I could try to find some links on that if you like, but the way I remember it is that the EU was against the idea of Scotland going it alone and EU officials actively worked to discourage any ideas that an independent Scottland would be received with open arms.
But of course, that was before Brexit and while the UK was still an EU member whose national interests were taken into consideration by other members (because EU). This is not the case now.
Still from memory -sorry for that- but when the last UK MEPs were making their parting speeches at the EU Parliament, one Scottish MEP finished his with an impassioned plea to the EU to not forget Scotland. Which I interpreted as a plea to make it easier for Scotland to join the EU if it ever gained independence from the UK.
But otherwise, Scotland was part of a former EU member, I imagine they would not necessarily use the pound (a Scottish pound would probably be weak), so they'd probably adopt the euro in a short while, there is a ton of cultural affinity with the EU, probably more than for England in some regards, etc.
Scotland for sure could get an accelerated membership process if they do decide to become independent. They could even start some of the paperwork or at least contacts before they gain the official independence, I imagine.
Before Brexit the only blocker was a unilateral declaration of independence, which will not happen. Scottish independence will most likely be a mutual separation.
And after that the Scottish budget will be hammered hard so I imagine they'd definitely want to join the EU ASAP to get help. Access to huge markets for exports, cheaper imports, EU funding for developing regions, etc.
But all that was at its apex years ago now it’s more stable.
And we have "God's Own Country"[4] which is a phrase but does have an independence movement[5], and a region (Mercia) which hasn't been a place since 527-897CE but still has an independence movement[6].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Country
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Country
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God's_Own_Country#Yorkshire
[5] https://i-yorkshire.com/yorkshire-independence/
[6] https://independentmercia.org/declaration-of-independence/
[1]:https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-61791994
[2]:https://news.sky.com/story/a-mess-unrealistic-doctrine-of-ne...
[3]:https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56400751
[4]:https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/11/uk/scottish-court-uk-parliame...
There dan also be an anti-rational or anti-scientific aspect. And as an old history prof lectured, the political spectrum is not linear it’s a circle. The far ends turn out to be the same part of the circle. Power for the in group and problems for the rest. Read animal farm.
Being "on the right" is about policy. Someone on the right believes in democracy, freedom, capitalism, human rights, etc. They hold policy positions such as lower taxes, controlled immigration, and greater punishment for criminals. These policy positions put them in opposition to those on the left.
Someone "on the right" is not a fascist, and is not nearer being a fascist than someone "on the left". Fascism means the abolition of human rights, democracy, free capitalism, and everything "the right" believes in.
It's common to cherry pick little policy points from previous facsict states and use that as evidence that the right is facsict. "Hitler limited immigration, the Tories want to limit immigration, the Tories are fascist!!!!". That makes no sense. "Mao raised taxes, Biden wants to raise taxes, Biden is literally a communist!!!".
Facsism is not about policy. It is a fundamentally different, totalitarian, way to structure a society.
How about: leaders <- government <- owners <-> workers -> government -> leaders. Which I can’t format in a circle. And the presence or absence of “for all” can be a tell about where on the political spectrum people or groups sit.
It’s generally accepted that the red states sit to the right vs. the blue states and the us sits to the right of Western Europe. There’s a spectrum of countries as there’s a spectrum of states (or provinces in Canada). The “political middle ground” can be constructed from this set and then decorated with secular or religions states from elsewhere throughout.
In what world? :-))
I made no such argument. Fasicm isn't associated with the actual, modern day right wing of politics.
This is why "far right" is such a slippery and nefarious term. It allows you to conflate right wing politics and facsism.
If you think the Tories are fascist, then make that argument. Don't hide behind this newspeak.
There are many possible axes to divide politics, in many (but not necessarily all) conservative politics and fascism tends to be projected to similar spaces and Soviet-style communism and socially-progressive politics to the same.
Once you start looking at multiple of these at the same time, things do tend to look quite different.
The Chinese Communist Party has all the stuff you listed here.
This has indeed happened.
1) https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/old-poster-sparks...
