Should Scotland be independent?

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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by Gfamily » Sun Jul 03, 2022 12:11 pm

But they do have relevance to the point you did make when you said
Little to no say? That's absolute nonsense.
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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by Millennie Al » Mon Jul 04, 2022 12:10 am

temptar wrote:
Sun Jul 03, 2022 10:32 am
Scotland, Wales and NI were ruled by England and were not equal partners in an equal partnership. Brexit reinforces that btw.
What's equality? Scotland has a smaller population than London - should it have a greater say? And If we're complaining about Brexit, London was also a Remain area - surely London has just as good grounds for complaint as Scotland or Northern Ireland?

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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by temptar » Mon Jul 04, 2022 5:59 am

Brexit is an example of how English policy is imposed on the rest of the union. This cannot happen where constituent countries have veto power and smaller countries have blocking power where qMV applies, and it prevents the tyranny of the majority.

In this context, an independent Scotland would have more rights and autonomy within the EU than it currently does within the UK.

On the question of London, the same applies, I believe to Liverpool. I am not aware of campaigns by Londoners or Liverpudlians to exit England. In contrast, there is a strong political campaign for Scotland to leave the Union. So come back to me when London and Liverpool have meaningful campaigns backed up by votes in favour of those campaigns in Westminster.

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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by nekomatic » Mon Jul 04, 2022 8:01 am

temptar wrote:
Sun Jul 03, 2022 10:32 am
But from the outside, A) Scotland would be better of as an EU member than a UK member simply because its representation at Council would be far more equal
Politically, yes. Economically, I fear very much no.

And people care a lot less about politics if the economics are going well than if they’re going badly.
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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by nekomatic » Mon Jul 04, 2022 8:14 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Mon Jul 04, 2022 12:10 am
What's equality? Scotland has a smaller population than London - should it have a greater say?
That depends on whether you see Scotland as just another region of the UK, or as a separate country that’s a member of a union with the other countries in the UK. Which is kind of the point.
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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by TopBadger » Mon Jul 04, 2022 8:54 am

I think they should be allowed to have another indyref - had Brexit not happened I'd say no, as the 'once in a generational vote' has already been had, but Brexit is such a huge change I think it warrants being able to ask the question again.

Is it in their interests to be independent? I don't think so... but it should be their call. TBH I'm unconvinced about the whole devolution thing, it doesn't create unity.
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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by temptar » Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:22 am

nekomatic wrote:
Mon Jul 04, 2022 8:01 am
temptar wrote:
Sun Jul 03, 2022 10:32 am
But from the outside, A) Scotland would be better of as an EU member than a UK member simply because its representation at Council would be far more equal
Politically, yes. Economically, I fear very much no.

And people care a lot less about politics if the economics are going well than if they’re going badly.
Economically England is utterly screwed courtesy of Brexit. The outcome visible is doubling down. You will have to forgive my assumption that if the English don’t think backing down is worth it, the Scots won’t either. And they will have regional support from the EU.

Instead, the UK government appears to be pouring money into track and trace that was not fit for purpose.

Ireland was not well off post independence and the trade war did not help. But the only people suggesting returning to the UK are British supporters of Brexit.

In short: Countries which got themselves out from under Westminster’s care tend not to want to go back, regardless. Even those countries that didn’t want independence in the first place, cf Malta which voted for full integration to the UK in 1956 but which was made independent 8 years later.

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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by nekomatic » Mon Jul 04, 2022 11:11 am

Right, but trade with rUK is a much bigger % of the Scottish economy than trade with the EU is of the UK economy. If Brexit has screwed us then Scotland could escape that by leaving the UK and rejoining the EU (or its CU/SM), but at a much higher cost in lost trade with rUK. The grim irony is that Scotland leaving the UK would knock back any chance of either the UK moving back towards alignment with the EU CU/SM, or the sort of political reform that might have allayed Scotland’s issues with UK government.

It’s up to the Scots of course, and if that’s what they decide after an honest referendum then good luck to them.
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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by lpm » Mon Jul 04, 2022 1:21 pm

Have these idiots decided what currency they're going to have yet?

That was their key disaster last time. They never looked plausible economically and looked foolish whenever it was raised.

They must not have a referendum until they decide the currency question. It's for their own good.
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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by snoozeofreason » Mon Jul 04, 2022 2:24 pm

lpm wrote:
Mon Jul 04, 2022 1:21 pm
Have these idiots decided what currency they're going to have yet?

