The simple act of having to maintain it’s own infrastructure without money from England would be economically crushing. Social services, state run hospital no longer funded by the NHS, police, even a small military and state security would see taxes through the roof. Tourism would be good for some money but would that sustain an independent Scotland without high taxes. Eventually there would be a brain drain as people and business relocate to England. Ireland is decades ahead of Scotland in becoming a knowledge based economy. Scotland would have to find a way to compete with them. The current oil glut will not end soon unless Biden is elected. So what besides, oil, whiskey and tourism does Scotland offer?
They are going to want a slow roll into independence to keep getting money from England or the Scottish government would collapse as the people became disillusioned. England is Scotlands primary trade partner. If I were England, I would say no more free ride! You can keep dual citizenship, but if you live and work in Scotland you do not rate English social services. All military equipment belonging to England be moved back to England including troops, unless Scotland builds and maintains bases and pays 50% of the cost to keep personnel there. That would be a huge savings to England as they could justifiably reduce their military. Require a Passport to enter England proper and they have to create a USMCA type trade agreement or Scottish goods cannot be imported to England without being taxed. At this late stage Independence would not be what it is cracked up to be. Scotland would become economically a third world country in very short order without England. Yet, somehow, England is the bad guy in all this.
The big problem with that is that the UK needs an RAF base in Scotland to police the GIUK gap. An SNP defence spokesman once suggested that RAF Lossimouth would be used as a bargaining chip (read ‘blackmail’) in order to get into NATO without having to spend 2% of GDP on defence and in spite of causing anger within NATO for neutralising the UK nuclear base on the Clyde (despite NATO being an explicitly nuclear alliance).
However, the silver lining is that the Shetlands and Orkneys are strongly opposed to independence, and there has been talk of them having their own referendum to either stay with the UK or become a self-governing Crown Dependency like the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands (Jersey and Guernsey). The latter would be an extremely tempting offer as it would give them access to much of the oil field resources coveted by the Scottish nationalists, and in return, we could relocate the air base to one of those islands and Scotland’s stragetic location would be irrelevent.
The big problem with that is that the UK needs an RAF base in Scotland to police the GIUK gap. An SNP defence spokesman once suggested that RAF Lossimouth would be used as a bargaining chip (read ‘blackmail’) in order to get into NATO without having to spend 2% of GDP on defence and in spite of causing anger within NATO for neutralising the UK nuclear base on the Clyde (despite NATO being an explicitly nuclear alliance).
However, the silver lining is that the Shetlands and Orkneys are strongly opposed to independence, and there has been talk of them having their own referendum to either stay with the UK or become a self-governing Crown Dependency like the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands (Jersey and Guernsey). The latter would be an extremely tempting offer as it would give them access to much of the oil field resources coveted by the Scottish nationalists, and in return, we could relocate the air base to one of those islands and Scotland’s stragetic location would be irrelevent.