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Scotland’s Independence

Scotland’s Independence

(Bloomberg) -- Scotland claims credit for inventing the telephone, television and penicillin, not to mention modern economics. Its people built ships, bridges and locomotives for the world and, more recently, Grand Theft Auto. Scotland is also home to one of Europe’s most prominent independence movements. In a 2014 referendum on whether it should break away to establish the continent’s newest nation-state, voters chose to remain in the three-centuries-old United Kingdom with England and Wales by 55 percent to 45 percent. But rather than settling the matter, the outcome fired up the nationalists on the losing side. They have since gathered strength and numbers, especially since the U.K. voted to leave the European Union. Now they’re demanding a second vote on independence.

The Situation

While the U.K. as a whole opted to split with the EU by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent, 62 percent of Scottish voters in the June 2016 referendum favored remaining in the bloc. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who runs Scotland’s semi-autonomous government, says Brexit doesn’t reflect the will of most Scots. She wants a second independence plebiscite by 2021, though realistically she may have to wait. She says it’s up to Scotland — like last time — to decide when to hold another referendum, but the U.K. needs to give permission and the government in London has so far refused to sanction one. Sturgeon’s pro-independence Scottish National Party is a formidable electoral machine with membership now at about 125,000, or about 1 in 43 people in Scotland. While the party lost some seats in the 2017 U.K. general election, it’s still the third-largest group in Westminster and crushed its rivals in the May 2019 European Parliament elections by opposing Brexit.

The Background

The Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, known as Holyrood, was restored in 1999, with the U.K. government relinquishing oversight of education, transportation and health. The momentum of the secessionist campaign forced the U.K.’s main political parties to promise Scotland an accelerated plan for more powers to help keep it in the union. Sturgeon has challenged the U.K.’s austerity measures and sought enhanced financial powers to protect the health service and free university tuition for Scots. The SNP lawmakers in London also want to remove Britain’s nuclear weapons from a deep sea loch in western Scotland. Independence movements are often about ethnic or linguistic splits — Scotland has been an inspiration to separatists in the Spanish region of Catalonia — but just as frequently they’re about economics. The U.K. was formed by the Act of Union in 1707, as Scotland faced financial ruin after a failed project in Panama. Even after all the years of intertwining, the distinctions between the nations go beyond kilts and bagpipes. Scotland has 5.4 million people — less than a tenth of the U.K. total — yet it has a separate legal system, its own soccer league, its own banknotes and a Gaelic television channel. Now, increasingly, politics are what set Scots apart from the rest of Britain.

Scotland’s Independence

The Argument

Sturgeon is framing another vote on independence as Scotland’s right to choose which path it wants to take: to follow the rest of the U.K. out of the EU and likely out of the European single market, or to break away and keep its access. That choice, she says, needs to be made before Brexit damages the economy. The last referendum forced politicians on both sides of Hadrian’s Wall to map out what a stand-alone Scotland would look like. The debate focused on whether Scotland should pursue its own distinct economic and political path apart from the U.K., and whether it could keep the British pound as its currency. Since Scotland’s economy would be underpinned by North Sea oil, opponents of independence say the plunge in offshore revenue from 2012 to 2016 proved voters were right to decide that there was too much risk in going it alone (though revenues have rebounded somewhat since). But their case that Scotland needed to remain part of a larger entity that has a greater say in the world has been turned on its head by Brexit. With Britain headed for the EU exit door, the status quo is no longer an option. For its part, EU chiefs have said Scotland’s voice deserves to be heard. 

Scotland’s Independence

The Reference Shelf

  • A Q&A on why Scotland's independence is back on the table and a  QuickTake on Britain’s vote to leave the EU.
  • “What Scotland Thinks” blog from John Curtice, a professor of politics at Strathclyde University.
  • Businessweek: Britain’s next prime minister has probably already lost Scotland
  • Scottish National Party’s website and its manifesto for the 2019 European Parliament election.
  • Scotland made its case for independence in a series of government reports and the U.K. published a collection of research papers.
  • Research on independence referendums from Matt Qvortrup, a researcher at Cranfield University. 
  • “How Scots Invented the Modern World,” a book by Arthur Herman, a former professor of history at Georgetown University.
  • QuickTake: Why Catalonia is still fighting a battle that has divided Spain.

To contact the editor responsible for this QuickTake: Leah Harrison at lharrison@bloomberg.net, Andy Reinhardt

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