Why Do the Scots Want to Be Under Again ...eu

Flags outside the Scottish parliament, Calum Hutchinson, Wikimedia

There are two principal questions people enquire me virtually Scotland and the European referendum. Why is Remain considerably alee in the polls in Scotland, but not the rest of Britain? And, what volition happen if Scotland is dragged out of the EU, despite voting to remain. Here's my best endeavor at answers to each.

Why is Scotland more likely to vote to Remain?

Here are nine partial answers. Experience complimentary to add together others in the comments below.

one. The Scots and English call back very differently near identity

For most Scots, being Scottish and British is, to use an old analogy, a bit like Russian dolls. One can sit comfortably within the other, without any disharmonize. That ways it's easy plenty to add another one – European – on top. The Scots don't really discover information technology, think about it or feel particularly uncomfortable about information technology. Englishness and Britishness, though, are different. As Anthony Barnett points out in his excellent Blimey, it could be Brexit!, English language people essentially meet the 2 as synonymous, as two sides of the same coin, with Englishness facing in and Britishness facing out. Adding the 'European' identity to that feels similar an imposition.

2. Scots are less bothered nearly immigration

It's easier to make the case for immigration to someone with a cousin who is an immigrant somewhere else

Scottish attitudes on immigration aren't as different from those in England as some would like to brand out. But they are different. Equally a 2014 Migration Observatory study showed, Scots are virtually 17% less likely to think migration levels should be reduced, and notably more likely to say that immigration is good for the state. Immigration also seems less salient as an issue in Scotland. Why? There has been enough of speculation.

Perhaps it's political leadership – both the Scottish National Party and Scottish Labour have been pretty good at making the example that Scotland needs immigrants. The weakness of the Tories and UKIP in that part of the land ways they don't run off to the right on this outcome very often. Mayhap information technology's the extent to which Scotland a nation of emigrants – every bit SNP MEP Alyn Smith recently wrote, "There's barely a single Scottish family that didn't grow up sending the Broons or Oor Wullie Annual to far flung loved ones, economic migrants all, in Canada, Australia, New Zealand or elsewhere."

It's easier to make the case for immigration to someone with a cousin who is an immigrant somewhere else. Peradventure information technology'southward the deviation in rural histories: enclosure encourages country-dwellers to want to 'protect' their patch, clearance leaves a desire to de-clear. Maybe it'south that Scotland is better educated than the residue of the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland.

Some have suggested that it's because there's less immigration, though that contradicts the tendency across the rest of the Uk that the places with the least clearing tend to be about concerned about information technology.

3. England has a different legal system to the residual of Europe

I argument for why England is (even) more eurosceptic than much of the rest of the continent is its different legal arrangement. England, Wales, and both Northern Ireland and the Commonwealth of Ireland take common law systems. The rest of the Eu has civil police force systems.

This departure, every bit Jeremy Fox has outlined, goes some way to "explaining why the UK seems constantly to struggle with Eu bureaucratic rigidity and with what Eurosceptics perceive as undemocratic regulatory incontinence", and it'southward even an argument deployed in Brexit, the Movie.

Scotland, though, is unlike. Up here, nosotros have a hybrid organisation: half-civil police, half-common law. Then the nature, habit and behaviours of EU institutions seem much less alien to the Scots than they exercise to people in England.

In the video below, watched by more than four one thousand thousand people, prominent Brexit campaigner Dan Hannan refers twice to the mutual law legal system as a reason to exit. This argument doesn't apply in Scotland. And whilst few notice information technology consciously, information technology'south interesting to consider the broader cultural impacts and sense of 'foreignness' created by such a deviation.

4) The 'reclaim our sovereignty' thing has a whole different meaning in Scotland

OK, information technology'due south all a bit circuitous. Because both 'our' and 'sovereignty' have slightly different implications in Scotland. Beginning, what people come across as their nation – who they would mean by 'nosotros' if they were to say "We should govern ourselves" isn't simple here. In the 2011 census, 8% of people in Scotland ticked just the 'British' box. 62% identified only as Scottish, and 18% put a tick next to both 'Scottish' and 'British'.

That means that roughly only a quarter of Scots encounter themselves as partly or primarily British. It seems probable that these are the same people as those who say they would vote against independence even if they thought it would make them £500 a twelvemonth richer, and who were the primal targets for for the Scottish Bourgeois's recent election campaign. For these people, the entreatment to reclaim Britain's national sovereignty by leaving the EU presumably has some purchase "We (i.e. the British) should govern ourselves".