If you look at various media outlets, their own definition of far-left or far-right varies so much that you can end up being labeled as both very easily.
Another issue would be cultural aspects and you will find what is far-left or far-right will vary country to country and with that. Subjective labels have and always will be a can-of-worms.
The Tory party has absorbed the UKIP/EDL/etc vote. It rules by populism alone at this stage.
> By any reasonable definition England is currently governed by the far right.
These can both be true, IMHO you're talking about different things - 1) the position of the electorate and 2) the position of the government.
And the growing gap between them.
Rwanda is a country with a recent successful history of rehabilitating refugees, and the president reached out to offer a home to those who need it.
For geography alone, the UK would be a better destination for the flood of Ukrainian refugees coming in, where as African asylum seekers would be better served by a country close to home.
As a member of an ECOWAS county, I’m happy to see that once again counties on the African continent are handling their own refugee situation. Immediately post WW2, this was more common practice and it lead to deeper economic and social ties between the counties of my region.
Our stepping to perform a social good is in no way a support of right wing sentiment.
Not sure how well there success is measured after recently finding out about this:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people...
My suspicion is this is just a short term attempt to boost the PMs popularity among the segment of his support base who think mistreatment of refugees and immigrants is a good thing. It's not a serious attempt to change substantive policy.
Real solution is alas one that eludes us today. The real issue is the blur in lines between economic migrant and refugee, with one used to bismish the other and anything to address the former being classed as an attack upon the later. Hence the whole subject is just a can or worms that just does not get dealt with.
As for the UK, when the majority of the economic and refugee's arrive via safe countries like France then it kinda adds a whole layer of debate that you just don't get with other countries migrant/refugee problems.
Honestly should be that people who need to escape a country for fear of their life should be able to walk into any other countries embasy and apply for asylum. That though is still not a thing, which only helps fuel illegal smugglers who will take refugees and economic migrants equally if they have the money. Which is the bigger sadness of all with how things are working currently as how many true refugee's in fear of their life have died as they had no means to pay for a way out! That whole aspect of thought is just sadening and yet, overlooked as the focus is all about those who had the means or morals to pay smugglers and can imagine there are those who probably had the means but equally ethics and morals that meant they were unwilling to pay in effect crimininals.
So I guess changing how people apply for Ayslum and the ability to walk into the nearest forign embassy would certainly be a start in solving things.
Then distibution equally needs to be fair around the Globe, so no one country becomes burgened, though that would be a whole area of debate the UN could work out. Certainly the ability to apply at embassys would be huge improvment.
I think a country which in the last 3 years had a melt down because they couldn't buy toilet paper; Crashed the supply chains for petrol and diesel by sheer panic; and thought it was a national crisis when KFC ran out of chicken should perhaps wind it's fucking neck in.
It is only natural that people fleeing persecution or not attempt to find a place which gives them the greatest opportunity to have a decent life. There are many contributing factors here everything from prior knowledge of English, family connections and reunification laws.
I'm reminded of a quote though darned if I can find a source, but it's something like "Don't judge a place by the idiots it keeps".
It's interesting times when protecting borders from illegal immigration is seen as „far right“. It's not „far right“ rising, it's some people pushing Overton window extremely to the left.
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/denmark-talks-with-rwan...
Asylum-seeking is not illegal immigration.
Economic migration under the guise of asylum seeking is though. And pretending that all the people who make the attempt to gain Asylum in the UK are legitimate non-economic migrants is absurd.
Correct. As is murder, theft, etc. I don't think anything in my comment suggested they're not?
Everyone that learns about the Overton window is immediately convinced the other side has been pulling it in their direction for years.
But you're talking about Denmark and I know nothing about Danish domestic policies - which is why I was intentionally broad in my wording.
The Overton window is poorly named. It's an irregularly shaped blob rather than a rectangular frame. Some things can move in different directions at different times.
I can only imagine that if not for horrible optics, UK would send them to Australia.
But oh well, I guess if your dream is to resurrect the British Empire, having a foreign penal colony is one of the requirements.
