Scotland’s Independence

Scotland claims credit for inventing the telephone, television and penicillin, not to mention modern economics. Its people built ships, bridges and locomotives for the world and, more recently, Grand Theft Auto. Scotland is also home to one of Europe’s most prominent independence movements. In a 2014 referendum on whether it should break away to establish the continent’s newest nation-state, voters chose to remain in the three-centuries-old United Kingdom with England and Wales by 55 percent to 45 percent. But rather than settling the matter, the outcome fired up the nationalists on the losing side. They have since gathered strength and numbers, especially since the U.K. voted to leave the European Union. Now they’re demanding a second vote on independence.

While the U.K. as a whole opted to split with the EU by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent, 62 percent of Scottish voters in the June 2016 referendum favored remaining in the bloc. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who runs Scotland’s semi-autonomous government, says Brexit doesn’t reflect the will of most Scots. She wants a second independence plebiscite by 2021, though realistically she may have to wait. She says it’s up to Scotland — like last time — to decide when to hold another referendum, but the U.K. needs to give permission and the government in London has so far refused to sanction one. Sturgeon’s pro-independence Scottish National Party is a formidable electoral machine with membership now at about 125,000, or about 1 in 43 people in Scotland. While the party lost some seats in the 2017 U.K. general election, it’s still the third-largest group in Westminster and crushed its rivals in the May 2019 European Parliament elections by opposing Brexit.