Chris

On the issue of whether or not Scotland *could* be independent ... it’s a strawman argument. Seps frequently recite the line “too wee, too poor, too stupid”, but nobody is making that argument about Scotland. Only seps are putting it forward, as a strawman they can then tear down.

The argument really is whether Scotland could continue to enjoy levels of welfare and other public spending commensurate with an economy the size of the U.K., once it is no longer in the U.K. it is very, very hard to see where the money is coming from in the brave new world nationalists like to paint. They make breezy assertions about Scotland taking control of its destiny as if that is self-evidently better, and fail to address the very real problem of a much richer southern neighbour over which it would no longer have any influence whatsoever. The Union has always been as much about forcing England to put Scotland’s interests ahead of those of other, foreign allies, which at root is why Scotland’s imperial venture at Darien went belly up.

The problem many of the most committed Nats seem to have, when you get them fulminating over Darien, is that they put it down to perfidious Albion as if it were some sort of treachery, rather than simply an independent foreign competitor state acting in its own interests and with regard to a far more important treaty it had made with a far more significant European power (Namely Spain). The debate leading up to the 2014 referendum was likewise characterised by Salmond cheerfully asserting how newly independent England, its government shorn of all obligations to treat Scotland as part of the home territory, would somehow magnanimously give Scotland a free pass on the national debt and chuck in a seat on the Bank of England’s MPC while they were at it.

All that was nonsense on sticks then, and it’s nonsense on sticks now. An independent Scotland would not exist in a vacuum, and no amount of control over its own economic levers will make up for the loss of influence over the way England is run.