From the point of view of Africans, we see this as a Rwanda led initiative to take care of refugees in a country that is safe, and in an environment that is closer to their homelands. Although in the past Rwanda has had is troubles but … so did Ireland and the UK on different scale. Rwanda of today is a different place, and the current president has long experience in handling refugee situations and defusing the natural tensions of people in a refugee crises.
Is it absolutely necessary for refugees to leave to go to a different continent, to live on an island where they will forever look like an “other” and have a culture and weather that is totally alien to them?
There should be more to this equation than the thought of sending people to the most prosperous country that they can.
UKIP and BXP disintegrated because their more competent members colonized the Conservative Party, which is now much more radical and far-right than it was under Cameron.
The only surviving cabinet minister from Cameron's era (2010-2016) is Michael Gove. The rest are all new faces with far right credentials and a commitment to the hardest of hard Brexits.
- Liz Truss (current Foreign Secretary) was SoS for DEFRA under David Cameron.
- Sajid Javid (current Health SoS) was BEIS SoS under David Cameron.
- Grant Shapps (current Transport SoS) was Minister for Housing under David Cameron and later party chairman.
- Brandon Lewis (current SoS for Northern Ireland) was Minister for Housing under DC.
- Ben Wallace (clearly ultra right wing (/s), and SoS for Defence), Minister for Northern Ireland under DC.
I don't think this is an exhausive list, these are just the SoSs I can think of off the top of my head. Your statement is just so untrue it just makes me think you don't know much about UK politics and don't really care enough to even google your "facts".
I'm not sure what your definition of far right is but that statement is quite far from the truth.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/oct/20/bnp-members... "...firm but voluntary incentives for immigrants and their descendants to return home".
What does that even mean? That anyone who wasn't a member of the SWP in their youth is automatically a closet fascist?
Irrespective of the colour of her skin, her actions are those of the far right.
You are throwing around "far right" as a slur in this discussion and that doesn't address facts or the truth of the matter.
I’ve already explained why it’s far right policy but let me explain in simpler words:
Only black and brown people are sent to Rwanda under this scheme. White Ukrainians are not. That’s why it’s a far right scheme. One might even call it racist.
Calling it “nativism” would be inappropriate because that would make it seem like a thing that needs a label. To the contrary, that’s just how most societies are. What we need a label for are the small minority of folks who feel the opposite way.
It can be both simultaneously.
> the desire of Indians to have their country without other people in it
It's a bit more than that though. I don't think you know enough, sorry.
At the end of the day, Bangladesh exists because Bangladeshis wanted a country for Bangali Muslims. Most Bangladeshis subscribe to that core premise. So it’s bizarre to me when people attack Britons upset about immigration from Bangladesh using accusations of “racism.” The Brexiter and the average Bangladeshi are ideologically on the same ground. Their differences arise due to conflicting interests, not conflicting ideologies.
Except you forgot to include the part where Greater Pakistan military overturned the democratically elected Bengali prime minister, so that Bhutto could hold onto power as Bengalis are unfit to lead. You also forgot to mention that Pakistani military killed a million plus Bangladeshis.
Please point out where the EU sent in an army to kill a million Brits.
You make so many bad faith arguments, its really nauseating to sit around correcting all of your Gish Gallops.
Waiting to hear from you how the independence of African nations and the overturning of Apartheid was an act of racism/ethnocentrism by black people against white people.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31348078
Rayiner is an ex Muslim, currently Christian, brown Bangladeshi immigrant to USA who wants the brown people to leave the United States - so that white people can have a white United states - just like "Indians/Bangladeshis want a country for themselves" a need that Rayiner made up on behalf of the citizens of India and Bangladesh.
Significantly, Rayiner excludes himself from the list of brown people who need to leave USA. I have heard of Jewish Nazis and watched the Clayton Bigsby comedy sketch- but it is surreal to interact with someone like this online.
Instead of white, he uses the word "culture" which is the hip dog whistle in urban circles.
