I really should just shut up because skull and bloodnock are putting a better case for independence than me .
Iain Macwhirter Now and Then I've been in this game too long. I remember being taken by the Tories nearly twenty years ago to Brussels to hear Baroness Ellis warn that Scotland would not be allowed to join the EU. Don't even think about it! France and Spain would block an independent Scotland to discourage their own separatist movements. England wouldn't accept Scotland as a legitimate nation. There would be years of wrangling over budgets. England would dump financial liabilities onto Scotland to reduce its contribution to the EU budget etc etc..
Scotland would end up broke and isolated, a ragged and homeless fragment lost in the North Sea. It was tedious rubbish then, and it is rubbish now. Yet, barely a week goes by without some report or other announcing that wee Scotland would be frozen out of Europe and told to go and sit on the naughty step.
I've just been looking at the latest report to hit the front pages. It came from the House of Commons Library and it is a background briefing note, not an authoritative assessment of the Scotland's legal status within the EU. It carries its own health warning "[This briefing note] should not be relied upon as legal or professional advice or as a substitute for it. A suitably qualified professional should be consulted." It goes on to rehearse all the arguments that have been made about Scotland's relationship to the EU that have been made over the years. Pros and cons - naturally, the Scotsman chose the con and headlined this as "£8bn Bill To Join The Eurozone". This presupposes that Scotland would automatically join the euro, which of course is not going to happen, at least in the short term. Just like Sweden, Scotland would have the right to decide whether and when to join the euro. The report goes on to question whether membership would be automatic and finds differing views among constitutional authorities.
Lawyers make their money from creating legal complexity, so you will always find that there are differing legal opinions about secession. But the political reality is that it is inconceivable that the EU would try to block an independent Scotland from entry. The EU is founded on the principle of national self-determination, so the idea that Scotland would not be recognised as a nation in Europe is ludicrous. Scotland is already a part of the EU through its participation in the United Kingdom, and as a nation in its own right, Scotland would automatically qualify for membership of the EU. It would take concerted action by the other member states to prove, either that Scotland is financially insolvent, or that it is not a democracy, or that it is in in violation of the European convention on human rights. That is not going to happen.
Sure, there may be bureaucratic obstacles to formal entry - calculations of Scotland's contribution, relationship to the eurozone, Shenghen - all of which are the subject of opt outs by the UK. But many of these problems would also face the RUK (Residual United Kingdom) in exactly the same way. How much should England and Wales pay exempt of Scotland? What weight should English votes continue to carry in the Council etc etc..
But the central question: Scotland's ability to remain in the EU, answers itself. in 2004, the EU admitted a raft of small European countries many of which had been part of the Soviet empire. The idea that the EU would reject Scotland because it used to be part of the UK is laughable. Iceland is being given a free entry ticket to the EU as I write. Scotland is a wealthy country, unlike Greece or the small former Eastern block countries like Latvia and Estonia or minnows like Malta. Scotland has around £400 billion in oil reserves, a quarter of Europe's wind and wave energy, five of the top universities in the planet.
I despair at unionists who make these arguments because they are only destroying their own case. If this is the standard of debate we can expect in the run up to the independence referendum then - roll on independence!
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