Kevin Hague

Leaving the Union would harm Scotland more than Brexit

Anti-Brexit badges on sale at the SNP's conference (Getty images)

The Spectator recently ran a piece by Andrew Wilson, author of the SNP’s Sustainable Growth Commission, under the headline ‘Scotland can’t afford to remain part of the Union’. For those seeking any fresh insight into either the moral or economic case for breaking up the United Kingdom, it was thin gruel. 

Instead of coherent arguments, we were offered bold and unsubstantiated assertions. We are asked to believe that the separatists’ position is ‘highly sophisticated’ and that because of Brexit, ‘staying in the Union is riskier than independence’. Any worries about the economic implications of leaving the UK single market, abandoning the Sterling currency union, losing the economic support offered by UK-wide pooling and sharing, dismantling our shared defence resources and unpicking our deeply integrated machinery of state can apparently be dismissed because, we are assured, ‘the SNP prospectus is worked out and clear’.

While it is undeniably true that Brexit has heightened the sense of grievance in Scotland on which the separatists thrive, their dogmatic commitment to independence existed long before Brexit. Are we expected to forget that the SNP campaigned for independence in 2014 in the certain knowledge it would take Scotland out of the EU? Their enthusiasm for the EU is based on opportunism, not principle. But no matter, let’s take the SNP’s commitment to the European project at face value.

If Brexit causes economic damage by creating trade friction between the UK and the EU, placing Scotland on the EU side of UK-EU trade barriers would make things worse for Scots, not better. After over 40 years of unfettered market access, the EU accounts for just 21 per cent of Scotland’s exports compared to 60 per cent to the rest of the UK.

We were promised highly sophisticated, worked out and clear answers but, when it comes to this critical border question, the best the author of the SNP’s Sustainable Growth Commission can offer is ‘Scotland wants a frictionless one’.

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