In fact, it is easy to distinguish political far right from political far left. Both wants to remove/weaken the institutions. One will push for more personal power(aka: strengthen executive, weaken judicial and legislative power (you can add push media concentration). The other will push towards revocative referendums, random selection for public committee, and overall a weakening of the executive power (refund/divide the police and stuff). As long as with stay within economic center (basically modern capitalism shades).
If you don't think moving toward a less republican government is enough, we can go historically: a marker of far right is treating/talking about the country like a living organism.
I'm talking myself into believing that India is already far right, i should stop arguing :/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/10/uk-deportati...
This will be challenged at the court of appeal and will, eventually, be found a breach of international law.
So yes, the policy is unlawful _in fact_ but the legal process needs to catch up to that.
So it is not illegal.
This doesn’t mean they’re legal, it means the courts won’t stop those individuals from being deported while the legal case for the policy is being argued. The decision to grant, or not, an injunction is not in itself a judgement on the underlying policy. The court did the former, not the latter.
The English courts haven’t done this yet, they just said they won’t issue injunctions to prevent certain deportations.
This does seem logically consistent to me, just trying to understand your position better.
Whether I think it’s legal is based on what the policy is, whether it was passed into law by Parliament (in this case, there’s no Act of Parliament), what legal experts have said, whether it’s been tested by the courts.
You know, how most sensible people make decisions: they look at the information available and make a decision based on that.
- it might still violate the Human Rights Act
- it’s still a matter for debate whether Rwanda is safe for refugees
Just reading one Act isn’t enough because real life is complicated.
It being a matter for debate whether Rwanda is safe is, I think, not something the SC is going to rule on.
It violating the Human Rights Act seems to be the only real issue for the SC then? Again, I just wonder whether this policy is likely to be illegal under that Act given that the relevant clause says "No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. I just doubt that deportation would fall under torture, inhuman, or degrading treatment _in the spirit of this Act_. I agree that this policy is immoral but kind of doubt that the SC is going to find it tantamount to torture. But maybe there are other arguments here that I'm unaware of?
I guess my legal basis is precedent.
Forgive me if I find your entire premise suspicious and decline the opportunity to debate further.
Rwanda in particular is an odd choice if you are genuinely concerned about the well-being of people who are fleeing persecution, given the UK government travel advice for its own citizens.
It is also a very expensive choice (about the cost of giving them free food and accommodation in an average bit of Hull for over 2 years); but even in its own terms, it does not appear to have changed, nor is it likely in the future to change, the minds of the extremely small number of asylum seekers who have not been put off the UK by virtue of it being a damp sheep-filled rock in the North Atlantic where they will be banned by law from seeking employment.
What percentage of asylum seekers in the UK were eligible for asylum?
Even using “granted” as a proxy for “eligible”, hard to tell as every source I found contradicts all the others, somewhere between 25 and 75 percent.
However, this isn’t the right question, for two reasons.
First: The number you want to compare against is the people whose minds were changed by the latest policy. Given how few people were seeking asylum in the UK even before this, the maximum is already low.
Second: this policy does not improve the expected accuracy of government judgement regarding the legitimacy of any given claim.
E.g. my country had thousands of „refugees“ hoping over border from Belarus last year. Last time I saw statistics, not even 1% was eligible for „refugee“ status. Even skipping the part that, according to international law, refugee is legit for the first safe country.
You can’t because they don’t exist. There is no obligation to seek asylum in the “first safe country.” This is a common trope trotted out by right-wing mouthpieces which is where I’m assuming you got the rest of your “facts.”
For EU, there's Dublin agreement.
Your first sentence is irrelevant because this applies to refugees claiming asylum.
Javid, as Home Secretary, stripped a teenager of her British citizenship, leaving her stateless and stranded somewhere in Iraq or Syria.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamima_Begum
There's an interesting discussion to be had about whether a government official can strip someone of their citizenship (even though in the UK it seems to be part of their powers under the Nationality Act) - it's not correct to frame this emotionally under "deported a teenager" when there are specific issues at play here. Same with slandering anyone who is not politically aligned with you as "far right".
