Chris

That would be a decent précis of the Nat argument - plus, it neatly encompasses the typical evasion you get from them when they talk about Scotland making “different choices” without going into any sort of detail about exactly what those choices would look like.

Imagine, though, the arguments made against Brexit with regards to our loss of unfettered access to the EU single market. Now imagine those arguments made against Scotland’s loss of access to the single market within the UK. Again, standard Nat evasion is to point out that rejoining the EU would give Scotland access to a much larger single market, however (leaving aside the serious structural barriers to an independent Scotland joining the EU any time soon), there is an enormous difference between access to a single market and the proven ability to exploit that access. England may be a smaller market than the EU, but Scotland does vastly more trade with England than it does with the EU. Geography, history and a fully aligned economy all play their part in that.

So much of the Nat prospectus actually relies on the remaining UK rolling over and giving Scotland absolutely everything it wants in terms of access to the market and influence over monetary policy that their argument is holed below the waterline before it’s even off the slipway.