Scottish/Northern Irish Forced Ejection From EU – Update

The Scots have been busy over the last three days. Headline from BBC today:

Nicola Sturgeon says MSPs at Holyrood could veto Brexit

And quite right too. As I said in my previous post, it is plain wrong that a substantially self-governing country should be forced against their democratically expressed will into such a fundamental constitutional change, because of their membership of the United Kingdom.

I’ve had various discussions about this since I wrote the post below, and for the record, before devolution, this would have been fair game. Devolution changes things however.

Also, there have been numerous jibes at Scotland on social media about wanting independence from one Union (UK), only to regain membership of a much larger union (EU).

To those spouting this rubbish, the analogy does not work.

The UK is a small country, and a small trading partner. The European Union is over 40 times the size of the UK. Admittedly, the UK is, per capita, wealthier than the EU, but as a trading partner, there is still no competition between the UK and the EU, with the UK’s 2016 nominal GDP amounting to only 17% (2016 – EU: $16.5 trillion; UK: $2.8 trillion) of that of the EU as a whole.

Let’s hope Scotland and Northern Ireland continue their stand. Many have used the words “justice” and “democracy” to describe the EU referendum, but there has been neither for two of the four countries – exactly half – of the United Kingdom.

Thanks for reading.