Bangladesh is an officially socialist country. You’re just defining “far right” to include everyone who disagrees with a narrow view of immigration.
Regarding your sibling comment: is Bangladesh “racist” against Bangladeshis for not taking her? What an absurd smear.
You’re making another false equivalence with Bangladesh when Begum was born and raised in the U.K. and had never been to Bangladesh. And then trying to use that in bad faith to insinuate things I never said.
And it’s not a false equivalence. Bangladesh has special rules for return of children of people of Bangladeshi origin. My brother was born in Virginia but could travel back to Bangladesh without meeting the usual immigration conditions by showing proof of our parent’s birth in Bangladesh. Begum was in the same position. But Bangladesh isn’t as sympathetic to terrorists as some folks in the UK.
The fact that homosexuality isn't as controversial as it once was doesn't preclude their authoritarian nature.
It's not a boogeyman, it's part of the reality.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/12/world/europe/russian-mone...
Russia is involved and dangerous.
Further reading: https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/21/butler-to-the-...
Yet I keep hearing about Russians.
- Take a bunch of Russian money - Hang out with a bunch of Russians - Ignore the recommendations of your national security apparatus to appoint Russians to permanent positions in your upper house - Employ a bunch of people who have ties to Russian interests. - Delay investigations into how your government didn't do anything to prevent Russian interference in a national referendum.
People make the completely illogical conclusion that you're somehow sympathetic to Russian interests.
True they aren’t all far right, but they do capitalise on decisive policies to invigorate their core supporters.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people...
Many of the ideas of UKIP and the others have been adopted by the Tories! And the main opposition party (Labour) has been taken over by centre-right neoliberals. The left had a tiny bit of power pre-Brexit. Now it has none.
Now, UKIP had existed before Farage, and it existed after Farage, but as with a typical far right party it's full of nutters who don't know which part of the message you can say out loud, so it's unelectable. Indeed, in actual UK parliamentary elections even Farage was unelectable, which is why he got into the whole "Brexit" thing because EU elections are seen as less important yet they're also multi-member PR so you can get 20% of the vote in a four seat region and expect to come away with a seat even though the vast majority of people in that region hated you.
Mostly though, for Farage this is and always was a scam. So the subsequent parties unlike UKIP were founded from the outset as scam operations e.g. "The Brexit Party" was a private company, owned by Farage and co., profits for the owners not members (indeed for ages you couldn't "join" that party), and paid for by the candidates who Farage then promptly sold out because it was convenient for him personally. You should see all that family of parties as just "The Nigel Farage Party" much more so than e.g. Republicanism is "The Donald Trump Party" because while you're not going to see Republican leadership actually say Trump is a piece of shit any time soon, they'll be here in ten years and he won't whereas the Farage parties without Farage just wither away and die.
Anyway, my point is, the popular UKIP was just the Farage Party, it's primarily about putting your money in Farage's wallet and the bigotry is a side show, without Farage that's the main event.
I suppose it depends on your definition of “far,” but from an English perspective this seems like nonsense.
Looking at international politics, or even (perhaps more relevantly) the history of UK politics, modern UK politics is extremely far right. Labour is a very good example (considered by many within the UK to be left). They have been right-wing since the "New Labour / Blairite" movement (verifiable either by comparing their policies to pre-Blair Labour, or to international socially democratic contemporaries). A similar example is the UK media coverage of Corbyn: his political views - which align very well with the Labour party historically & with international socially democratic parties - were portrayed as being communist/socialist. Corbyn's political ideologies never varied over the decades of his career, nor became more extremely left; rather modern UK discourse moved right, placing him left of the "new centre".
I dare say even leaning towards fascism the way that they're rewriting rules to protect big dog.
I’m not sure there’s any significant ‘far left’ in Scotland. What groups are you thinking of?
There’s also of course a very large nationalist component.
1. "far-right beliefs that centre on religious and ethnic hatred"
2. or, "a desire to become an independent nation"
In this case when people say the SNP is nationalist it's the second - their policy is that Scotland should be an independent country. For what it's worth they seem to have a strong pro-immigration stance[0] and a belief in racial equality[1], which are usually things type #1 nationalists are heavily against - so take from that what you will.
