad is hardly an unbiased source these days
The surveys in question were compiled by Markit.
>> Sure, and I'll bet it's possible to find statistics that prove the opposite if you look hard enough. Not to mention the fact that as things change, so the country will adapt.
> we can choose what low skilled workers we let in
You seem to have missed the point: they don't want in, they are already leaving:
The June 23 referendum vote to leave the EU has already affected Gorton’s business: About 10 of his Eastern European employees have gone home.
“They were coming to us the next day and saying, ‘Crikey, this is not good for us, we’re not wanted in the U.K.,”’ he said. “Within a week of the vote, we saw people leave and go back to Poland and Lithuania. Ever since then, it’s become a lot harder to find the people we need.”
>> So then we have to pay a little more for our fruit and veg. I'd be more than happy to do this if it means we are not sending billions in CAP money towards preserving the bucolic complacency of rural France.
> your third source contains only predictions about the return of Polish citizens
Based on trends already observed.
>> Oh no, the Poles are going! Well I suppose that means indigenous Brits will be able to see their doctor in a timely manner, and the first language in our school classes might revert to English again, etc.
> your fourth source reflects a mixed picture
Because it covers the period in the year to September, i.e. only 3 months after the referendum vs 9 preceding it. The trend break is quite visible in the chart:
I don't blame them at all. A large part of the "better together" campaign was fear-mongering that Spain would block their re-entry to the EU (ostensibly to set a precedent that'd make Catalunya's 'exit' more difficult).
It does feel like they were entirely hoodwinked on that particular point.
I see this as a lose-lose scenario. If Scotland votes to split - it is effectively the end of UK as we've come to know it for a very long time. Fracturing is almost always a bad idea and bigger countries almost always do better than the smaller ones. If they vote to remain that will be bad as well, because it will embolden the politicians (tories in this specific case) that they can get away with anything (breaking up the country with their disastrous Brexit in this particular case). I am a european living in UK.
The lose scenario of a split already happened with the Brexit. Now it is time to save as much as possible. Scotland wants to stay in the EU and has interests diverging from England and Wales. Why should Scotland stay with them to make them stronger?
> Fracturing is almost always a bad idea and bigger countries almost always do better than the smaller ones.
This is demonstrably false: roughly half of the top ten countries ranked by standard of living and quality of life are small European nations about the same size as Scotland.
There's a much better argument for it historically because being a small country tended to end up getting you invaded or otherwise subservient to one or the other of your bigger neighbors. But that really an issue with most European countries today.
Larger/richer countries still tend to have more control over their own destinies but that doesn't necessarily translate to quality of living standards.
I think neverminder meant that, amongst countries that separate, the larger of the new countries will generally be better off than their smaller neighbour. Your list doesn't address this point.
Examples would include Pakistan-Bangladesh; Czech Republic-Slovakia; and Sudan-South Sudan.
Your own list has a counterpoint: Bangladesh has a better HDI than Pakistan. Republic of Ireland also has an higher HDI than the UK and they were in much worse state than the UK when they became independent.
What do these kinds of referendums mean? This is just three years after the last "once in a generation" referendum. Let's say it goes independence. Will supporters be okay with another referendum three years later that might reverse that decision?
It all smacks of opportunism and reminds me of all the other EU-related votes that keep happening until voters pick the right answer.
Suppose Scotland does vote to separate from the UK, presumably with the intention of attempting to gain EU membership.
My understanding, based on a whole minute or two of Googling, is that the relationship between the parts of the UK, such as Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland is similar to the relationship between the states in the United States: if you are a citizen of the union, you are automatically a citizen of whichever part you live in.
I wonder, then, if between the time of the vote and the time that independence actually happens if Scottish independence would trigger a lot of movement (1) to England of Scots who do not want independence from the UK or who do not want to try to join the EU, and (2) to Scotland of English who want a shot at staying in the EU?
Citizenship isn't clear at all. There's no clear concept of English, Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish citizenship -- we are British citizens, and European Union citizens. During the previous independence vote in Scotland, the people who voted were British, Commonwealth and EU citizens resident in Scotland.
Around 800,000 people born in Scotland live elsewhere in the UK. Millions more presumably have a parent born in Scotland, but weren't themselves.
I was born in England. I emigrated from the UK in 2015, and briefly considered registering as resident in Scotland (rather than England) just before I left, on the off-chance that Brexit went ahead without Scotland. However, the likelihood seemed remote, so I didn't consider it seriously.
I wonder if this will effect the UN Security Council membership? The dissolution of the UK and it's nuclear naval bases based in an EU country which is anti-nuclear weapons.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 303 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_Scotti...
Given that the approach used to achieve the Brexit vote has been documented in great detail I wonder how we'll see them applied in this new referendum?
Unfortunately in international politics, winning a vote at home doesn't translate to a winning move internationally.
The huge disconnect between how Brexiters think the world works and how the world really works isn't subject to a popular vote or to media spin. It is going to cause the UK - well, England - catastrophic problems over the coming decade.
Anyone with objections to a slim majority making such a sweeping decision is met with, "leave one, get over it."
They're definitely not bluffing. Clue's in the name.
I certainly think there is a sense that to get a poll on a timeline they want, they need to start pushing now, because they know they can expect resistance.
I can't imagine anything that would increase support for independence more than any hint that we wouldn't be allowed to have another referendum.
[OK - apart from BoJo being PM].
At the same time, note Nicola Sturgeon's statements about how this isn't up to Westminster. Legally, of course, it currently is. But she's setting Theresa May up to use a refusal as a "look how undemocratic Westminster is" if it's refused. Look for attempts to bypass Westminster if it's slapped down - which may be serious, or may also be designed out of expectation they'll cause unfavourable reaction to another Westminster slap-down.
Their massive majority of Scottish MPs also mean they will be able to paint any Westminster refusal as England dictating Scottish issues.
It's very much a lose-lose for Theresa May in any case. If a vote is accepted, then it will be a constant distraction during the Brexit negotiations, for example, where any whiff of results negative to Scotland will be exploited for what it's worth...
If anyone's bluffing in this environment, it has to be Theresa May; the Brexit plan is far less coherent than the plan for an independent Scotland, it's not clear what cards she might hold that have any value, and her ministers are briefing against her in the Times.
The outcome of the vote could fall either way, but it's certainly not a bluff. Current support for independence is Scotland is around 45-50%; there was a clear indication in the current government's manifesto that a referendum would be held if the UK exited the EU.
"Why have the polls not shown a shift towards Scottish independence?"
The First Minister needs a big swing in the polls to Yes somewhere in the 6X% to get this to pass.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/mar/13/scottish-in...
If the terms are unfavourable to Scotland, they will likely leave the union.
> Speaking at her official Bute House residence in Edinburgh, Ms Sturgeon said the people of Scotland must be offered a choice between a "hard Brexit" and becoming an independent country.
Autumn 2018 - Spring 2019 also fits the two year negotiation timeline.
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I don't even know who they might get to do the No campaign who has any credibility in Scotland. The most sensible option is probably Ruth Davidson, so the most likely choice is someone like Blair McDougall. Labour will probably have to spend all their time trying to avoid letting Jeremy Corbyn say anything on the subject.
Cameron and Corbyn standing together and saying "this is dangerous and stupid" would have sent a very powerful message.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/01/kezia-dugdale-i-c...
