Doesn’t this just emphasise that the UK is not a nation state?

‘Country’ is an informal term. ‘Nation state’ is weirdly specific and doesn’t even apply!

Yeh I agree there's nothing about the term nation state that applies...all the more if Scotland has a separate heritage & tradition. I think the problem is less about pretentiousness though. A "nation" isn't necessarily something with a border or a language...it's a tradition of governance within a special kind of community. But at the same time, what we call a nation in the "global power" sense is also different. At no point previously in human history would we think of one State as having the ability to unilaterally control different aspects of other States like the European powers did when they conquered the world. And I'd say the current structure of the international money systems which allows the U.S. treasury to freeze foreign bank accounts is not typical of a mere "State" I'd say there should be another world entirely.

> Doesn’t this just emphasise that the UK is not a nation state?

I should've said sovereign state. Let's not get caught up in semantics.

>Doesn’t this just emphasise that the UK is not a nation state?

What would you use to refer to UK then? Because if Scotland is a country, and Scotland is a part of UK, that feels kinda weird to call an entity composed of multiple countries a country.

Well certainly not 'nation state' of all things. The UK literally has 'the Nations'. And the US literally has the 'Native Nations'. By their own description and common sense they aren't nation states.

Does the 'United...' part of their names not give it away?

Call them 'sovereign states' if you want to mean something independent on a global scale.

A group of united nation-states of the British isles.