But for the significant majority who identify as Scottish primarily, the question of sovereignty is more complex. Either they believe that it is best restored through Scottish independence, or they are perfectly happy with and used to pooling sovereignty in the modern world.

The Scottish mythology is that the people of Scotland are sovereign

Secondly, the English language tradition is that sovereignty lies with the crown in parliament (and, traditionally, came to the monarch from God). Or, every bit it'southward interpreted these days, parliament is in accuse. The Scottish mythology is that the people of Scotland are sovereign. This was declared by most Scottish politicians in 1989 in the famous Claim of Correct, and is a tradition which claims to go dorsum to the Annunciation of Arbroath, which some see as the starting time expression in the Western world of the idea of 'popular sovereignty' – i.e. information technology is the people who engage (and can depose) the monarch, non God.

These differences express themselves in a soft way in much of the chat plant effectually democracy in England and Scotland. Interestingly, the deviation is usually found in the more fringe elements of the movements for Scottish independence and leaving the EU respectively: the small-scale group camping outside the Scottish parliament and their supporters have a habit of referring to themselves (much to the embarrassment of the residue of the movement) equally 'very sovereign Scots' (sometimes abbreviated to "VSS" on Facebook). The well-nigh off-the-wall corner of the Get out vote, on the other hand, is probably the UKIP Christian Brothers. They talk about "our nationhood and the aboriginal Laws and Freedoms bestowed on us by God".

v) There's no ane to promote leaving the European union in Scotland

My brother once described modern Scottish identity every bit i big in-joke. And if this is right, so the UKIP MEP David Coburn is a part of that – a blundering idiot not even taken seriously past his own cluster of supporters. He is, in other words, hardly an effective abet for Exit. Beyond him, a couple of new Tory MSPs support leaving the EU, every bit does Jim Sillars, who quit as deputy leader of the SNP when I was seven. That's basically it. No other prominent SNP or Scottish Labour effigy is bankroll a Leave vote. No one cares what George Galloway and Tommy Sheridan recollect whatsoever more, so much so that I nearly didn't bother mentioning them here, and no one here thinks of Michael Gove as a Scottish politician.

There are certainly people in Scotland who are against the European union – as I write, the Labour Exit campaign is in Fraserburgh interviewing fishermen. Merely there isn't really any credible political effigy to represent this view. Which I suppose, in itself, is telling.

6) Scots believe constitutions can change

According to the latest social attitudes survey, nearly people in Scotland like most people in England recall the Eu should have less power. The English response to this belief is more often than not to vote to Leave, while the Scots' response seems probable to be to vote to Remain. There is an obvious explanation: Scotland in the terminal two decades has gone through an astonishing period of ramble alter: devolution, then more devolution, and then more; a new voting system for local government; votes at 16; and the independence plebiscite. England, meanwhile, has seen almost null this century: law commissioners and a rejigging of the top of the courtroom organization. Maybe the difference betwixt Scotland and England is non so much the complaint, but the belief that things tin modify.

Ironically, if this is true, England is voting to get out Europe because it sees that Westminster can't be changed, and assumes this is truthful of Brussels likewise.

7) Different attitudes to monarchy and British Empire kitsch

In 2011, at that place were five,500 applications for Purple Nuptials street parties in England and Wales. In Scotland, in that location were fewer than 30

Scotland was as complicit in the Empire as whatsoever other office of the United kingdom. But the folk memory doesn't quite seem to be the same. It'southward sometimes hard to get a grip on civilisation, as we all have different experiences and things tin can exist hard to quantify. Certainly, there seems to be less in Scotland of what I call British Empire kitsch and its iconography. And a good example of this is in attitudes to the monarchy.

In 2011, in that location were 5,500 applications for Royal Hymeneals street parties in England and Wales. In Scotland, there were fewer than thirty, with 20 of those in Edinburgh. At that place were more than celebrations in Sheffield than in Scotland. This is despite the fact that, of course, William Windsor and Catherine Middleton met in St Andrews.

This tendency is plant in the polls too. In Scotland, 48% support the monarchy, with 32% against, and 20% 'don't know'. Across the UK equally a whole, three quarters of people support the monarchy with only 18% beingness republicans. If you consider that Scotland makes upward about a tenth of that figure, then English monarchism is a little stronger still.