The last referendum -- the Scots voted to stay in partially to guarantee EU membership. This referendum will be fundamentally different as it means choosing between the EU and UK something the UK forced on Scotland.
Alienation of our nearest neighbours and the likely dissolution of the Union.
It's also looking likely that Brexit will cause problems for the Northern Ireland peace arrangement.
> "For the first time in my life, the prospect of a united Ireland is not only credible but inevitable"
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/northern-ireland-stormon...
It'll be interesting to see how often Conservative ministers promise that there will be no border between UK and ROI but there will be a hard border between England and Scotland, despite none of this making any sense.
All of the countries in the union have seats in Westminster, dedicate ministers and committees, as well as their own devolved parliaments. I'd say things are much worse for counties in the North of England, than for the other countries in the UK.
The nature of democracy means the majority rules, which will always be problematic for minority communities. The only solutions I can see are to be more cohesive and unified in opinion, divorce completely, or accept differences as the cost of peace and stability and continue working to improve the balance.
There is no doubt in my mind that the loser in all of this is the north of England. They are repeatedly denied a voice, publicly scorned, and they see all their talent move south or abroad. England is a lopsided country and I don't know how to fix it.
Well, they had their voice, they cast their lot, they were the deciding vote for Brexit. Now they can lie in the bed they made for themselves. No pity lost from anyone up beyond the Wall or down in the South.
People throwing the towel in and blaming others for everything that is wrong is how we've ended up in this political mess. No leaders. No vision. Just pity and blame.
The North of England has consistently been stripped of its talent for the last fifty years. To blame them for wanting change and not being attracted to the same campaign you were is idiotic.
Universal Basic Income is the very definition of welfare state, and the purpose of which is to counter the effect special interests coercion. To abolish it would be to empower the lobbyists and too-big-to-fail corporates
This is arguably the big problem of the 20th and 21st centuries: not all questions are sensibly amenable to majority rule, and minorities must have rights and protections against discriminatory politics. This tends to grate a bit with the majority, which is tolerable in OK economic times but can be vulnerable to demagogues.
Protection of minorities is baked into the Good Friday agreement. It's also differently baked into the Human Rights Act, which seems to be part of why the HRA is so unpopular in some quarters.
As an aside, I think that most people don't understand these concepts because the word 'democracy' is used so much in political rhetoric and in the media that people have taken it to mean a representational system of government. For example the US is not a democracy... it is a republic, while the UK is indeed a democracy (which causes the problems that you mention). Both are still representational systems of government.
To give an extreme example say you have 3 foxes and 1 sheep at a table and all 4 of them represent a country. In a democracy the majority rules, and it would be perfectly legal for the 3 foxes to vote and eat the sheep.
However in a republic, legal limits are placed on the government (think constitution), which has implications for all citizens--but especially minorities. In a republic with a constitution that states that all citizens have the right to life and liberty, those 3 foxes could vote to eat the 1 sheep but that sheep is protected by the constitution. Therefore in that example, the vote would be illegal.
It is no coincidence that the founding fathers of the United States set America up to be a republic and why constitutional matters are so important even today.
Now having said all this I am aware that many believe that the UK has an "unwritten" or uncodified constitution. While I don't outrightly reject this concept, I believe it doesn't give a country a strong ethical or moral foundation because it does not offer clarity or consistency when ethics or morality are legally challenged. Ideally ethics and morality are codified in law so that all citizens know where they stand with regards to the power of their government.
Coming back to the issue of Scottish independence, it could be rooted in the very real problem that most people are nescient--or worse, selectively ignorant--about these issues. Unfortunately in the UK we seem to be perpetually locked in a 'treat the symptoms rather than the disease' scenario.
England?
UK citizens were never given a vote on their 'citizenship' rights in the EU.
UK citizens only voted to join the EEC - not the EU. They voted to join what was essentially a 'trade block'. Not a supra-federal state. (UK citizens were not given a vote on the treaty of Rome.)
The French voted against the treaty of Rome - and guess what? Their Parliament enacted it! How's that for consensus?
Same thing in the Netherlands.
In Ireland, they were forced to 'keep voting until it passed'.
Most other countries did not get a referendum on joining the EU.
There was never any 'popular consensus' on the EU as we know it - it likely may never have existed if it were put to referendum.
I would argue that a 'strong consensus' would be needed to have Scottish, Catalonian or Quebec separation - those are parts of nations.
The EU is not quite the same thing.
Cameron also helped Saudi Arabia [3] become the head of UN's human rights council, and who knows what other kind of corrupt deals he made with China. Cameron was really "looking up" to the leaders in China and how they're doing things there, so to me it didn't come as a surprise that he would try to turn UK into West's China (from a surveillance/censorship point of view).
[1] http://europe.newsweek.com/ip-bill-most-extreme-surveillance...
[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/01/26/porn-blocki...
[3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/uk-and-saudi-arabia-ma...
One could argue that the root political problem is the EU itself.
Nationalist movements are on the rise across Europe: The Dutch are about to give their top choice a pretty hard core 'anti Muslim' guy. The French will have a runoff between Le Pen and probably Macron. The Sweden Democrats are polling at 22%. True Finns have incredible influence. Austrian nationalists lost the presidency by a tiny margin. Brexit. Poland. Danish nationalists form government. Admittedly, Catalonia and Scotland are a different strain.
And a massive division between periphery, core and Eastern Europe on 'existential' issues.
For most of these issue, failure of EU leadership, and hostility and intransigence towards the will of the plebes led to this. It could have been avoided.
'For or Against' - the EU as we know it is dead - it didn't want to adapt - so Europe is adapting underneath it.
I don't think it will break up, but nothing will ever be the same in EU-land.
46.21 % to 53.79 % is NOT a tiny margin.
I would argue it's the politicians. No matter what way you voted it's clear that the campaigns around the referendum were incredibly dishonest. Politicians were largely playing games to further their careers and were willing to say what they had to to succeed. We need to do something to ensure referendums deal only in fact because a large portion of voters have no interest in doing their own research and will vote on lies and propaganda.
Cameron only offered the Brexit referendum because he was afraid of the more far-right Tories going UKIP.
It's very, very sad. She seems like a nice lady, but she has (apparently) been extremely ineffectual.
Like I noted, maybe someday we'll discover that she's actually been extremely involved, preventing one disaster after another, and that Britain's fall would have been much worse without her expert guidance. I don't expect that's the case, but maybe it'll happen.
(I'm also reminded of the line from the Australian constitutional crisis, "God save the Queen, for nothing shall save the Govenor-General!")
This is the first time I've felt a border poll in Northern Ireland is a possibility. The recent election resulted in a huge swing in power and a hard border with the south would be devastating for a lot of people regardless of political persuasion. It'll be interesting to see how each part of the UK ends up in 5-10 years time.
NI could ally with Scotland and remain a United Kingdom in the EU. Then it would be England and Wales leaving the Union.
I must admit this is more of a board game fantasy than an actual possibility given the time and I/NI politics, but is amusing to consider.
It's funny that Scotland lost its (semi-)independence by trying their own hand at colonialism[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_list_of_Non-Sel... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darien_scheme
>Jacqueline Minor, the European commission’s head of representation in the UK, said Scotland would need to formally apply after leaving the UK, although it could be fast-tracked because it already complies with EU rules and regulations.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/10/independent...