[0] - https://www.snp.org/policies/pb-what-is-the-snp-s-policy-on-...
[1] - https://www.snp.org/policies/pb-what-actions-are-the-snp-tak...
I've never specifically associated it with neither left nor right because in my country we have both right and left wing nationalist movements. Yes, far right nationalism is often fascism, nazism, jingoism, etc. but this isn't the only type of nationalism, and we don't use nationalism as a synonym for nazism/fascism, except when speaking specifically in the context of right wing nationalist groups.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETA_(separatist_group) 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Workers%27_Party
How far left do you want to go? Cenfuegos press was Scottish, that's a former angry brigade member.
The point being made here is Scotland has a socialist history and has had explicitly socialist candidates elected to parliament in recent history. Like.. 2003-2007. I'd hesitate to call it dead just yet.
I think it’s pretty unreasonable to call these people ‘far left’. I don’t think they’re planning to take up arms like the IRA for example.
Or did they try to subvert capitalism by forcing half+1 workers representative on every company boards?
There is not a lot of far left ideas left to implement. Societally, there is basically nothing left since women are allowed to vote and segregation ended. Socially, it is impossible to advance without political or economic far leftism. So this only leave political far left and economic far left.
But right now radical left == far left for most. Worse, right now in France, a lot of people really think the reformist left is the far left, and the rest believe they are radicals. Saner, but still wrong. This is mindblowing, but i am not a professional historian or political scientist so it doesn't really matter to me, i won't loose any sleep. It just says a lot about how low our political culture fell. They aren't even anticapitalists nor they push for worker ownership. And i've read today that the overton window was pushed to the left?
One thing still that can explain this: it seems that the 19th century history lessons were erased from our western memories. And even the years between WW1 and WW2 are not that clear for western europeans.
As an economist, this is far from far left -- it's a fairly middle-of-the-road policy that is used in market economies that are more stable successful than the UK's, e.g. Germany. (And at 33% representation, it is the default across western Europe, where you would be laughed at if you tried to characterise them as far-left...)
That was absolutely an ugly bait-and-switch, and I'd be incredibly upset about it if I was Scottish. I'm frankly surprised there hasn't been a massive independence movement directly following the Brexit referendum.
More to the point is that EU citizens resident in Scotland were given a vote on the matter and apparently they overwhelmingly voted Remain because it was in their direct interests to do so.
And in no way can it be described as "an ugly bait-and-switch" when the Establishment had no desire to leave the EU, they were just as surprised at the Brexit result as everybody else.
They voted to remain in the UK because they thought at the time it was in their best interest to do so. They had no idea at the time that their country would leave the EU. In retrospect, it would have been in their best interest to leave and rejoin the EU.
It can absolutely be described as a bait and switch. Maybe it wasn't explicitly planned as such at the time, but it definitely turned out that way.
I worked for a company based in Edinburgh during the Indyref campaign and I remember the concern about being left out of the EU at the time. All my coleagues (obviously not a representative sample of Scottish society) really thought independence was not a good idea from a bussiness and financial point of view, although I don't reckon any of them were particularly friendly to the Tory government in England.
Edit: thinking of it now, I'm getting the feeling that Scottish people were much more interested in being in the EU than the UK, at the time at least.
The people of Northern Ireland today tend to want either continued union with the kingdom ruling Great Britain, or union with the rest of Ireland — depending whether their families are of British origin or Irish. The thought of post-Brexit passport control and customs for travel between the territories comprising Northern Ireland and either Great Britain or Ireland is thus a major political football (far worse in the case of the border with Ireland, because it is a land border and that requires walls.)
So yes, North Ireland represents a nation seperate to the English, the Welsh, or the Scotts.
Brexit wasn't a case of each nation 'winning' so to speak. The 38% of the vote went to the total number of leave votes. Which contributed to the overall Leave vote.
Point being Scotland did make a significant contribution to the Leave vote.
