The SNP’s failure to win an overall majority in Holyrood
was a setback for them and their cause. It will be very hard indeed for
Scottish nationalists to push for a second independence referendum in the next
five years. Importantly, in the present context, this is the case even if the UK
as a whole decides to vote to leave the EU. If that happened there is no
question that the SNP would complain and kick up a fuss. But there would be
very little that they could do. They just don’t have the numbers. Too few Scots
support independence at the moment and the Scottish economy is too dependent on
subsidy from the UK.
Despite all the scare stories it remains the case
that leaving the EU would be relatively straightforward for the UK. All we
would have to do is revert to the norm. Most nation states in the world are
like Australia, Japan, Iceland and Switzerland. These countries trade freely
with the rest of the world, but their own parliaments are supreme. The laws
these parliaments make are not subordinate to the laws made by unelected bureaucrats.
They don’t allow countries they trade with to tell them what to do. Fundamentally, Brexit supporters are simply saying that the UK can become once more what we
had been for centuries until we joined the then Common Market. The scare stories from our opponents amount
to the claim that the UK cannot revert to being a country like Australia. In
the end what’s scary about being like Australia? Nothing at all.
The thing that makes Brexit relatively
straightforward is that the UK already is a nation state. The arguments that
were used in the Scottish independence referendum against Scottish nationalism
simply do not apply. Guess what if the UK leaves the EU we get to keep the
pound.
No-one knows anything about economics in the short
term. Almost no-one predicted the 2008 economic crisis. We cannot predict what
will happen to the UK economy in the next twelve months let alone the next
twenty years. The future has not happened yet. What happens depends on things
we cannot control, but also to an extent on the choices that we make. There
will be a recession some time relatively soon if we leave the EU. But there
will also be a recession if we stay. We know this because recessions are
cyclical. All you can do is make sound economic decisions for the long term.
The core EU countries share a single currency. In
the next few years they will face a choice. Either the Eurozone will become
something like a single nation state or it will break up. Currency union
requires political union and fiscal union. Money has to be transferred from the
richer parts of the union to the poorer parts. At the moment the Eurozone
simply isn’t working. Countries like Italy have had to endure long term
recession with no hope of finding growth. The idea that leaving the EU causes
recession is preposterous. The EU itself is a recession machine.
In order to work properly the Eurozone will have to
come much closer together and gain a federal structure. Alternatively it could
break up. No-one knows which of these two options will happen. My guess is that
the Eurozone will become something like a single federal nation state. Breaking
up would be too traumatic. We learned that last summer. If Grexit were going to
happen, it would have already happened.
The Eurozone is going to have to make some tough
decisions in any event. German tax payers are going to have to pay for Italian
debts. Naturally they don’t want to. They would far rather that the UK had to
pay too. It is for this reason that staying in the EU is a long term threat to
the UK. There are benefits of sharing a single currency, but we don’t share
them, yet even so we will end up paying the cost of Eurozone unification.
The only way the Eurozone countries can gain
political union is if the majority can overrule the minority. The idea that the
UK can remain in the EU while not sharing the costs of political union is to
misunderstand the nature of the EU. Whatever guarantees are made turn out to be
worthless a few years down the line. What’s more there will be nothing we can
do, because we will be outvoted. If we choose to remain in the EU, we choose to
make our laws and our parliament subordinate.
Likewise we don’t share the benefits of being in the
Schengen zone. Recently we have been discovering that there are costs too. The
EU cannot control its external borders. If at some point in the future the EU
decides that everyone has to take their share of those who take advantage of
the EU’s open border policy, what will we be able to do to stop this? Nothing
at all. By choosing to remain in the EU we choose in the end to be outvoted on
anything and everything. That’s what political union means.
The EU is one crisis away from moving decisively
towards political union. That crisis may come with the next global recession, which
cannot be far off now. The reason for all the scare stories by the global establishment
is that they fear that Brexit would give an example to countries like Italy and
Spain. What they fear is that the UK shows that there is life outside the EU
and indeed that it is better.