Spain are concerned that it might a set a precedent for Catalonia to get independence but if the Scottish independence came about because of the UK leaving the EU Spain will be conformable in allowing Scotland to join.
There's no small irony to the fact that scaremongering around Europe was such a big focus of the Better Together campaign in the run up to the first referendum.
Which ones? Generally the EU wants more stable democracies to hold up the others.
The context now is that independent Scotland would have to apply, as it will be a successor state of a non-EU member. I think Spain et al. are fine with this since the precedence it sets will be hard for Basque nationalists to follow.
'Brexit: Spain and France oppose Scotland EU talks' - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-3665...
Also, I imagine that Spain will do what they're encouraged to do by thE EC considering the budgetary reliance.
Not at all wanting a flame-war etc but if I'm wrong then I'd really like to know! :)
The correct year to consider it fully a region of Spain would be 1714, when the Spanish army defeated the catalans and removed most of its state structures/institutions, etc. This article's intro might help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Catalonia
I don't want to bore you with a history lesson that I myself might not know accurately, but I feel the need to say that different namings for the same levels of independence of state structures should be taken into consideration. So saying "Catalonia has always been a region of Spain" is far from the truth or at least it skips a lot of history.
I didn't mean any offence by my statement, I understand that of course Catalan's case for independence is no less valid! I suppose it's really just legal wrangling :)
England doesn't 'sign off' for whether Scotland is in union or not as that is Scotland's choice, not England's. England acknowledge this and would never say otherwise.
Which is not to say it's impossible (as some have, [2]); the EU has turned a blind eye when convenient before and I'm sure will do again. But many in the EU might be reluctant to go that route again after the way Greece turned out.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_and_Growth_Pact
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/08/25/scotland...
And that's the key thing. They would be changing masters, probably for the worst.
As a former Euro supporter and now Euro sceptic I would recommend them to keep their lead in their own hand.
Their best option is have their own currency.
It's my believe now that my country just give away a very important part of their sovereignty (maybe the most important) to entities that have not our best interest in mind. I would not be against the Euro if I though that the people in charge is on my side.
As an example (even if I'm not greek), we have seen the ECB just closing the Greece bank system when they are supposed to protect it.
For anyone interested, there are some discussion now about the legality of that movement: https://diem25.org/thegreekfiles/
I've always heard the argument that things are more expensive in the Euro. I know people in countries where they switched to the Euro and salaries remained the same while prices of goods went up. I'm not sure why this happens (or even if it's true) but it's a reason a lot of people are against losing the pound.
Adopting it often makes central bank policy more challenging. An outright "Euro makes goods more expensive" statement is an oversimplification though, don't take it at face value and always ask for objective inflation data relating to the particular country in question.
Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Sweden are the members of the EU which have not joined the Euro because they don't meet the convergence criteria.
(My personal preference is to ditch the silly "shared" pound idea but define a Scottish Pound pegged to the GBP and using the existing notes as a transitional currency. Much as Ireland did.)
The scottish government would likley be forced to strongly discourage the use of the UK pound to maintain fiscal control.
Do you mean "monetary control"? What do you mean by "strongly discourage"? Forced by whom, or by circumstances?
Forced by currency speculators. New currencies are always strained, and given an independent Scotland would be close to bankruptcy anyway, a fully-pegged currency would be (how do I say this) difficult.
"strongly discourage" is as easy as not accepting payment tax in pounds.
Sticking with Sterling wouldn't even allow the option of crashing out of the monetary peg if needs be. I think you'd see an exodus of financial institutions' head offices down to London. An independent Scotland simply couldn't afford to bail out a large institution in Sterling, or even if it let banks fail couldn't afford the economic hit because its debts would be denominated in Sterling. Iceland was able to devalue by 60%, Greece wasn't able to.
The point of the currency debate is that it has consequences with whichever choice is taken. Separately applying to join the EU saying "yes I know I have to join the Euro, but I'm not actually going to do that" isn't the best strategy in the book. France may get to pull that kind of thing, but they're already in the tent.
I'd expect Scotland to parallel Ireland's history of using the pound and pound-equivalent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_pound
See also https://qz.com/260980/meet-the-countries-that-dont-use-their...
Oddly - European nations that don't use the Euro are generally much better off: Norway (though not EU), Denmark, Sweden, UK.
In hindsight, the UK's decision to not join the Euro is widely accepted as smart.
The Euro is effectively a 'hard Germany currency' that has entrapped the periphery of Europe into a monetary system that massively favours the Germans. Maybe it could have worked out - but from 2000-ish to 2008 - world bankers assumed the Euro meant 'collective risk pooling' so the periphery countries loaded up on cheap debt. But when the crash happened - we discovered there were going to be no bailouts - leaving the periphery with a massive balance sheet problem, and the total inability to manage monetary policy - or rather - they're stuck on a 'strict currency' which favours Germany who already had several advantages.
But I agree, if Scotland does go indy, then it may very well introduce a pegged currency, which makes sense as something temporary.
The problems you mentioned (and some non-Euro countries being better off) are caused by structural problems in those countries, which are only tangentially related to the common currency. From an economic point of view those countries probably shouldn't have adopted the Euro so quickly in the first place but were allowed to do so nonetheless for political reasons.
Whoever thinks the Euro is a success has not been paying attention and probably don't understand how monetary policies (and money) works.
The Euro-area countries has been forced to follow procyclical policies, in a time when govern spending was necessary.
And the countries you listed are not the only ones in the Euro, think about how Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece are faring with the Euro! It's worse than a war!
The Danish Krone is pegged to the Euro, within a very tight margin.
http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=DKK&to=EUR&view=5Y
And you've missed Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Romania and Bulgaria; these countries don't use the Euro, but aren't usually considered much better off.
But they are definitely different - they were closed economies, way behind, and there's advantages to their having the Euro (should they get it). Which is different from Greece/Spain.
Moreover, they want to be in the Euro :) the Swedes, Danes, English etc. chose to not use it.
So is it that countries that took the euro were hurt by it, or that countries with already strong currencies chose not to take the euro?
Anyway, it's not so difficult to see why to have the flexibility of adjusting your currency, independently of the rest of the system, to suit your current situation is a good thing.
micro-services anyone?
Monte Negro is using euro, and is not even part of EU yet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montenegro_and_the_euro
Pegging your currency to another when you don't have the fundamentals to match it tends to be of interest to George Soros, especially when you don't have much in the way of foreign currency reserves to defend it.
Can you imagine a future where the independent Scottish government could arrange a similar deal with another financial institution, to cover them until ECB took on the role?
> Pegging your currency to another when you don't have the fundamentals to match it tends to be of interest to George Soros
When was Black Wednesday for Montenegro?
The much more likely alternative is that the Bank of Scotland and Royal Bank move their HQ to London. Standard Life (and therefore Aberdeen Asset Management) probably as well. Not all their staff will move, but their profits will and some highly paid staff will go. That will in turn have an impact on the nascent FinTech sector.
I do think they'd buy independent Scottish treasury bonds & then the independent Scottish government can use the proceeds for emergency lending. Isn't this how the German banks are covered?
Pounds Sterling.
