(Five-minute read)
You might say that with all that is going on in the world that this question should be put on the back burner.
However, the history of humans is littered with the lives of the youth’s struggle for self-determination so the process of taking a view on this has to be impeccable if not surreally decorous.
The days of Royalty, Knights, and Lords, being ruled as a subject by the Magna Carta, and lying politicians, have long gone thanks to the Smartphone.
Data is now the king.
With baying popularism, and the coming mass migration, ( due to climate change ) a written constitution is inevitable, so why not write your own.
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Nothing is inevitable, but any view of the future of the UK must comprehend the possibility of independence for Scotland within the next decade.
Scotland would be a foreign country;
Even as a friendly one, its cooperation would have to be sought to maintain the integrity of the defense of the British Isles.
Some sort of trade border would have to be negotiated, made more fraught by the possibility of an independent Scotland re-joining the EU- another protocol.
An agreement would need to be reached as to Scotland’s share of the United Kingdom’s existing national debt burden.
The government of an independent Scotland would have a critical decision to make on its currency, but in any circumstance, it would have to set up a central bank.
Systems of governance and cultural interdependency would have to be teased apart, on everything from the national debt and Revenue and Customs databases to the BBC and artifacts held in national museums.
It is very hard to say what independence would look like, other than to say that Scotland would no longer send politicians to sit in the UK parliament in Westminster and that the UK parliament would have no say on how Scotland was governed.
How the two countries would separate themselves would be an enormous question for decision-makers on both sides of the border.
Who or what would be the Head of State of an independent Scotland?
There is no doubt that the UK’s international reputation would take a hit. A country that had turned its back on its near abroad and then fallen apart would not walk tall in international counsel.
For Northern Ireland, the UK shorn of Scotland would hardly make continued adherence to the union more attractive.
The secession of Scotland would probably accelerate the already evident trend of increasing support for the reunification of Ireland.
It would leave England, with a truculent Wales in tow, turning England into a rump state off the northwest European continent, surrounded by the EU. What sort of country would that be?
Leaving the family of the UK would mean a load of tough decisions for Scotland with either higher taxes or lower spending. The issues would range from what people would have to do to travel between the two countries – would you need a passport, for example – but also how to divide up resources like the UK’s military or power plants.
The most difficult practical issue will be European Union membership.
Will Scotland somehow stay on in the Union, or be expected to negotiate as a brand new member?
What will Scotland have to pay to – and get from – the EU Budget?
Can Scotland join without committing to joining the eurozone?
Will (say) Spain stand against Scotland joining the Union for fear of encouraging its own separatist tendencies?
In practice, (and after lots of bad-tempered meetings), an independent Scotland will end up joining the EU and NATO, and other European/international organizations.
All of this is the price of self-determination.
At present, over 60% of Scottish exports go to England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Scottish Independence would lead to the removal of nuclear weapons from Scotland and probably also the G7 and the G20 and a permanent place on the United Nations Security Council.
An independent Scotland may find it difficult to deny the same rights to those in the Orkneys and the Shetland Islands should they wish for it.
Unionism has no new songs.
Brexit has been and will remain to loosen the social contract binding the Britains union. It is reveling the Union as the English, by the English, for the English.
The Scottish question now occupies the place held by the Irish Question which still after seven hundred years of occupation has to be resolved.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
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