(I did put my name to a few of the relevant post referendum petitions, but as a way to signal my opinions — it was already clear to me that the government doesn’t really listen to any of the petitions).
I voted remain: not everything said about Brexit is rhetoric.
Say you break it down to a single street which might have voted 90% remain, should that street then be declared independent?
There are always going to be areas that believe stronger in one idea or another but that doesn't mean those areas should be separate from each other, the whole point of Europe is the idea of being stronger together but then in which case why not keep Scotland part of the UK?
What really is scotlands issue, is not that they need indolence from the UK, they need a better UK government and plenty of people in England believe this also, independence is not required.
The main challenge for Scotland is EU membership if they break away. It’ll get vetoed by Spain who doesn’t want Catalonia to break away. Frankly, perhaps unfortunately, I don’t see Scottish independence in the cards for that reason. Fostering nationalistic, anti-UK sentiment for political power is a dangerous game to play when you’re going to remain in the UK and is loosely akin to all the pillow-rattling that Texans do about seceding. It also somewhat contradicts the mission of the EU. Why stop at Scotland? Why not Catalonia? Or Brittany? How does this not give fuel to secession movements in the US as well? You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t “support self-determination except when I disagree with who is self-determining”.
Though right now I want the second referendum as it's probably the best way to end the uncertainty that SNP causing
After all, independence before would have meant exiting the EU, while it now could mean re-entering it. Independence is ultimately the question about how a region wants to see itself in the world, and the alliances you are in are a big factor in that qestion.
You could argue that, but, the nationalists never did. Instead they said the issue would be categorically resolved by the referendum for an entire generation. Perhaps if they were a bit smarter they'd have thought ahead and caveated their promises, but they wanted to create artificial pressure that they thought would help them.
Then they lost and it was immediately revealed that they were lying. It wasn't going to be a once-in-a-lifetime vote unless they won, in which case of course, they'd never let anyone vote on the topic ever again (if you believe they'd host a "let's rejoin the UK" referendum even in 50 years you don't know the SNP).
Brexit meanwhile is not actually a stark change in political landscape. It has barely affected the lives of most people. It's not at all clear why that should make a difference when there are so many other wedge issues the SNP could also use to claim now it's all different.
Really, if they wanted to ask the question again and win the best way would be to campaign for English voters to also be given the vote. Polls show a significant number of English voters would quite like to be rid of Scotland - whilst politicians really want to keep the union together, actual voters aren't so in love with it. Scotland sometimes gets perceived comes across as more trouble than it's worth: a left wing heavily subsidy dependent one-party statelet mired in corruption and with leadership that vigorously encourages anti-English racism.
I am convinced there are (not just a few) Scots for which this would be similar.
The UK wasn't in the Euro and it wasn't in Schengen. These are two of the most visible aspects of EU membership for ordinary people.
The third biggest effect is automatic migration rights. A relatively tiny number of British people have ever moved to the EU. Losing "freedom of movement" is therefore an issue that a small number of people feel very strongly about, but those people were almost always not actually using it. They liked the idea of it, actually doing it not so much. Whether it's language or cultural barriers, Brits just mostly don't do it. Of my group of friends at school, only one ended up moving to the EU (France). All others stayed in the UK or moved to non-EU countries. Moreover it's not like Brits can no longer move to the EU: they can, they just need to get a work visa. This isn't a big deal.
Of those who do though, they were disproportionately represented in media, politics, academia etc. Hence why the Remain campaign ended up focusing on it, even though for the average Brit this was actually pure downside. They didn't want to move to France or Germany, but they had to compete against the millions of immigrants from eastern Europe who were willing to work for pittance.
"Sure, for many this might just be about symbolism and things like access to the world's biggest single market, its regulations etc."
The US is a much more unified single market. At any rate, every country has access to the EU markets, do you think the EU is cut off from the world? It boils down to more paperwork for those outside it, very often deliberately created but useless paperwork designed to annoy companies into not bothering, but it's still possible to sell for those who really want to.