Stirling is a city in Scotland.
the joke is they'd also have to be changed from that
* The EU and ECB aren't particularly happy that Montenegro is using the Euro without being a member anyway...(see your wiki link)
Politely, you might want to check your assumptions: I submit that if Norway can run a currency, or Ireland (which joined the Euro after running its own free-floating currency for multiple decades) then Scotland should be able to.
On the other side graphs of the Pound dropping in value after the referendum results is also quite powerful especially if the SNP frame it as leaving a sinking ship.
Polling for almost a year (see Wikipedia) indicates that it will not succeed - there's only one of more than a dozen or so polls that puts independence ahead - and then only by one point. 'Remain' are ahead by 10 points in the rest.
The easy trump card to play is the fact that Spain and others (Belgium) will not allow Scotland to join the EU, even if they do - it will take years.
An 'independent Scotland from an independent UK' is a huge pile of risk for people to stomach.
With the UK faring economically well since Brexit (I know A50 has not been triggered, but investors have already priced in what they know, and A50 is a sure thing) - this is not the 'Brexit horror' story the indyreffers wanted.
I would also point out that these things can fatigue on people, and that after a while, even soft Nationalists see the tactics of separatists.
The SNP said the last referendum was a "once in a lifetime" event - and that was 4 years ago. 'The situation has changed' - surely - but nevertheless, it makes them look rather without credibility on the surface of it.
It will be very interesting though.
Spain is desperately afraid of Catalonia departing - and the nuance of 'we left the EU before we joined' won't matter to the voters. Scottish separation and ascension to the EU would carve a crystal clear path for Catalonian separatists, and give massive wind to their sales.
To the above commenters point - no gov will likely ever come out and say it, but there's no reason for Spain to support Scottish ascension, and every reason to be against it.
It's very likely that Scotland won't remain a EU member (as a successor of a EU member), but no government has said they would veto Scotland's application. The media mentions about this topic are vaguely-worded, to make it sound like it's about Scotland ever becoming an EU member (which it's extremely likely to achieve) versus avoiding having to apply (which is probably not going to happen).
That argument played a lot better before the Brexit vote. The choice is now between "definitely out of Europe, possibly on bad terms" versus "hopefully rejoining Europe, possibly with interim deal".
Personally I expect Spain to accept an independent Scotland as leverage against Brexit Britain - note that this way Spain would retain the right to fish in Scottish waters. But all of these are "forward-looking statements".
Also the BBC asked a Spanish EPP representative directly if they would veto and he said no: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-3923...
> UK faring economically well since Brexit
If a Labour government had lost 20% of the value of the £ along with threatening to expel financial services from London the news coverage would be rather different. I don't think it has all been priced in yet, because we don't know exactly how bad it's going to be.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/02/14/ftse-100-falt...
(Also, note that polls are from before campaigning starts! I'd expect campaigning to move the needle somewhat, otherwise what's the point?)
The EU is threatening to legally force people to move to Europe from the UK if they want to continue selling services there. Neither the UK nor the financial services industry wants that, for obvious reasons. If it happens, it'll be the EU doing it, not a British government.
"Starting a chain of events which will likely lead to financial services having to move out of London", then.
I think we'll need to wait and see on this one. A collapse in currency value has masked some of the longer-term issues that leaving the single market will raise.
but nevertheless, it makes them look rather without credibility on the surface of it.
I can't agree with this. The current Scottish government was elected with a manifesto indicating that a second referendum would held if Scotland was removed the EU.
I think its going to kill a lot of people when they see 'Brexit horror' not materializing. The UK has a powerful economy (number 5 in the world) and as such can certainly work out beneficial trade deals alone. Its not a Greece-like mess that benefits from the Euro and the Euro's backers. Without the shared currency and having a land border with other EU nations, its questionable if the benefits are worth it. At least, they come with liabilities.
I certainly see the various pro EU political argument at work here and many have validity, but the economic one is fairly weak sauce. If anything, the UK has a stronger negotiation position as its own entity, assuming they play their cards right. If Scotland wants to go independent then fine, but using brexit as an excuse is very questionable.
>even soft Nationalists see the tactics of separatists.
I wonder how many separatists are being honeydicked by Russia. Russia has been funding separatists and far-right political parties in the West for its own gain for quite some time now. Perhaps people are starting to see through their ultra-tailored Facbook newsfeed, hysterical yellow journalism, legitimately fake news, and other biased media. I suspect the Trump win the US is showing people that yes, an electorate can go crazy with outsiders and extremist policies, but that doesn't mean that's actually good for the electorate.
Ignoring Spain's own separatist fears, the EU members probably are fairly wary of any separatist talk right now, especially after seeing what happened in Crimea, and don't want to encourage it and certainly don't want to signal that separatism is a quick way to EU membership. Not to mention NATO membership, are the Scots ready to invest 2% of their GDP into defense (nearby $4bn)? We've probably moved towards an anti-separatist attitude in the West for the foreseeable future due to recent events. According to the guardian, the yes/no spread is the same was it was in 2014, so the idea that Scotland has become more separatist is questionable:
Between August and December last year we polled over 3,000 Scottish adults and found yes to Scottish independence on 46% and no on 54% – just a fraction different from the result two years earlier.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/27/shift-...
Not 5th any more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4056296/India-overta...
(yes the mail is unreliable but I thought I'd pick the most Brexity source)
UK GDP growth fits in at almost 2% which is where the USA sits at as well and typical of later-stage capitalist countries. EU darling and once economic powerhouse France is at .3%. Spain is only recently getting out of negative growth, for comparison.
I think you're dismissing how powerful inertia is in the financial sector and how the EU needs the UK and as such will work out agreements to keep things going. London wealth and banking is most likely very safe. Remember, London as the premier financial center of Europe predates the EU by a few hundred years. It is not an outgrowth of EU membership.
Is Spain now willing to allow them into the EU or will they veto their membership application because of their issues with Catalonia?
Still seems like racist SNP are still in denial
Politically, the case for independence is on the downside; both Theresa May and Ruth Davidson have higher net satisfaction rates than Sturgeon in Scotland, and the likelihood of a general election before EU exit is getting higher every day, but for other reasons. Peak Sturgeon has come 2 years too soon.
In Scotland? I'm extremely skeptical.
From mid-september 2016. Couldn't find a more recent poll.
As I understand it, the poll which they based that article on didn't even ask the same question for each of the leaders, so the final results can't be seriously compared.
And of course "doing well in her job" doesn't matter much if 38% of Scots vote SNP vs 16% Tory voters (from the Yougov survey).
I've not heard much, if anything positive about May, but Davidson is generally highly regarded, even if very few actually vote for the Tories in Scotland.
[1] I avoid the BBC comments like the plague, for the same reason I avoid the Daily Mail.
[2] I was born and grew up in England; I've lived in Scotland for the past 22 years.
The Labour party have traditionally been very strong in Scotland - the Labour party was a party for life, and many people only every voted Labour. However, this has all changed over the past year, as they have effectively self-imploded to the point of uselessness. I cannot overstate how much of a breakdown there has been within the Labour party, and people who had previously only ever voted Labour are now voting differently.
I'd argue that much of the Conservative party's gains have come from people who will simply no longer vote for Labour, rather than a move towards the Conservatives themselves.