That was their key disaster last time. They never looked plausible economically and looked foolish whenever it was raised.

They must not have a referendum until they decide the currency question. It's for their own good.
So far as I am aware, the latest position on this is the one set out by the Sustainable Growth Commission that Sturgeon set up in 2016.
3.203 The Commission recommends that the currency of an independent Scotland should remain
the pound sterling for a possibly extended transition period.

3.204 A future Scottish Government should put in place the arrangements and financial
infrastructure that would support a move to an independent Scottish currency at such time
as this was considered appropriate for the Scottish economy.

3.205 What happens with respect to currency the day before an independence vote would
happen the day after and continue to happen until such time as the elected Scottish
Government seeks to do something differently.

...
This might have a bearing on EU accession. The EU has said that it would be open to a request for accession by an independent Scotland but that negotiations on accession could not begin until after the separation of Scotland from the UK is complete (a process that would take years, rather than weeks or months), and that Scotland would then have to follow the same accession process as other candidates such as Albania, Montenegro, Moldova, and Ukraine. Even without the additional complications imposed by the currency, that would probably rule out accession any time this decade. Continued use of the pound adds further difficulty because it is unlikely that Scotland would be able to acceed without its own central bank or a formal link to some other EU country's central bank (the issue came up in the context of the 2014 referendum and was problematic at the time, even though the entire UK was still in the EU).
In six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. The human body was knocked up pretty late on the Friday afternoon, with a deadline looming. How well do you expect it to work?

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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by lpm » Mon Jul 04, 2022 2:47 pm

Ah. Good approach. "Let's leave the sinking ship but tie our boat to it".
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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by snoozeofreason » Mon Jul 04, 2022 3:14 pm

lpm wrote:
Mon Jul 04, 2022 2:47 pm
Ah. Good approach. "Let's leave the sinking ship but tie our boat to it".
And continue to pay the mortgage on the sinking ship. One issue that seems to have received very little attention so far is debt and borrowing. An independent Scotland, in order to look respectable, would need to accept some kind of responsibility for some part the national debt accrued by the UK prior to independence. The proposal set out by the Sustainable Growth Commission is that an independent Scotland would make annual "Solidarity Payments" of around £3 billion to the rUK in order to discharge that responsibility (that's their offer anyway, I would guess that the rUK might hold out for an arrangement that imposed greater costs and risks on Scotland).

And then, of course, Scotland would need to borrow on its own behalf and, as a small country, with limited track record, it would probably find itself paying higher interest rates than the rUK, at a time when interest rates are rising anyway.
In six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. The human body was knocked up pretty late on the Friday afternoon, with a deadline looming. How well do you expect it to work?

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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by temptar » Mon Jul 04, 2022 3:58 pm

nekomatic wrote:
Mon Jul 04, 2022 11:11 am
Right, but trade with rUK is a much bigger % of the Scottish economy than trade with the EU is of the UK economy. If Brexit has screwed us then Scotland could escape that by leaving the UK and rejoining the EU (or its CU/SM), but at a much higher cost in lost trade with rUK. The grim irony is that Scotland leaving the UK would knock back any chance of either the UK moving back towards alignment with the EU CU/SM, or the sort of political reform that might have allayed Scotland’s issues with UK government.

It’s up to the Scots of course, and if that’s what they decide after an honest referendum then good luck to them.
Cf Ireland.

The UK is not moving back towards the EU any time soon. Your current government is hell bent on vandalising any chance of that. And to be perfectly blunt about it, there is no awareness of any need for political reform in England. The Tories are happy with the idea that they can stay in power for ever.

Scotland is not going to see reform within the Union.

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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Jul 04, 2022 4:03 pm

snoozeofreason wrote:
Mon Jul 04, 2022 2:24 pm
lpm wrote:
Mon Jul 04, 2022 1:21 pm
Have these idiots decided what currency they're going to have yet?

That was their key disaster last time. They never looked plausible economically and looked foolish whenever it was raised.

They must not have a referendum until they decide the currency question. It's for their own good.
So far as I am aware, the latest position on this is the one set out by the Sustainable Growth Commission that Sturgeon set up in 2016.
3.203 The Commission recommends that the currency of an independent Scotland should remain
the pound sterling for a possibly extended transition period.

