Yet another Scottish push for independence : The UK is better together

SCOTTISH First Minister Nicola Sturgeon last week took a huge political risk by pushing for a new independence referendum next year. 

The tragedy is that, despite her understandable disappointment at the 2016 Brexit vote, and the many flaws of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government, she is leading Scotland plus the wider United Kingdom, down a potential political impasse which will probably weaken all parties given that their future is better together.  

For while most administrations in Europe have full agendas at the moment with cost-of-living crises, the pandemic, plus the war in Ukraine, the referendum risks becoming a distraction that Scotland and the wider UK could do without, at present. While fierce debate rages within Scotland on the merits of independence, what is more widely accepted is that the wider UK would be damaged by this outcome. For instance, losing the Scottish tax base could lead to further budgetary cuts to the armed forces. Moreover, the UK’s large overseas aid budget and extensive network of diplomatic and trade missions will also be impacted. Together with military cutbacks, this will undermine both its hard and soft power. There is also a significant prospect that Scottish independence would weaken the bonds between England, Northern Ireland and Wales, especially post-Brexit. It is perhaps Northern Ireland that poses the greatest challenges here given the significant opposition to Brexit with the country voting strongly to remain in the European Union, plus also the Stormont elections in May which saw the nationalist Sinn Féin coming first for the first time ever. All this underscores that Scottish independence, combined with Brexit, would further undercut the domestic underpinnings of the UK’s international influence. They threaten a double whammy undermining the sizeable political, military and economic force that the UK has preserved on the world stage in the post-war period. Moreover, Sturgeon is charting her pathway toward a new referendum (which will need to be adjudicated by the UK Supreme Court) despite the uncertainties that Scotland itself would benefit, significantly, from independence. This is not least given the difference between tax revenues and public spending in the country -- which it can better stomach as part of the union with England, Wales and Northern Ireland.  Moreover, Scotland’s trade within the UK’s internal market is worth around four times their trade with the EU.  Further, the EU has confirmed that an independent Scotland would not have an automatic right to join the Brussels-based club.  So such an accession may, in fact, require potentially complex, protracted negotiation with the terms on which Edinburgh might accede significantly less favourable than those that the UK negotiated.