The clue is the quiet dropping of demands for Full Fiscal Autonomy over the past few years. There isn't close enough savings to made from things like Trident to enable even a credible deficit to be run. The level of spending cuts / tax rises required will be of the level that only an IMF intervention normally brings - far, far beyond anything Osborne did over many years.
I'm an ardent supporter of independence, but I don't doubt for a second that it will be difficult to build a strong economic case – in no small part because of the level of uncertainty we are currently dealing with. But I'm quietly confident that the independence movement will have learned a lot from the previous campaign and will avoid making mistakes it perhaps made in 2014.
The English are very angry about this and are touting Sturgeon as a crying "remoaner". They believe that they had a referrendum recently and therefore it's just "keep trying until you get the result you wanted".
If you're a person with that in mind I have a few things to say:
1) the UK being a member of the EU was something sorely needed, but people consider it a trade union deal and not anything else. Therefore they use the argument that the EU has changed enough to warrant leaving.
2) Scotland largely voted remain last time because it was immediately evident that the EU would not allow Scotland to join- since Spain and the remaining UK was in strong favour of vetoing entry. This has fundamentally changed.
3) Now Scotland will not remain in the EU despite voting overwhelmingly to remain. Leaving the EU now would be the antithesis of "the will of the people".. so you can't say that "they voted, get over it".
I'm rather sour on the whole experience regarding Brexit, there has been a _lot_ of smug mudslinging from the leave side, and they've already tried to scapegoat the remain campaign as being "not with the program" and subsequently sabotaging the leave campaign.
That has obviously changed somewhat.
Is Spain now willing to allow them into the EU or will they veto their membership application because of their issues with Catalonia?
Still seems like racist SNP are still in denial
Unsubstantiated smear.
To answer your specific point, my understanding is that general noise from Spain is that a Scottish application for EU membership would not be vetoed.
Scotland will be "fairer" if it is independent i.e. the English who keep outvoting us are nasty and "unfair" by nature.
There are lots of quotes from people like Salmond and Sturgeon along those lines. What they mean is "we disagree with the dominant political viewpoint in England" but what they say is that the English are morally defective and the Scots, morally superior. That's merely irritating when it's a left wing/right wing party political campaign, as people can change their political party quite easily. When it's phrased in terms of ethnic origin, that crosses the line.
Scotland's economy will be wrecked by leaving the UK as there will no longer be the massive transfers of tax revenue from England to Scotland as at present under the Barnett formula. It seems like plenty of Scots hate everything about from the UK apart from our English pounds, which they are quite happy to keep sticking their hands out for. Good luck without them!
I don't doubt that there was strong anti-English sentiment among some groups in Scotland in 2014. However, there are always extreme elements to any political movement - the mainstream campaigns were open and constructive, and in my opinion it's a weasel argument to complain that "nothing was done to discourage" anti-English sentiment.
Now in reality, it's hard to make a solid argument conomic case for Scottish independence. The sums can work out, but it will likely mean belt-tightening until the Scottish economy develops further. But the short-term economic outcome is not the only metric by which success can be measured.
I'm not sure I could support the view that the two referenda are directly comparable in that sense. There has been no noise from the Scottish government about 'too many English here' or anything like that - rather more along the lines of everybody being welcome in a self-determining country. Contrast that with the dog-whistle EU campaign, with the 'new border with Iraq' leaflets (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C2XwDAEXUAE597E.jpg) or the whole 'breaking point' billboard campaign (http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/scalefit_630_noupscale/5...) - these are mainstream campaigns, and I didn't encounter anything even close to this yellow in the Scottish referendum.
There will always be a hardcore of extreme views in any political campaign, and it's important for the mainstream to denounce this where it's out of line. But we can't take the extremes and use them as a basis for comparison in that way.
I don't see the problem with those communications - they reflect the truth! There are hundreds of thousands of economic migrants - don't tell me they are all refugees, because the evidence simply does not support this - that once in the EU are able to make their way to Calais etc. with little difficulty. These migrants come from a culture that is very different to our own and many struggle to adapt (e.g. the New Year rapes in Cologne, news of which suppressed by the German media with complicity from BBC and other international sources). Don't we have a right to be concerned about the prospect of thousands upon thousands of immigrants arriving specifically due to their background, if their culture is one that is in some parts actively hostile to our own way of life? I have to say when either side lines up to spread propaganda it's scary, and regarding Brexit the consensus and weight of propaganda was definitely coming from the establishment Remain cohort.
One question that never seems to get answered by Remainers is the question of how many is too many - they are desperate to tell us about how immigration is a net benefit to the economy etc. To take this to its logical extreme, why then don't we just abolish all border controls and invite anyone to come? Because surely all immigration is a net benefit! We all know this is a ridiculous idea. With that agreed, the question is just about numbers. For some reason that's a debate the left seems to be terrified by.
I'd strongly disagree with your comment about the SNP being racist but obviously it's a sensitive subject. I view it as being about getting the right deal for Scotland.
Can you expand? They seem quite similar to me (but I have no close interest in either, so my view may be simplistic). Very much not trying to start a flame war here, just curious as your comment surprised me.
So Catalonia has always been a region of Spain whereas Scotland is a sovereign nation which consented to joining the UK through the Act of Union. It's only part of the UK by a statute rather than inherently being part of the 'country'.
That's why Britain is referred to politically as the United Kingdom as it's a union of countries.
So for Catalonia to get independence, they have a much tougher argument as they're not a sovereign entity and it'd be much closer to a secession rather than Scotland pulling out of a treaty as would be the case here.
Quite apart from that, the fact is that history is never as clean as your argument suggests. If people in a certain area begin to develop their own separate conciousness, feelings of separateness, culture and so on, there comes a point at which imposition of rule by an external power becomes tyrannical.
Good luck to Catalonia, and good luck to an independent Scotland. I'm sick of the ingratitude and whinging from north of the border. I don't think I'm the only one that wishes we could have a referendum in England to boot Scotland out first.
I've had that point corrected in another comment, so that's a fair position to take. I didn't intend to overly simplify a complex historic background.
I understand the sentiment of 'whinging Scots' and find it to be a real shame. Many of us are big fans of our English neighbours despite wanting independence. I guess it's a difference of opinion and always a very sensitive topic.
Either way, I'm sorry it's caused you to feel resentful of Scotland. Hopefully we can all reconcile our differences in the end.
From their website:
The SNP believe that immigration is essential to the strength of our economy and adds greatly to our cultural fabric. We propose a fair, robust and secure immigration system that meets Scotland’s social and economic needs.
Therefore we will seek, as a priority, the reintroduction of the post study work visa, so that those we have helped educate are able, if they so choose, to make a contribution to our economy.
Some people see the SNP's strong desire to separate from Westminster as anti-English.
technically that would be sectarian and not racist, as both Scotts and English bellong to the same race.
The original inhabitants of Great Britain were Brythonic + Pictish (of the Celts), but in Scotland they were squeezed out by the Gaelic (also of the Celts) tribes (including the Scotti) crossing the Irish Sea into the west, the Norse crossing the North Sea and expanding into the isles from the north, and a rotating cast of invaders from the south: Romans, Danes (the Angles of Jutland and the Saxons), Normans (the Norse by way of Brittany in France), and English (a strange hodge-podge of remnants of various invaders).
