Scotland votes to stay in EU as UK opts out of Europe

Scotland last night gave a resounding endorsement to the EU as the UK overall voted for Brexit, raising the prospect of a demand for a second independence referendum.

..In the early hours, Alex Salmond was.. announcing that, if Scotland voted to remain but the UK overall voted to leave, Nicola Sturgeon would “implement the SNP manifesto”. The SNP document for last month’s Scottish election states that Holyrood should have the right to hold a second independence vote if there is a “significant and material” change in circumstances from 2014, such as Scotland being taken out of the EU against its will.

And, as the cross-border divide on the issue became clear, with almost three quarters of Edinburgh voters opting for remain, Fiona Hyslop, the Scottish external affairs secretary, said: “There will be many people in Scotland who want to consider the situation if there is a Brexit vote. There are many people in Edinburgh who voted clearly for ‘no’ for Scottish independence barely two years ago and believed David Cameron when he said that Scottish independence would take them out of the European Union. Well, actually the reverse is clearly being indicated in the result so far, so they are going to have to reappraise their situation as to what they think is the best prospect for Scotland going forward.”

Edinburgh returned what could be the highest support for the EU, 74.4 per cent.

..Among them was Alasdair Allan, the SNP minister for Europe. He said, just before 3am: ““What the Scottish government will always do is put our interests first when it comes to Europe and our relationship with Europe. I can’t predict what the UK result is going to be but I can say the Scottish government will always put those interests first.”

If you study the development of both England and Scotland since the Union I think an honest person would say it has benefitted both parties, despite our differences.

However, the compaigning for the most recent vote on Scottish independance was so bitter and aggressive that I think today most English would say to the Scots, “Go”.

(I personally know Unionists who have sold up and left their homeland to move to England as a result of intimidation.)

I disagree.

I'm English, and a union man through and through. I've talked to lots of Scottish Nationalists on line, especially at about the time of the independence referendum. Some are just old style Jacobites who were never reconciled to the union. More, (usually younger ones) are motivated by what amounts to an anti-English racism. They've drunk the kool aid, they think that thoroughly awful movie Braveheart is real history (how the hell did THAT abortion win best picture oscar?) and so they've got it into their heads they are fighting their own modern day independence war.

But the vast majority of Scots Nationalists, certainly in my experience, are not anti-English. They're not even particularly anti-Union. They're anti-City of London. THAT is what is really driving all the nationalist causes, even BREXIT to some extent. Scottish people are tired and resentful of taking orders and direction from a remote, powerful and very disdainful entity over which it seems they have no control or influence. This is not an untypical attitude. During the independence debate there was a joke letter going round saying "Dear Scotland, if you get independence, can we come with you? Signed the north of England"

The problem with Britain is that there is too much power concentrated in the Capital - political, economic, even cultural, and its becoming very damaging. To the extent that London is almost like a separate country. If you look at the latest referendum polls you can see just how much out of step with the rest of the country (or provinces, as Londoners disdainfully refer to us as) really is.

Now this is all very reminiscent of the EU. The EU is remote, isolated, unaccountable and exercises enormous and increasingly intrusive controls on British people's ordinary lives. It's bizarre to me that the Scottish Nationalists want to stop taking orders from London but are ok with taking them from Brussels. The lesson of all this is surely that over centralisation of power is a bad thing and needs to be broken up, and now we've dealt with Brussels London has to be next, or as people have intimated on these boards the UK will break up next.

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