3.204 A future Scottish Government should put in place the arrangements and financial
infrastructure that would support a move to an independent Scottish currency at such time
as this was considered appropriate for the Scottish economy.

3.205 What happens with respect to currency the day before an independence vote would
happen the day after and continue to happen until such time as the elected Scottish
Government seeks to do something differently.

...
This might have a bearing on EU accession. The EU has said that it would be open to a request for accession by an independent Scotland but that negotiations on accession could not begin until after the separation of Scotland from the UK is complete (a process that would take years, rather than weeks or months), and that Scotland would then have to follow the same accession process as other candidates such as Albania, Montenegro, Moldova, and Ukraine. Even without the additional complications imposed by the currency, that would probably rule out accession any time this decade. Continued use of the pound adds further difficulty because it is unlikely that Scotland would be able to acceed without its own central bank or a formal link to some other EU country's central bank (the issue came up in the context of the 2014 referendum and was problematic at the time, even though the entire UK was still in the EU).
Another complication is that is if Scotland wanted to join the Euro it would first need to follow the convergence process which includes having a currency which is pegged to the Euro via the ERM. Which isn't going to happen if it is using the UK pound. New EU members are supposed commit themselves to joining the Euro (though the EU has been very flexible with Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic and Hungary). Accession negotiations would be interesting if Scotland had no prospect of meeting the convergence criteria.

As with everything else the costs of independence may well be worth paying. Some peoples endured lengthy wars of national liberation in order to attain self-determination. But avoiding the tradeoffs involved in independence is just a Scottish version of cakeism, bannockism perhaps.

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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by TopBadger » Mon Jul 04, 2022 4:10 pm

temptar wrote:
Mon Jul 04, 2022 3:58 pm
there is no awareness of any need for political reform in England. The Tories are happy with the idea that they can stay in power for ever.

Scotland is not going to see reform within the Union.
What reform would even make Scotland happy? They already have an outsize number of seats for their share of the vote meaning they have much greater representation than say the LD's or Greens.
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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by EACLucifer » Mon Jul 04, 2022 4:27 pm

TopBadger wrote:
Mon Jul 04, 2022 4:10 pm
temptar wrote:
Mon Jul 04, 2022 3:58 pm
there is no awareness of any need for political reform in England. The Tories are happy with the idea that they can stay in power for ever.

Scotland is not going to see reform within the Union.
What reform would even make Scotland happy? They already have an outsize number of seats for their share of the vote meaning they have much greater representation than say the LD's or Greens.
I've got to admit I'm beginning to be reminded of some of the discussions about the American senate, where people insist on defending the current system because of course each state should have the same representation, never mind that that means the Dakotas (combined population approx 1.64 million) have twice as much say as California (population 39.35 million), meaning that voters in the Dakotas have twelve times as much power to choose senators than voters in California.

And if you think the Tories in power forever is remotely certain, perhaps consider recent polling, opinions of the party and by-election results?

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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by snoozeofreason » Mon Jul 04, 2022 4:35 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Mon Jul 04, 2022 4:03 pm
Another complication is that is if Scotland wanted to join the Euro it would first need to follow the convergence process which includes having a currency which is pegged to the Euro via the ERM. Which isn't going to happen if it is using the UK pound. New EU members are supposed commit themselves to joining the Euro (though the EU has been very flexible with Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic and Hungary). Accession negotiations would be interesting if Scotland had no prospect of meeting the convergence criteria.

As with everything else the costs of independence may well be worth paying. Some peoples endured lengthy wars of national liberation in order to attain self-determination. But avoiding the tradeoffs involved in independence is just a Scottish version of cakeism, bannockism perhaps.
Johnson is clearly a risk taker, and I wonder if he might be tempted to take a punt and offer Sturgeon a referendum, in the expectation that he would win it, and thus genuinely settle the issue for a generation. Opinion polls in Scotland have, with one or two exceptions, consistently shown a majority against independence for the last year or so. Of course things would change during a referendum campaign, and the independence movement has some very campaignable issues - particularly Scotland being dragged out of the EU against its will, the untrustworthiness of the Westminster government in general, and of Johnson in particular. But those issues have been aired almost nightly for years now, so any minds that are likely to be swayed by them have probably already been swayed. The issues that haven't been aired so thoroughly are all the messy points of detail - currency, debt, the complexity and timescale of EU accession, the creation of a new land border and so on - which might play well for the Better Together lot if they use them sensibly.