So, yes, under the UK anti-racism law, it would count as racism.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/10/independent...
Rajoy will likely follow the direction set by the EC and also, Catalonia is a different situation to Scotland. The former is a region of Spain whereas Scotland is already a sovereign entity and would only be withdrawing from the Act of Union, not seceding from a country.
Edit: Also, it's already a choice between 100% being out of the EU if we stay in the UK, or at least having a shot of joining the EU which could be more likely in the backdrop of Brexit negotiation.
I suspect that there will be the arguments about currency and EU membership which the UK government will lobby to make life difficult for Scotland, but as the pound is doing poorly and we're leaving the EU anyway, there isn't much to lose.
You might not even have to charge people who lived in London income tax, for example, due to the large number of companies based here.
;-)
One can hardly blame them. I was a unionist during the first referendum simply because I thought we were stronger together and felt that the Scottish made the UK as a whole more liberal (which, to be clear, is a GOOD thing).
But after Brexit one cannot blame or criticise them for wanting to leave. I want to leave too! If their choice is being part of a fairly progressive EU or a conservative/paranoid/racist English-Welsh alliance then they're better off leaving and trying to gain EU membership.
My only concern for Scotland is that they wouldn't be able to gain (re-gain?) EU membership then would be left out on their own for many years. So I definitely think the Scottish leadership needs to better plan out EU entry relative to the last referendum.
With or without Scotland, England is a sinking ship, better that other countries don't tie themselves to her mask as she flounders.
Really appreciate the well-wishing on it. I would love for there to still be a very open relationship between the two countries. We've got plenty of space up here and a booming tech scene!
Agreed on clarification with the EU membership but I think this is something that the SNP have been working on and that we can expect to see follow-up announcements.
Interesting times!
Not saying it wouldn't be doable for some businesses. If however your business relies on doing anything new/innovative in a legal sense then that is one reason why London is an attractive to be based. That is a big part of why "The City" is such a force, and legal services are a decent chunk of the UK's service exports.
It's true that there's a lot of advantages to English laws but we see a lot of companies using Scotland anyway for its Scottish Limited Partnerships which have a lot of tax/ownership advantages.
I'm sure there will be considerable debate and potential change to our commercial law if independence goes ahead. To my mind it's a huge commercial opportunity.
Where EU links matter, a newly independent Scotland that might join the EU is a far less attractive destination than many other nations whose EU membership and other trade relationships already exist. Where EU links are less important, London has the considerable advantage of network effect, access to the 55 million remaining Brits under English law and regulations, and by then at least some idea of what its trade policy with the rest of the world might look like. Can't see the SNP wanting to start a corporate-tax cutting race to the bottom either.
Those Scots that (with considerable justification) are very unhappy that the rest of the UK voted them out of the EU with all the uncertainty and damage to trade that entails might want to consider that the same arguments apply to leaving the UK. And Scotland does a lot more business with the rest of the UK than the EU
It is a slow start, but jobs have already started shifting from the UK to other EU member countries (particularly for companies based elsewhere in the EU). We'll also likely see reductions in exports as UK goods cost more for other countries to import than competitors elsewhere, and UK imports from the EU go up in price (due to tariffs) and elsewhere (due to weaker trade agreements).
We also may see "brain drain" as students and highly qualified pros go to countries like Germany, France, Sweden, and Ireland where they can gain/maintain full EU travel/rights/benefits. Gaining citizenship in England & Wales is simply going to be seen as less useful than in e.g. Germany.
Overall we're just on the leading edge of how bad Brexit is going to be, the loss of the GBP's value is the market trying to "build in" projected future weakness. It could take England & Wales thirty years to fully recover from Brexit.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the parent comment about sinking ships. I'm simply pointing out how easy it is to form this type of meaningless rhetoric
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_U...
Challenge your worldview. The status quo is not a conspiracy.
I was simply pointing out that the rhetoric you just spewed is meaningless in this context and contributed nothing of substance to the conversation.
I suppose I am at fault here as well. I shouldn't have given such a useless comment the dignity and value provided by a response.
Enjoy your delusion!
Previously they said that if the UK left the EU, and Scotland left the UK, they could take on the UK's EU membership. This seems to be what they're aiming for with saying they want the referendum before the Brexit process is complete.
That said, it's never been confirmed that would actually be allowed, and with the UK government likely to trigger Article 50 this month, I'm not sure the door is even open for that. And given the EU's fairly strict and slow entry process, as you say, Scotland could be left outside of both unions for many years. I'm not sure if they'd even satisfy the EU's economic requirements on their own.
My guess though is that the EU won't be keen on the UK splitting up and thus won't encourage it by providing Scotland a quick ascension.
This is also a wonderful bargaining chip for the EU to play against Theresa May in negotiating the terms of the UK's exit.
Yup. "You lot can leave, but we'll take Scotland. Your choice."
Maybe Spain would let in Scotland and claim Gibraltar as their own?
Long version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disputed_status_of_Gibraltar
Is just that not the UK neither the people in Gibraltar want that. But yes, Gibraltar could face some problems when the UK leave the UE.
Germans are going to face a large hike in their contributions to the EU in the next few years as the UK leaves, as the EU appears to be utterly incapable of actually spending less (despite now having diminished responsibility). That's just not in its nature.
So then Scotland comes along. The best available data says it's an economic basket case significantly worse than Greece. The UK subsidises it to a great extent for historical and cultural reasons that don't apply to Germany. Meanwhile, 40% of Scotland voted out of the EU as well.
If you're German and already questioning whether you should be subsidising lots of low productivity high debt Mediterranean countries, does the thought of waiving the entry requirements and then paying even more taxes to subsidise a new Greece appeal to you?
There was a brief desire to start an independence movement for London... It might very well happen (starting a group, not independence itself - if that ever happens it'll be decades) if Brexit gets too nasty and Scotland leaves and causes rest-UK to be even more hostile to our concerns.
Much more likely, though, is that everyone argues about it for decades and nothing happens.
- Scotland is likely to go (despite what the polls say right now)
- Northern Ireland is quite likely to join Ireland
- God knows what Wales is going to do
So, I don't think it is as simple as: 'Northern Ireland is quite likely to join Ireland'.
It looks like the Cymraeg [language] loving Welsh-nationalists are likely to press for all schools to become Cymraeg language and demand all businesses to move that way too. That should push taxation to new levels, reduce school achievement further, and retard international businesses from entering/remaining in Wales.
Given the North-South divide in Wales (even amongst Cymraeg speakers) I'd expect the massive demographic differences to push it back to the pre-annexation days where Gwynedd in the North was the central power (due to Irish/Viking immigrants after the Roman exit AFAICT!). Cymraeg speakers in the low-population North will break away and enter an economy propped up by tourism. The South-East is 90% English speaking, has three-quarters of the population and relies on the M4 corridor for a lot of its economy it's staying close to England one way or another.
In short Wales is already starting to pull itself apart. The low-income Welsh people who benefited a lot from EU schemes [eg in The Valleys (S.E.)] voted to Leave though, I don't think they'd try to follow Scotland back to the EU. However there's still an undercurrent of "we were conquered by the English and will hate them forever".
