British Election Impact: If UK Leaves Europe Could Scotland Depart UK?

After her Scottish National Party scored a landslide in the U.K. election – winning 47 of Scotland’s 59 seats, 11 more than in the 2017 election – First Minister Nicola Sturgeonis demanding a second referendum on the matter of independence.

Sturgeon said the victory of her party, usually called SNP, was tantamount to “a renewed, refreshed and strengthened mandate” to call for a vote on Scottish independence.

In 2014, a referendum for Scotland independence was defeated – 55.3% to 44.7%.

Soon after the recent election, Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke to Sturgeon and re-asserted his opposition to Scotland holding another independence referendum.

A Johnson spokesman said: "The prime minister made clear how he remained opposed to a second independence referendum, standing with the majority of people in Scotland who do not want to return to division and uncertainty. He added how the result of the 2014 referendum was decisive and should be respected."

Cabinet minister Thérèse Coffey also said there would be no referendum on Scottish independence over the next five years that Conservatives hold power.

However, Sturgeon insists Scotland has the right to hold another referendum and that she will soon present a paper outlining her case for such a vote.

“I don’t pretend that every single person who voted SNP [Thursday] will necessarily support independence, but there has been a strong endorsement in this election of Scotland having a choice over our future; of not having to put up with a Conservative government we didn’t vote for and not having to accept life as a nation outside the [European Union],” she said.

Indeed, while the Conservatives won handily in England, they scored poorly in Scotland, losing seven of the 13 seats they won in 2017. (Labour did even worse, retaining only one seat in Scotland).

The Conservative party has rejected Scottish independence, but many in Scotland would like to be free of Westminster.

Michael Gray, a law student and journalist, said Scotland, which does not wish to leave the European Union, is ripe for a new referendum on independence.

“Scotland is big enough, rich enough, and smart enough to flourish as an independent country,” Gray wrote. “We are rich in energy resources, in oil and gas and renewables. Our food and drink sector is globally successful. We have world-leading universities, an independent legal system, and well-established financial institutions. Scotland is a popular tourist destination for millions. I believe that independence is an urgent necessity for Scotland to escape the horror of bad government and Brexit.”

Scotland was highly opposed to Brexit – in the 2016 referendum, 62% of Scots voted for the U.K. to remain in the EU – a figure higher than for England, Wales or Northern Ireland.

Scottish separatists say Brexit would be ruinous to the local economy. Among other things, due to its aging demographics -- by 2041, the number of people of pension age, 67, is projected to rise by 265,000, while the number the working-age people will rise by only 38,000 – Scotland needs immigration of younger workers from the EU and elsewhere. Brexit, in contrast, is expected to reduce immigration.

In 2018, the Scottish government released a paper warning that Brexit “will leave every Scot worse off by £2,300 ($3,080) a year, [and] wipe out 80,000 jobs.”

Presumably, if Scotland became independent it would seek to join the EU – a process that is usually quite lengthy, especially for small countries. For example, Albania, which formally applied for EU membership in 2009, still has not been accepted by the bloc.

Scotland would face other economic challenges if it gained independence – for example, it has a heavy reliance on North Sea oil, an industry already facing criticism from environmentalists and movements to cut back on oil drilling.

More importantly, Scotland is economically subservient to England -- the very country from which it seeks to be free. In 2017, 60% of Scottish exports went to England while London essentially subsidizes Scotland’s public deficit, which amounted to £12.6 billion ($16.8 billion) or 7% of Scotland’s gross domestic product last year.

Some local voices are adamantly opposed to an independent Scotland.

Gordon Brown, the former Labour Prime Minister and a Scotsman himself, recently told a church group in Edinburgh that neither Brexit nor Scottish independence “will solve the economic problems we face.”

Brown strongly opposed Scottish independence in the 2014 referendum and warned that an independent Scotland would face a bleak future.

"Neither Brexit nor Scotland leaving Britain does anything to solve the basic economic problems we face,” Brown said. "But it's about more than that, it's about whether you support divisive nationalism across this country. I'm worried about Brexit nationalism and I'm worried about Scottish nationalism, because they need an enemy even when it doesn't exist. It's an us versus them, there's always a struggle that needs to be taking place."

Brown added the SNP’s tentative ideas about forming a new currency, the Scottish pound, would also create new problems.

"That would mean we would need to have reserves which we don't have at the moment, we would need to have a surplus and we have a deficit at the moment and we'd inevitably face the devaluation of that currency," he said. "If the economic consequences are so bad for Scotland leaving Europe, then three or four times these consequences would be visited upon us in jobs, national income per head and investment in our economy.”

Similarly, Fraser Nelson, a Scottish political journalist and editor of Spectator magazine, warned that independence would lead to “massive austerity” and “financial destruction.”

"If Scotland was an independent country, its deficit would look pretty bad compared with an [Organization For Economic Co-Operation And Development] average.”

Nonetheless, on Saturday, Sturgeon reiterated her demand for an independence referendum.

“It was a watershed election on Thursday and it’s very clear that Scotland wants a different future to the one chosen by much of the rest of the U.K.,” she said. “Scotland showed its opposition to Boris Johnson and the Tories, said no again to Brexit, and made very clear that we want the future of Scotland, whatever that turns out to be, to be decided by people who live here. You can’t bludgeon a nation into accepting your view of the world when it is made very clear that it doesn’t have that view of the world.”