But Brexit might also be of huge benefit to the EU.
In the next few years while they try to come closer together, what is going to
be their stumbling block? It will be the UK. It’s hard to imagine a UK
government being pleased at being outvoted. It's equally hard to imagine the
British people being grateful that we have to do things we don’t want to do for
the sake of European unity. But if we were not there, if we were not always a
hindrance, it is possible to imagine the European project succeeding.
Once you understand what the EU is going to become,
then the result of last week’s Scottish parliament election becomes ever more
important. The crucial thing is that there is no longer a threat that Scotland
will try to leave the UK if we vote to leave the EU. Pro UK Scots can then vote
for Brexit knowing that the SNP can do nothing about it.
But won’t this just store up a grievance for the
future? Well it’s not as if the SNP will cease having a grievance in any event.
But it’s vital to realise that leaving the EU makes Scottish independence must
harder to realise. If you don’t believe me then perhaps you will believe this
from the site Wings over Scotland.
It’s not accidental that the SNP has for a long time supported the EU. The reason fundamentally is that it makes independence more palatable and less of a shock. The whole SNP argument is that independence would be a relatively minor change. All of the things that we like about the UK would continue, but Scotland would be independent. This can be described as independence light. If on the other hand it turns out that we would be voting for independence heavy, the likelihood of the SNP winning the argument becomes much smaller. If the UK leaves the EU Scottish independence becomes very heavy indeed.
I have made this point on a number of occasions, but
it’s worth reiterating. Imagine five years from now. The UK has left the EU.
Things are going fairly well. The Scottish nationalists still want independence
and they want to join the EU. Well the EU five years from now will most
probably be still more integrated. Moreover the condition for joining the EU is
that you promise to join the Euro and Schengen. There is zero chance that new
members will be given any sort of rebate on their subscription. Will Scots
really prefer to join a United States of Europe, where they will actually have no
more independence than Texas? The Scottish parliament in those circumstances
would lose power rather than gain it.
At present 64% of Scottish trade is
with the rest of the UK and only 14% is with the EU. Would
Scottish voters really want to leave the trading block (the UK) with which we
do most of our trade in order to join another with which we hardly trade at
all? That would be senseless.
There could be no question whatsoever of Scotland
keeping the pound under those circumstances. The idea of a currency union
between a country that’s in the EU with one that isn’t is preposterous. Anyway we just learned the lesson of the Euro that currency union requires political union. So in order to join the EU Scotland would
first have to set up its own currency and then join the Euro. Would Scottish
voters really go for that? It would be like first changing your money into dollars and then into Yen. That's a really good way of losing money.
If Scotland were in Schengen, while the UK was
outside the EU, it’s hard to imagine that we could maintain an open border. If
there were an open border between Gretna and Berwick then anyone who got into
the EU would immediately be able to go to London. But it would be precisely to
stop this that the UK left the EU in the first place.
The failure last week of the SNP to win a majority
in the Scottish parliament gives us a chance to kick Scottish nationalism in
the teeth. They have had a setback we can turn it into a rout. The main reason
why I support Brexit is that it makes Scottish independence so heavy that it
becomes a dead issue. We will face challenges if we vote to leave the EU, but
we will face them together and that will unite our country as such challenges
always have. It may be the only thing that will bring back our unity.
The alternative is that we vote to stay in the EU.
Five years from now perhaps the SNP will be ready for another push for
independence. Who is to say they won’t have a majority then? Who is to say that
the UK government will not feel compelled to give them another referendum? Who is
to say they won’t win next time? Now the SNP are at their weakest. The Scottish
economy is in trouble and dependent on UK subsidy. The condition for the
possibility of Scottish independence is UK membership of the EU. Destroy the
Scottish nationalist dream before it turns into our nightmare.