It is, of course, perfectly possible to support the monarchy and the Eu. Prince William has indicated fairly strongly his support for the wedlock. Only information technology does seem that much of the Get out vote is based in a cry dorsum to royal Britishness, tied into empire, Commonwealth and monarchy. And there is pretty good evidence that these strings don't tug and so strongly on Scottish hearts.

8) The plebiscite is an English affair

this referendum has arrived in Scotland like a stag-do from the south coast

Scepticism of the EU is rife across the continent. But, as Anthony Barnett has argued, this plebiscite; the circumstances of its making, is an English language thing. In Scotland, people seem largely befuddled by the whole matter. It feels, as I suppose the Scottish referendum did to most English people, like information technology's come from nowhere. Northern Republic of ireland (and Gibraltar) will both too almost certainly vote to Remain, and Wales seems to lean Remain somewhat more than England (though not much, showing how wrong it is to believe whatsoever one simple narrative).

Peradventure, as Barnett argues, this a sideways expression of a trapped identity which really needs its own parliament to express itself. Perhaps it's virtually the failure to come to terms with a lost empire – a failure which is truthful in the residue of the UK also, but seems to play out differently. Any it is, this referendum has arrived in Scotland like a stag-practice from the south declension, and the main reaction seems to be to politely ignore it, and promise it doesn't miss its railroad train back abode in the forenoon.

9) We're used to dissimilar levels of regime

Rather like identity, Scots have go accustomed to a more than normal European manner state of affairs, where different decisions are fabricated by different levels of government: when people here talk about 'the government', they might equally hateful 'the Scottish government' or 'the Great britain government'. People in England, on the other manus, live in one of the about centralised governance systems on world. So the idea that more than ane parliament has power over them often seems to feel a picayune weird to them (you?). Of course, internationally, it's really the English/British organization that's weird.

What will happen if the United kingdom votes to Leave, but Scotland to Remain?

Given all of this, there has been much speculation about what volition happen if Scotland votes Remain, merely the Great britain equally a whole votes Leave. Hither's my best guess. Nicola Sturgeon volition, immediately, seek permission from Holyrood to negotiate with the EU terms for Scotland to Remain. Where in the past, Brussels has refused to talk to the Scottish offset government minister, doing so in this context would be outrageous.

At that place are, in theory at least, two means in which Scotland could stay in the Eu in this context. Either, we (and perhaps Northern Ireland and Gibraltar) could remain in both the European union and the UK despite England and Wales leaving. Denmark, subsequently all, has three nations, one of which is in, and two of which (the Faroe Islands and Greenland) are out. Alternatively, Scotland could hold a second referendum on independence.

If the the Scottish government and the Eu can find a way to make the one-time option possible  – which probably a) depends upon the balance of the United kingdom remaining in the mutual market place and b) requires the agreement of Westminster  –  so my instinct is that both sides would get for it. For the EU, it saves face. For Sturgeon, it'due south less risky than a 2nd referendum, and is a further step towards independence.

On the other hand, in that location may be another referendum  – perhaps if the middle footing turns out to be impossible for technical or political reasons. I suspect the SNP would only phone call it if the EU offered positive terms for connected membership. In that circumstance, what would happen is an interesting question. I've spoken to senior activists in the Scottish Liberal Democrats who tell me that they would vote for independence in that context, and that they await there would be a meaning split in their party. Where most staff in Scottish NGOs voted Yes last time (if an informal but reasonably wide-ranging survey I did at the fourth dimension is to believed) their organisations stayed tranquillity. I suspect many would put their heads to a higher place the parapet in this context. Where the Church building of Scotland took no position in the independence referendum, it has backed a Remain vote, merely as information technology backed devolution in 1997. Where Scottish Labour still had some resources and rest loyalty in 2014, information technology has been crushed, leaving the Tories on 23% as the primary advocates of the Marriage.

Polls at the moment exercise not bear witness whatever increase in support for independence if Scotland is taken out of the EU. But contingent polls ('what would retrieve if') are notoriously inaccurate, and if ceremonious lodge swung behind independence as a path to stay in the European union, and then my suspicion, if I had to guess, is that independence would win such a vote.

Merely, who knows what will happen...

I'm going to cease on a proviso. In that location are enough people up here – supporters of all parties and none – who volition vote leave. And lots of undecideds. So things could change, even at present. And if I'm honest, most people don't really seem to care very much. Events are moving fast, and could hands slip from one rail to another. What will happen over the next few months? Who on earth knows.

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Source: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/eight-reasons-scotland-is-more-remain-and-what-will-happen-if-its-dragged-out/

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