What will happen if scotland go independent

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Would you like to receive The WeekDay newsletter? Scotland plays a big role in the cultural influence of the UK and Scottish products are a big part of the British brand — losing those would diminish that brand. That identity has been subsumed into British identity for years and the departure of Scotland would set in train a process of reflection the outcome of which is very difficult to predict, but, I think, would have a huge psychological impact.

Kirsty Hughes: It would be a huge shock to the rest of the UK, but, with or without Wales and Northern Ireland, England is a big country and its soft power is still going to be there. It will need to rethink its own identity and what that means to projecting its soft power to the rest of the world. The remainder UK would be looked at very differently from the outside. Talking to diplomats and others in the European Union EU , they say the break-up of the UK would be a national humiliation and some have told me it would be pay back for Brexit.

Others are horrified and baffled at what they see as the self-harm of Brexit and the prospect that this old state could break up would confirm their view that the UK is a state in turmoil. The party also wants good relations with the remainder UK after independence. Philip Rycroft: It would be important an independent Scotland and the remainder UK seek very rapidly to establish a security partnership, both militarily and in terms of counterterrorism and policing. Scotland would be a second land border for the UK and the integrity of the defence of these islands will depend on the two working closely together so a lot would depend on how the independence negotiations were conducted.

If it were acrimonious, there would be a risk of weakening the security of both sides and, as we know from Brexit, there could be a temptation to approach negotiations with a sense of anger. Others feel that EU membership and euro adoption would be the better option. Murphy prefers the strategy that would see Scotland create a new currency. There is no way that any country can be independent without control of its own currency.

It is essential that the country must be able to price itself into work. Scotland may need to have a lower value for its currency than the apparent equivalent Sterling rate.

That is because it needs to competitively price people into jobs in Scotland. That would be the consequence of having an apparently lower exchange rate. Lloyd highlights that Scotland no longer owns its largest banks. Between and , financial services has seen the largest indexed growth of GVA of all sectors in the country. If and when it went independent, it would have quite a difficult job, in the short and medium term, to become a successful economy.

It possibly could do it; there are good universities, good research centres and a talented workforce, but it will take some time, and it would take a number of policies quite different from those that the SNP is presently [putting forward]. That is no longer the case. Oil prices have been dropping alongside demand and a global desire to embrace renewable energy over climate-harming fossil fuels has left the industry with an uncertain future.

It is a help but a minor one. Despite this, Murphy agrees with Lloyd that more focused business reforms are needed from the SNP when it comes to energy. Outside renewable energy, there are a diverse range of sectors in Scotland that have seen promising growth in the past decade, such as life sciences, advanced manufacturing, construction, financial services and creative industries such as video games.

All of these sectors have the advantage of doing business in a domestic market that is 66 million people strong, and stands as the sixth-largest economy in the world. Independence would cut this domestic market to 5. So is Scotland too small to survive and thrive on its own?

Is Scotland too wee to be wealthy? An argument that is often touted in favour of independence is the comparison to similar-sized countries to Scotland that are performing well, both politically and economically.

All of these things are more important than the size. Lloyd is unsure whether Scotland would be able to emulate these countries. The issue is not that these are small countries, the issues are that they have in one way or another coped well with modern conditions.

What debt? While Sturgeon is continuing to focus on the handling of the pandemic, her friend turned foe is making her life difficult.

There is an attempt [by some pro-independence Scottish politicians] to say that the national debt has nothing to do with them.