Of course, as you say, there will be many voters who think that those issues represent short-term problems that are worth facing in order to achieve the goal of independence. But those will probably be voters who have already made their minds up in favour of independence, rather than the fainter-hearted members of the electorate who need to be won over.
In six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. The human body was knocked up pretty late on the Friday afternoon, with a deadline looming. How well do you expect it to work?

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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by nekomatic » Tue Jul 05, 2022 7:13 am

temptar wrote:
Mon Jul 04, 2022 3:58 pm
there is no awareness of any need for political reform in England. The Tories are happy with the idea that they can stay in power for ever.

Scotland is not going to see reform within the Union.
If we just take the biggest political reform i.e. proportional representation, there’s plenty of awareness of the need for it thanks very much, including at every level of the Labour Party short of the actual leadership. Obviously Tory turkeys are never going to start wrapping presents and learning the words to Good King Wenceslas , but the campaign to persuade Labour as an entity that frequent participation in a governing coalition would be preferable to almost-permanent opposition is live and gathering support.
TopBadger wrote:
Mon Jul 04, 2022 4:10 pm
What reform would even make Scotland happy? They already have an outsize number of seats for their share of the vote meaning they have much greater representation than say the LD's or Greens.
It doesn’t matter how many seats you have if neither you nor anyone who thinks like you ever get to be part of the government. I think you’ll find the Greens aren’t happy with that either.
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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by Bird on a Fire » Tue Jul 05, 2022 9:41 pm

snoozeofreason wrote:
Mon Jul 04, 2022 4:35 pm
Johnson is clearly a risk taker, and I wonder if he might be tempted to take a punt and offer Sturgeon a referendum, in the expectation that he would win it, and thus genuinely settle the issue for a generation. Opinion polls in Scotland have, with one or two exceptions, consistently shown a majority against independence for the last year or so. Of course things would change during a referendum campaign, and the independence movement has some very campaignable issues - particularly Scotland being dragged out of the EU against its will, the untrustworthiness of the Westminster government in general, and of Johnson in particular. But those issues have been aired almost nightly for years now, so any minds that are likely to be swayed by them have probably already been swayed. The issues that haven't been aired so thoroughly are all the messy points of detail - currency, debt, the complexity and timescale of EU accession, the creation of a new land border and so on - which might play well for the Better Together lot if they use them sensibly.
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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by Woodchopper » Sat Jul 16, 2022 2:03 am

Rishi Sunak will circumvent Holyrood to implement key policies if he becomes prime minister because "we cannot trust the SNP to act in the best interests of the Scottish people", his most prominent supporter north of the border has said.
https://twitter.com/kieranpandrews/stat ... DVvsVApyoA

Something that if implemented would be a very powerful argument for independence.

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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by tom p » Mon Jul 18, 2022 3:16 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Sat Jul 16, 2022 2:03 am
Rishi Sunak will circumvent Holyrood to implement key policies if he becomes prime minister because "we cannot trust the SNP to act in the best interests of the Scottish people", his most prominent supporter north of the border has said.
https://twitter.com/kieranpandrews/stat ... DVvsVApyoA

Something that if implemented would be a very powerful argument for independence.
Either that or it might drive Scots who have recently voted for the SNP in Westminster elections to switch to Labour in an attempt to get the tories out

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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by lpm » Wed Nov 23, 2022 10:01 am

Ha ha Scotland, you have no power, just stick to arranging the bin days.
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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by discovolante » Wed Nov 23, 2022 10:24 am

Tsk tsk lpm, the supreme Court was answering a different question to the thread title. If brexit has multiple threads (for good reason) then so can scottish independence.

Anyway that's my busybodying done for this morning.
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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by lpm » Wed Nov 23, 2022 10:36 am

discovolante wrote:
Wed Nov 23, 2022 10:24 am
Tsk tsk lpm, the supreme Court was answering a different question to the thread title. If brexit has multiple threads (for good reason) then so can scottish independence.
There's not going to be scottish independence. So that would be like having multiple threads on other non-existent things, like unicorns.
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Re: Should Scotland be independent?

Post by discovolante » Wed Nov 23, 2022 10:36 am

I've moved replies to a more relevant topic, here: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=815. I have made this decision unilaterally, without seeking the consent of the other mods, in solidarity with the Scottish people.
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