An oft-overlooked factor that interests me is the Crown - what have they got to say about it all. I assume they're keeping their beaks out to ensure they keep Crown money and property but along with all of this it strikes me if they aren't going to retain a political union of "their" lands then there's no longer a regent in even the hands-off sense we have in the UK today.
Why you'd throw off rule of the Queen's government and choose to stay being Her subject is beyond me.
I sort of wish that were the case. The reality is likely to be a lot more problematic than "quite likely", and has every danger of becoming quite violent, to boot.
But any kind of devolution for London that makes much difference will end up increasing divisions, and increase the odds the UK fractures further. I have a hard time picturing a UK 30 years from now without imagining a Westminster that has devolved away most of its powers.
Even then, I suspect Scotland will still leave sooner or later, and possibly Northern Ireland too.
What a fucking mess of a total fucking disaster. None of this needed to happen and it's a total nightmare for me and my family.
If this goes through the UK is gone totally and both countries could sink.
I have no idea whether I'd get Scottish Nationality without moving there. Similarly, I assume the same goes for my children.
While the future back in the EU looks like it could be good (eventually) for Scotland there is no guarantee that Scotland will match the criteria in the short term and there may be no EU in the long term if Marine le Pen gets her way.
Do I move to go with them? Do I stay here and wait until its too late? Presumably if I qualify to be Scottish so does half of England. What happens then?
As for the economics—they are super-scary—worse than the economics of Brexit as Scotland not only proportionally trades more with rUK than UK does with the EU there is the little matter of £9bn subsidy UK gives Scotland plus other costs that Scotland will have to take on that look like being a £15bn a year shortfall. Imagine what devastation those kind of cuts will wreak on a small country of 5-6m people?
I'm terrified that once the dust settles and Scotland is free of the UK and having to slash services to meet EU entry requirements the whole mood of jolly, liberal, civic nationalism could come crashing down to normal nasty nationalism and people like me and my family who are reasonably well-off with english-sounding accents could soon see bricks crashing through the windows. Similarly, once the IMF and European banks start to dictate spending policy, European immigrants my be less welcome there than they are now. These are fears not predictions but I think they are plausible scenarios—Hungary seems a case in point here.
On the upside, weirdly, we may see a united Ireland come out of this fiasco.
That's short-hand of course for the "UK people's democratically expressed will".
FWIW I don't vote conservative, nor support Brexit; but we can't solely blame the elite cabals - as this sort of phrasing tends to do - the demos are complicit.
they even shipped Obama over
This may be an indication of the problem. To my view your opener should be "I'm a child of British parents, born in Britain and grew up in Britain. I have British children. I, and my children, live in Britain. Some of us live elsewhere in the EU."
Somewhere we've hung on to the the idea that we're a [loose] amalgam of separate nations to which we really owe our loyalty [if any is owed]. Whilst that doesn't seem to be the case in other parts of the world [corrections?]. Which other sub-divisions of single countries compete internationally in sports for example?
Even worse for me, I'm an internationalist and I felt very proud to be part of the EU for many of the same reasons I felt proud to be part of the UK: civic nationalism. The UK was the worlds most successful civic nation built on mutualism between a number of ethnic countries. To break up on ethnic borders and return to tribalism is heartbreaking.
Was it?
I mean, that's how it's taught in schools, but how well does that reflect the actual history? Certainly it doesn't represent the UK's history with Ireland, which really isn't taught in schools. That's how people like Melanie "wrong about everything all of the time" Phillips can write national newspaper articles in which Ireland has a "tenuous claim to nationhood".
This is kind of the problem, we have all this national mythos that runs up to about 1966 and then stops. And it doesn't bear scrutiny in the modern age. The last attempt at building a national narrative that worked for everyone was the Blair era "cool Britannia", and half a million dead Iraqis took the shine off that a bit.
Not to mention the inward focus of Unionism. Everyone looks towards London, but London doesn't look outwards. Occasionally it dispatches a foreign correspondent to Manchester to report on conditions. The average English person thinks of Scotland little and NI not at all.
How it's taught in schools in UK/England perhaps. In Ireland the history class is all about how England is a horrible oppressor of Ireland. ;)
"Ethnic countries" - if the states primarily contains one nation of people - ethnically (ie mainly culturally), is commonly referred to as a national state.
National states became a popular concept in the 19th century, possibly because the kings, emperors and other rulers were starting to loose power and had to build their states around some concept. Before that, the kings and the rulers did not give the nationality of their subjects much of a thought I suppose.
Some (many?) Americans would describe themselves as hailing from a specific state or city, not the nation.
Personally, when traveling abroad, if asked where I'm from, I generally say "Washington DC", not "the US".
Yeah, I've met people like you. The problem is, this asks from your interlocutor of awareness for internal USA geography knowledge. On the other hand, many of those "from San Francisco" or from somewhere alike expect you to be just "from Europe" instead of "Germany" (or any other national state with its own cultural identity and external policy, for that matter).
P.S.: Try "Franconia" or "Thuringia" instead of "Germany" and see how many bells that rings! Mind you, these are broad regions, not merely cities.
I often say "London". I don't like saying "England", I consider the whole UK to by my country, but "United Kingdom" or even "Britain" are often not understood, and in any case, "which city?" is almost always the next question.
There are exceptions. If I'm introducing myself to someone with very limited English, like a young child in a developing country, I'll say England.
That city has been part of the American "brand" for decades; from hippies, free love, Vietnam protesters and gay rights, to the dot-com boom and more recent startups. Add some destructive earthquakes, plenty of American films and music, and the international press whenever a startup does something bad.
I wouldn't have the same expectation of somebody from Asia. Not only is language a possible problem, but there are a TON of large cities in China (and other parts of Asia) I know nothing about.
As for the economics I am not too worried. A 15bn shortfall sounds exaggerated but hey given the worse case Trident is a 205bn cost that dissapears and it is not the only one. rUK doesnt fund Scotland out of some kind heartedness, Scotland has a solid industry and a government that has shown to use its income to prioritise social services and an independent Scotland within the EU immediately becomes an extremely attractive place for all those international companies looking for a nice place to base their EU trace (a lot of which may just need to drive up a few hours from England)
How would the borders go in case of separation? Seems Scotland has only one refinery, and it's half owned by a Chinese company.
The difference after independence would be that the export would occur at Carlisle rather than Felixstowe.
Most of the "Thatcherism effect" of the 19080s can be directly attributed to North Sea oil. If you remove that money from the economy Thatcherism was a contraction until the banks boomed (though that was mostly post-Thatcher).
And now it's even more disputable with Brexit: what farm subsidies will Scotland recieve, for example? What's the future cuts scenario for the UK? What happens if the rUK starts mass deportation of EU nationals? Parts of England are a few Daily Mail stories away from burning down Polish or Pakistani corner shops.
The UK had its opportunity to choose inclusivity and openness, and instead England voted for reactionary panic. I think it's hard to underestimate how much work the SNP have done in declaring ethno-nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment unacceptable, and pushing those sentiments to the margins in Scotland despite the media.
(English-born Edinburgh resident SNP member here, btw)
The UK is not "a few Daily Mail stories" away from burning down Pakistani corner shops, Pakistani immigration having nothing to do with Brexit whatsoever of course. That's the kind of ridiculously over the top drama that lost the referendum, and it boils down to a form of racism itself: a belief that white English people are just horrible and ignorant, in defiance of all the facts (the UK is one of the most racially diverse countries in Europe).
