With An Independent Scotland, What Will Be The Fate Of England And British Occupied Northern Ireland?
In the 2014 Independence Referendum Scots voted 55% to stay with the United Kingdom and 45 for Independence. Though in a recent poll, it has become 52 for Independence and 48 % for the Union.
If that does reflect reality, then what’s changed is Brexit.
Of course, leaving the UK is not strictly up to the Scottish Government. If it had been, it would have done it already. Westminster has to give permission for another referendum, for which the English are unlikely to agree to.
Edinburgh the Capital of Scotland is having its streets packed with tens of thousands of visitors there to enjoy a smorgasbord of entertainment: music, comedy, drama, literally hundreds of shows squeezed into every possible venue for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
With a lone piper playing Scotland the Brave in the background the “bollocks to Brexit” campaigners are busy along Edinburgh’s golden mile.
Half a dozen people are encouraging passers-by to sign a petition calling for Brexit to be stopped. They’re doing good business, putting stickers of a combined Scottish and EU flag on people’s chests.
But beyond the curtain calls, the encores, another drama building to a tense final act. It’s called Brexit, and its consequences for the existence of the United Kingdom in general, and Scotland in particular, are far reaching.
Former PM Theresa May used to talk endlessly about a “good Brexit”, but there’s no such thing. Brexit is a foolish thing. It should never have happened.
Scotland can still salvage itself from Brexit — and it may mean leaving the union between Scotland and England. The union has had its day.There is endless debate about the economic consequences of a hard Brexit.
A crash out of Europe is looking increasingly likely. The cost of Brexit will most probably result in a return to violence in British Occupied Northern Ireland and a dissolved kingdom with a new border between England and an independent Scotland.
Hundreds of kilometres south in a place called London, the new British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has promised everyone in the country that Britain will be out of the European Union by the October 31 deadline, deal or no deal.
This promise is despite dire warnings from the Bank of England, the Chamber of Commerce and the former chancellor of the Exchequer that a no-deal Brexit will seriously disable the economy. Everything from a slowdown to a full-blown recession is predicted.
Boris is determined to fulfil his promise to honour the 2016 Brexit referendum in which Britons narrowly voted to leave 52 % and to remain 48 %. Together with Brexit it looks like an election is inevitable because of churnings in his own party.
However Boris needs to remember that North of Hadrian’s Wall, that is Scotland, the Scots had voted strongly to remain in the European Union. So too did the British Occupied Northern Ireland.
They are very unhappy with Boris Johnson for being forced out of the EU,an entity the majority there see as a being a better option.
The Brexit crisis has also started a fundamental debate in British Iccupied Northern Ireland regarding merger with the Irish Republic.
In Scotland, the Scottish National Party (SNP) governs in coalition with the Greens. For the SNP the Brexit debate is a gift, supercharging demands for a second independence referendum that could see the break-up of the United Kingdom as we know it.
“When it comes to Scotland, it’s fascinating because on the one hand, Brexit has confirmed everything that people who believe in Scottish independence always thought: ‘The English are bastards that are ripping us out of Europe.
They’re wrecking our economy. Look what they’re doing to us. Can you not see we should be governing ourselves?’,” Says a European Politics & Foreign Affairs professor at London’s King College.
Many are of the view that Brexit will certainly speed up Scottish independence. Scotland has already become a small, modern European nation, an outward-looking European nation. This process has been underway for several generations.
No wonder Scotland had voted against Brexit. Scotland voted not to leave the EU. In another referendum on that tomorrow, it would vote in even larger numbers against the Brexit. So the UK leaving the EU, is an insult to the people of Scotland.
When the PM Mr Boris visited Edinburgh recentky, he was not greeted by a 21-gun salute or a pipe band. Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon gave a frosty welcome to the new Prime Minister, there was a chorus of boos from the crowd. The assembled gave the impression Mr Johnson was as welcome as a maggoty haggis.
