Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
One of the most important things you need to understand if you’re going to grapple with the issues is the terminology. Devolution means something entirely different than independence or separation. Devolution is the authorising of the Scottish Parliament to exercise powers that remain held sovereign by the Westminster parliament. This is what was voted for in 1998 and which has been modified several times since.
What is at issue here is not devolution and the SNP and its supporters are not devolutionists. The vast majority of Scottish voters continue to support devolution as a concept. Independence is about creating a wholly sovereign Scottish nation state.
Support for separating Scotland from the U.K. is being driven by the febrile atmosphere around, first, Brexit, which is as yet unresolved, allowing the usual suspects to keep claiming they told us so (even though it being unresolved necessarily makes that untrue) and Covid, which has allowed Nicola Sturgeon to conduct a daily, live party political broadcast on national TV during which she has delivered essentially the same message as the Tories have for England, but in a way that makes her look caring and vulnerable in contrast to bumbling Boris, who is already widely disliked this side of the border.
There is no substance to the poll shift because the fundamentals haven’t changed since 2014, and I say that fully aware of the EU issue. The SNP has been allowed to get away with portraying the EU as a preferred partner over England despite cold hard reality. Size isn’t important, it’s what you do with it - and the single market of the U.K. is far more significant to Scotland than that of the EU. It doesn’t matter how many millions more people there are in the EU single market if they’re not buying your stuff, and you don’t make enough stuff they might want to buy anyway.
Scottish economic activity services its own public sector, the U.K. public sector, its own domestic commercial sector and the rest of the UK’s commercial sector. A significant chunk of that would be catastrophically damaged by wrenching it out of the U.K. - far, far worse than the worst doomsday scenarios postulated for the UK’s exit from the EU single market. None of these issues are being given any serious consideration at the moment, and nor would they unless an independence referendum were to be held. The SNP has the luxury of making its case without actually having to back it up, and hence we are where we are.
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Thanks for your considered reply, Chris.
Sorry, I meant independence not devolution, more haste and less speed on my part.
I get the economic arguments but I wonder if the EU argument for Scotland is non-financial too. You can work anywhere in the EU, you can study anywhere in the EU, your ambitions aren't confined by the island you were born on, etc.