Finally, I don't know what kind of independence campaign you remember, but the SNP I know practically defines itself through racist hatred of the English. Their entire argument for an independent Scotland seems to boil down to "we hate the awful Tory voting English".
This is in direct contradiction of my experience of being English (RP accent and all) at Indyref events and the SNP conference itself. There's maybe one or two fringe old guys who are actually anti-English and everyone else finds it embarrasing and is genuinely friendly.
Everyone does hate the Tories though.
The GERS figures are produced by Scottish Government statisticians. Why would they massage the out of Scotland's favour?
Also the English-Welsh alliance. The counties that we call Wales have been annexed to the lands of the English Crown, as were Yorkshire or Cornwall (say), for a millennium or so. It saddens me that this has to be thought of as an alliance - by a unionist - when in fact they're simply arbitrary groups of counties in a single kingdom.
Segregationists, nationalist, protectionists, or whatever, appear to be winning the battle in pitching each of us against the others rather than us [humankind] uniting as people towards mutual good.
That said I agree with your sentiment, why would those Brits in Scotland sit on the sinking ship when offered a place back on dry-land with their fellow Europeans.
I don't think that's interesting in the context of this discussion, it's shorter that "I'm British but not from Scotland".
The interesting thing to me is that it's only we English who feel the pressure to identify as 'British', say 'UK', et al. - Scots say so, Unionist or not.
It's a funny outcome after centuries of 'England' being used to refer to the whole union (and even the Empire, I believe) - but it changed some time in the last century or so, and now "you must get it right or you'll offend Scots!" is instilled into us in schools such that we even err on the side of UK.
Why? How?
Scotland would easily fulfill the requirements to join pretty much right away and the EU needs good news and would be able to sell that as something positive, so they have clear incentives to make it happen ASAP. Scotland also would be a net contributing country.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/27/scottish-in...
https://weegingerdug.wordpress.com/2017/03/11/la-gota-que-co...
"The argument upon which Spain bases it opposition to Catalan and Basque self-determination is a clause in the Spanish constitution which forbids them to have independence referendums. There is no such clause in the British constitution forbidding Scotland from holding an independence referendum. When Scottish independence come about, it will be legal, it will be constitutional, and it will be negotiated with and recognised by Westminster.
Spain doesn’t recognise the independence of Kosovo from Serbia because Kosovo declared independence unilaterally, an independence which isn’t recognised by Serbia and which Serbia claims is contrary to the Serbian constitution. But Spain does recognise the independence of Montenegro from its union with Serbia because Montenegrin independence was permitted by the constitution and is recognised by Serbia. Unionists only ever cite Kosovo, never Montenegro.
Nowadays the context is on independent Scotland applying to join as a non-EU member, which no one has made any objections to.
England is still one of the most important economies in the world. Better not hope she goes down, or everyone gets poorer.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-01/after-bre...
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-02-27/u-k-s...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/feb/23/net-migratio...
'Home Office figures show that the number of EU nationals in Britain who had their applications processed for UK residence documents to secure their individual status more than doubled from 92,289 in 2015 to 201,287 in 2016. More than 140,000 were successful.'
'Work continues to prove the main driver for near-record levels of immigration, particularly from within the EU, whose citizens accounted for 180,000 of the 294,000 who came to Britain to work in the year to September'
..so overall, far from a conclusive rebuttal of my points.
The surveys in question were compiled by Markit.
> we can choose what low skilled workers we let in
You seem to have missed the point: they don't want in, they are already leaving:
The June 23 referendum vote to leave the EU has already affected Gorton’s business: About 10 of his Eastern European employees have gone home.
“They were coming to us the next day and saying, ‘Crikey, this is not good for us, we’re not wanted in the U.K.,”’ he said. “Within a week of the vote, we saw people leave and go back to Poland and Lithuania. Ever since then, it’s become a lot harder to find the people we need.”
> your third source contains only predictions about the return of Polish citizens
Based on trends already observed.
> your fourth source reflects a mixed picture
Because it covers the period in the year to September, i.e. only 3 months after the referendum vs 9 preceding it. The trend break is quite visible in the chart:
https://interactive.guim.co.uk/charts/embed/feb/2017-02-23T1...
The surveys in question were compiled by Markit.
>> Sure, and I'll bet it's possible to find statistics that prove the opposite if you look hard enough. Not to mention the fact that as things change, so the country will adapt.
> we can choose what low skilled workers we let in
You seem to have missed the point: they don't want in, they are already leaving:
The June 23 referendum vote to leave the EU has already affected Gorton’s business: About 10 of his Eastern European employees have gone home.
“They were coming to us the next day and saying, ‘Crikey, this is not good for us, we’re not wanted in the U.K.,”’ he said. “Within a week of the vote, we saw people leave and go back to Poland and Lithuania. Ever since then, it’s become a lot harder to find the people we need.”
>> So then we have to pay a little more for our fruit and veg. I'd be more than happy to do this if it means we are not sending billions in CAP money towards preserving the bucolic complacency of rural France.
> your third source contains only predictions about the return of Polish citizens
Based on trends already observed.
>> Oh no, the Poles are going! Well I suppose that means indigenous Brits will be able to see their doctor in a timely manner, and the first language in our school classes might revert to English again, etc.
> your fourth source reflects a mixed picture
Because it covers the period in the year to September, i.e. only 3 months after the referendum vs 9 preceding it. The trend break is quite visible in the chart:
https://interactive.guim.co.uk/charts/embed/feb/2017-02-23T1....
>> I wouldn't put my mortgage on it: 'Note: 2016 data is provisional'
Actually, a poll yesterday suggested 56% do not want a referendum at this stage.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/13/half-scots-do-not...
It does feel like they were entirely hoodwinked on that particular point.
This is demonstrably false: roughly half of the top ten countries ranked by standard of living and quality of life are small European nations about the same size as Scotland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...
Larger/richer countries still tend to have more control over their own destinies but that doesn't necessarily translate to quality of living standards.
Examples would include Pakistan-Bangladesh; Czech Republic-Slovakia; and Sudan-South Sudan.
This is why these kinds of decisions are not plebiscites!
I hope everyone who voted leave understood that it was the dissolution of the union they voted for, and not some backtracking into a pre-EU britain.
It all smacks of opportunism and reminds me of all the other EU-related votes that keep happening until voters pick the right answer.
My understanding, based on a whole minute or two of Googling, is that the relationship between the parts of the UK, such as Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland is similar to the relationship between the states in the United States: if you are a citizen of the union, you are automatically a citizen of whichever part you live in.
I wonder, then, if between the time of the vote and the time that independence actually happens if Scottish independence would trigger a lot of movement (1) to England of Scots who do not want independence from the UK or who do not want to try to join the EU, and (2) to Scotland of English who want a shot at staying in the EU?
Around 800,000 people born in Scotland live elsewhere in the UK. Millions more presumably have a parent born in Scotland, but weren't themselves.
I was born in England. I emigrated from the UK in 2015, and briefly considered registering as resident in Scotland (rather than England) just before I left, on the off-chance that Brexit went ahead without Scotland. However, the likelihood seemed remote, so I didn't consider it seriously.