During an election campaign, the last thing the SNP
wants to talk about is independence. The core SNP vote is obsessed with this
and it is the primary motivation for these voters to choose the SNP. These
people will overlook the SNP’s performance in Government. Indeed, they don’t
appear to care if the SNP rules well or poorly. If only the SNP will deliver a
second referendum and if only Scottish nationalism wins that vote all will be
forgiven. But the SNP is reluctant to clearly explain what independence would
involve. Although independence is the key issue in the election for the Scottish
Parliament the present situation of the argument is not explained. We still
somehow think that it would be the same as in 2014. But it isn’t the same. It
is quite altered.
It is one thing to be in favour of EU membership and
Scottish independence in the context of 2014 when the UK was a member state. It
is something very different indeed in 2021 when the UK has left. But the
consequences of this change have not been addressed by the SNP.
If Scotland had voted for independence in 2014, it is
unlikely that the UK would have voted to leave in 2016. We would have all been too
busy trying to deal with the consequences of partitioning Britain. The idea
that Scotland would have become independent in March 2016 and the former UK
would have had a referendum on EU membership in June 2016 is unlikely at best.
We don’t know how long it would have taken an
independent Scotland to obtain EU membership. It would have had to wait until
independence to begin applying, but if the former UK had supported the
application there is no reason to suppose that it would not have eventually
succeeded. There might have been objections from countries like Spain, but
given that the former UK supported Scotland’s membership, the 2014 referendum
after all was legal, these objections would most likely have been overcome.
If both Scotland and the former UK had ended up EU
member states this would have solved many of the problems that would have
arisen from independence. There would be free movement of people between the
former UK and Scotland. There would have been no trade barriers and no need for
customs checks, because both would have been in the EU Customs Union and Single
Market. The relationship between the former UK and Scotland would have been
like that between Austria and Germany. It would have been possible to travel
between Scotland and England and hardly notice.
But this is no longer the case. The Brexit vote in
2016 changed everything for the SNP, but it has never properly addressed the
disadvantages of the UK’s leaving the EU for the cause of Scottish independence.
Many Scottish Remain voters were angry that the UK
chose to leave the EU and some of them have lent their support to the SNP as a
means of achieving EU membership for Scotland. But while the Leave Remain
argument was evenly balanced in 2016, it has decisively changed in the context
of the UK not being a member.
The SNP’s independence in Europe argument was never
really about Scotland’s relationship with places like France, but rather with
the other parts of the UK. The EU was the guarantor that life in an independent
Scotland would be much the same as now only we’d be independent. But with the
UK not being in the EU, the relationship between Scotland and the former UK
would be the relationship between a non-EU member and a member state. Worse it
would not be a relationship between say non-EU Norway and Sweden, because
Norway is part of Schengen and the Single Market. The UK is a member of
neither. The closest parallel is between Poland and Belarus.
If Scotland were in the EU and the former UK was
neither in the Single Market nor Customs Union, then a regulatory border between
Scotland and England would be inevitable. Scots could no longer rely on EU
membership to live, work and receive healthcare and benefits in England, rather
we would have to rely on whether the former UK would allow Scottish citizens
the same rights as we have today as British citizens. But leaving the EU took
away those rights from people in France and Germany. British citizens do not
now have the right to free movement in the EU. That was a consequence of
leaving. But why would the former UK give rights to Scots that it at present
does not give to Italians?
Ireland of course retains the rights of membership of
the Common Travel Area, which was set up because of Northern Ireland remaining
part of the UK after Irish independence. But we don’t know if Scotland would be
allowed to be part of the Common Travel Area. This would depend on whether
Scotland were obliged to be part of Schengen and how well or badly the divorce
negotiations went with the former UK.
It was possible to argue that EU membership for the UK
was beneficial for trade. But it is not possible to argue that it would be beneficial
for Scotland, because Scotland trades much more with the other parts of the UK
than with the EU. Trade barriers between Scotland and the former UK would not
be compensated by free trade with the EU, not least because of the geographic and
linguistic proximity of England and the fact that Scottish goods would have to
travel through England in order to reach the continent. To leave the UK to
trade freely with the EU, therefore make no sense.
What other benefits of EU membership are there? Scots
would regain free movement across the EU, but the price of this might be losing
free movement in the UK. But many more Scots live, work and study in other
parts of the UK than in the EU. We would also have to become members of the
Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy and we would regain the
subsidies that the EU used to give us. But it is hard to see that giving back
control over agriculture and fisheries and letting EU ships fish in Scottish
waters would give the Scottish Parliament more power. It would rather involve a
loss of independence.
Scots may complain about the loss of EU money, but it
would only really be a loss if Scotland were a net recipient of money from the
EU. But just as the UK contributed more to the EU than we received back, so too
would Scotland. To suppose that Scotland
would be a net recipient of EU money is to suppose that we would be
significantly worse off than the UK was when it was an EU member. But if that were
the case why would we choose to leave the UK?
Scotland in the EU would benefit from having to follow
EU law on a wide variety of issues. We would have to promise in theory to join
the Euro and we would have to accept that the goal of the EU was to bring member
states into an ever-closer union. But it is hard to see how these are compatible
with a desire for independence. If you want to see Scotland as region in a United
States of Europe in twenty or thirty years, why talk about independence and why
object to Scotland being a part of the UK?
Devolution in the UK gives Scots a more powerful Parliament
and more influence over the UK Government than we would have making up 1% of
the population of the EU.
The SNP argument in 2014 fell apart over currency.
Scots wanted to keep the pound. We still do. But it is harder to imagine that
we could keep the pound if we promised to join the Euro, not least because that
promise would entail eventually setting up a Scottish currency. Even using the
pound unilaterally would be harder if Scotland were in the EU and the former UK
were not, because monetary policy set by the Bank of England would be still
less appropriate for Scotland if we were in a different trading bloc.
Scottish voters who supported Remain must recognise
that EU membership is far less desirable for Scotland given that the UK has
left. But if EU membership is less desirable then so too is the means of
achieving it, independence. The EU has not been behaving in a particularly
attractive way since it made a catastrophic mess of vaccinating its citizens. Nicola
Sturgeon is unwilling to accept that Brexit has in this respect been
beneficial. But there is no question that if the UK had remained a member of
the EU, we would have been part of the EU’s vaccination programme. We could
have theoretically decided to go it alone, but no EU member state did, and nor
would we have.
But if the EU is unable to deliver vaccines to its
citizens, it is worth readdressing whether the EU model is the best way to decide
issues such as fisheries and agriculture, trade and industry. Is the EU the
best way for countries in Europe to interact?
Scotland is a net recipient of UK taxpayer’s money. We
receive more from the UK than we pay in. But we would be a net contributor to
the EU, and we would have to put up trade barriers between Scotland and our
largest trading partner the UK. We would do all this to be ruled by qualified
majority voting in the EU with the prospect of losing our independence in the
decades to come.
Whichever way we voted in 2016, the benefits of EU membership for Scotland cannot possibly outweigh the disadvantages, given that the UK is not a member. The argument for independence is decisively worse now than it was in 2014. If Scottish voters understood this, they would decisively reject the SNP too.