Of course there is no anti UK feeling in France. A great deal of french dream about doing the same 
But Brexit and its repercussions probably leave the EC awake at night. And they wouldn’t have any remorse throwing hundreds of billions of our and computer-generated money to Scotland or whoever the member states would allow in. More to reassure themselves than anything.
Graham wrote:
If an independent Scotland were allowed to join, Catalonia would declare independence from Spain instantly.
But that wouldn’t be recognised.
There’s a difference between Scottish independence (which would be achieved through a constitutional and legal referendum process) and Catalonia just “declaring independence”. The Spanish have already said as much: that they accept the idea of Scottish independence because it would be achieved legally.
alioth wrote:
But that wouldn’t be recognised.There’s a difference between Scottish independence (which would be achieved through a constitutional and legal referendum process) and Catalonia just “declaring independence”. The Spanish have already said as much: that they accept the idea of Scottish independence because it would be achieved legally.
‘Legal’ Scottish independence requires the UK Government granting Holyrood the power to hold a binding referendum on the subject. The UK Government has repeatedly said it is not minded to do so, viewing the 2014 referendum as having settled the issue for a generation at least. I have to say that on point of principle I agree – I am not a fan of holding repeated referenda until you get the result you want.
Sturgeon’s plan A is to make so much noise about it that the UK Government feels compelled through the realpolitik of the situation to back down and give them the go-ahead for another referendum. Ironically, the more support she has in Scotland the less likely they are to budge. If it were a bit closer (as it was in the run up to 2014) then the UK Government might be tempted to gamble on it and shut the issue down, as they did then and as Cameron tried to do with the Brexit vote.
Plan B, which has been alluded to at various times, is to interpret the legal and constitutional aspects ‘differently’ and go ahead without the nod from the UK Government. Assuming the vote comes out in favour of leaving, they might then push the realpolitik aspect even harder, or do something else. Assuming the UK Government continued to defy them, they could not leave ‘legally’. People talk about legal and constitutional processes for ‘achieving’ regional independence, but no state puts these in place such that they can be utilised against the wishes of the national government, because if it did it would be doomed to eventual break up into smaller and smaller units.
Spain obviously takes a much tougher line with Catalonia. The economics are also fundamentally different because in Spain it’s the rich part that wants to leave and in the UK it’s the poor part.
I think the bigger issue, for the UK govt, is practical implementation. Think of the new border, plus the “Nicola shopping list” which in itself is totally hilarious.
Peter wrote:
Think of the new border, plus the “Nicola shopping list” which in itself is totally hilarious.
Hadrian’s Wall still exists? Borders can be implemented quite quickly if one has to. See only how quick this happened within the Schengen community when Covid hit the fan.
The shopping list you refer to, can it be seen in some sort of form someplace?
Graham wrote:
I have to say that on point of principle I agree – I am not a fan of holding repeated referenda until you get the result you want.
Under normal circumstances I’d fully agree with you. We face this question quite often in Switzerland, where some people won’t agree with a referendum outcome and will try to overturn it with repeated, often more radical, initiatives.
However, there is a massive difference here, as Brexit against the will of the Scottish majority has created a new “raison d’ être” for a strive to independence. While it is pretty obvious that for those wishing to overturn the referendum result of 2014, Brexit is a very welcome opening, I would think that the general discord between Scotland and England has widened over this issue. Consequently the likelihood of a new referendum to pass has increased substantially.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
However, there is a massive difference here, as Brexit against the will of the Scottish majority has created a new “raison d’ être” for a strive to independence.
Actual data does not really support this statement: While in polls the general sentiment in the population has moved a bit more towards independence during Brexit (and in some polls even enough to tip it over the 50% cliff), in general there has not been a massive shift in public opinion. Even more importantly: This effect only hold for a comparatively short time of about half a year and then started to reverse.
It’s really like Swiss polling on autobahn speed limit of 80km/h, loosing and a week later a major accident with some dead happens so that the loosing group now claims “a completely different situation” and quickly wants to poll again …
Peter wrote:
NO, you wrote a personal attack. Normally these are deleted.
To be honest, you seem to push the “EU wants to punish the UK for brexit” quite a lot. You even take the UK-Norway trade deal into account, which has factually zero relevance in that respect. The UK sat on the same side of the table with the EU, now the UK sit on the opposite side, and that’s it.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
However, there is a massive difference here, as Brexit against the will of the Scottish majority has created a new “raison d’ être” for a strive to independence.
But if the result had been slightly different with a narrow win for remain, one could equally claim that the Welsh and English (which when viewed in isolation voted to leave) had been kept in the EU against their will?
It was an all-UK referendum – one adult one vote – and the only result that counted was the total voting each way, not arbitrary geographical sub-divisions viewed in isolation. Everyone knew this ahead of time. How ‘Scotland voted’ when examined in isolation has no more meaning than how the town of Cheltenham voted, or how the village of Sandford St. Martin voted. Following SNP logic, any community of any size – right down to a single individual – can cry foul on the grounds that it didn’t get the result it voted for. There did not seem to be any appetite for a complicated electoral college-type system to determine the result, and in any case how would that be fairer than one adult one vote?
@Malibuflyer has it bang on with the Swiss autobahn vote analogy, and I don’t buy the constant claims of people not knowing what they voted for or the situation having completely changed so a new vote being necessary. The population of Scotland voted to remain part of the UK in 2014, in the full knowledge that the UK leaving the EU was a distinct possibility. Likewise the UK population voted to leave the EU in 2016, whatever that process looked like and no matter how messy, unpleasant, expensive and damaging it was.
Graham wrote:
Malibuflyer has it bang on with the Swiss autobahn vote analogy, and I don’t buy the constant claims of people not knowing what they voted for or the situation having completely changed so a new vote being necessary. The population of Scotland voted to remain part of the UK in 2014, in the full knowledge that the UK leaving the EU was a distinct possibility. Likewise the UK population voted to leave the EU in 2016, whatever that process looked like and no matter how messy, unpleasant, expensive and damaging it was.
Isn’t that really not knowing what you voted for?
Airborne_Again wrote:
Isn’t that really not knowing what you voted for?
Of course, but why should it invalidate the vote or present a case for a 2nd vote? It was clear at the time that the choice was between remain (with a particular degree of certainty around what that would look like) and leave, with all the uncertainty that brings. If a choice involving unknowns is unacceptable (I’m not sure if you’re suggesting it is or not) then how could one ever choose anything other than the status quo?
We always ’don’t know what we’re voting for’ because we cannot see into the future. It is naïve of anyone to expect certainty to follow their voting choice in the context of anything political, especially referenda on major national / supra-national decisions.