As for the rest, really? The UK is way ahead of most of the EU on environmental issues. Germany especially is a disaster zone. It's a country that shut down nukes in favour of coal burning and now relies heavily on Russian natural gas as a consequence because it doesn't have sufficient LNG import terminals. You know which country is building new nukes, doesn't burn coal anymore, and has LNG import terminals that let it be no longer dependent on Russia? The UK! The idea that the EU is some sort of environmental and worker rights savior is nonsensical propaganda. The EU institutions don't care about the environment, it's just a wedge issue they can use to build up a support base of people who care more about stated intentions than delivered results.
Finally, re: Scotland. The EU is actually a seriously damaging issue for the SNP. They like to use Brexit as a way to attack the English but it poses major issues for keeping their internal coalition together. Effectively the SNP is an alliance of pro-EU leftists motivated by hate of the "Tory English", and the Braveheart contingent who actually want an independent Scotland but are somewhat conservative on social and fiscal matters. What keeps them together is their shared enemy below the border.
The moment the SNP tries to fight a new referendum, even the least canny opponent is going to point out that the SNP is supposedly a nationalist independence party. The EU hates nationalism, it hates independence, and it's not shy about saying so explicitly. The whole idea of it is to get rid of national governments and blend every country into one! So the core idea of the SNP, it's entire stated reason for existence, is to become independent of one union that controls it and immediately rejoin another. When membership was the status quo position they could mostly ignore this contradiction, but if they fight another referendum they'll have to face it and this will pose big problems.
The second problem is the question of whether the EU would even accept them. Although it is possible that the EU would do it just to spite the UK, in theory it faces major difficulties: Spain and other regions would want to block it to kill off Catalonian independence, and Scotland would immediately be in much greater violation of the budget rules than even Greece was. It certainly wouldn't be meeting the stated requirements to join. If it did join it'd immediately become a major subsidy recipient as one of the poorest states in the EU. It would also have to adopt the Euro, which is an unpopular policy with Scots. Would the other members be OK with that? This issue would be brought up in any second referendum and would force Scots and the SNP to face the fact that Scotland has not been laying the financial or political groundwork for independence, even though it could have been.
Honestly a common belief south of the border is that Sturgeon doesn't actually want independence at all. The lack of competence in organizing it is otherwise a bit hard to explain. The status quo suits her very well, actually becoming independent would make it much harder to blame London for everything whilst simultaneously relying heavily on its support.
The changes from brexit are minimal compared to what Scottish independence would be. Trade with UK dwarfs trade with EU. The Snp government basically buried their own economic report on the economic case for independence because there isn't one (let's see what's in the next one). Last referendum they couldn't even give a clear answer on currency as many nationalist don't want the euro (or EU for that matter).
Next up is defence, we would need to fund an army and navy etc. Given what's going with Ukraine and that russian jets regularly test our air response capability (jets scrambled from cooper airbase regularly I believe). Would we join NATO? Given what sweden and Finland are looking at I really hope so. Oh and the Snp government firmly want rid of nuclear weapons in Scotland (I'm not pro nuclear now hardly seems to be the time to disarm in northern European countries). Break up of the UK would be a huge win for Putin and loss for the west. Oh and have a read of our defence spoke persons bio:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_McDonald_(politician...
It would be funny if it wasn't so serious.
There are four nations in the UK (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland).
But England has roughly 90% of the population of the UK. So what England votes for in an all-nations referendum, the rest of the UK gets.
England voted for Brexit by a narrow-ish majority. But Scotland voted against Brexit by a huge margin -- 62/38, or approximately 3:2.
Ironically, the year before the Brexit referendum there was a Scottish independence referendum where "remain part of the UK" won, 55/45. One of the promises the remain campaign made was that staying in the UK was the only way to guarantee Scotland could stay in the EU.
So there's a strong sense here in Scotland that we were misled, and presented with a bait-and-switch last time round.
Finally, Scotland has a very different political climate from England, with a much weaker far right, stronger far left, and a dominant centre left government. While since 2017, England has increasingly drifted towards the far right.