Originally Posted by
Getintaethem
It is worthy because the rest of the UK would most likely take Ireland back into the Union. It illustrates that the rest of the UK would also take back Scotland. It is not so hard to understand.
So basically exactly the same as we have now except that the lib dems and labour could merge. I do not understand why independence would make the lib dems and labour merge any more than out with independence. Incidentally, they call themselves Scottish Labour, Scottish Lib Dems and Scottish Conservatives now.
One reason is because they believe that Scotland is stronger as part of the United Kingdom. i.e. perhaps they have principles that they will stick with. Running a deficit of £14bn per year would be suicide for an independent Scotland. We would need to put up taxes, reduce services and/or borrow more. £14bn is so far outside anything that the EU would allow from a borrowing perspective, therefore we would need to put up taxes and reduce services - unless there is some magic wand. £14bn represents over £5K for every worker in Scotland. It does not take a genius to work out that this would be a disaster for any SNP Government and popularity for independence will fall dramatically post independence. The price of oil is unlikely to recover for several years. If oil prices rise, it gives a green light to the US shale production and oil prices will fall again.
There are a lot of political soundbites but no real details around why a hard Brexit will be such a disaster economically.
I do not understand economically what the issue is post hard Brexit (there may be political/social reasons for not wanting to leave). Even with using WTO trade rules (rules set up to promote trade) tariffs would be set at around 3%. Normal exchange rate fluctuations are far more than 3% per year and we do not notice any major disruptions in trade and WTO rules are used by China and the US to export into the EU. In fact, our trade outside the EU using WTO rules has been going up - not down.
To put this into perspective, the UK exports around £225bn into the EU. 3% of that is around £7bn. Therefore, the UK Government could just recompense every company that exports to the EU the 3% tariff, if it so wished, from the amount the UK now pays into the EU as our membership fee - or as the UK could also set tariffs on imports - from this money. However, what is far more likely, if it came down to it, is the UK would just say that they will use WTO rules for trade with EU countries and set tariffs to zero and will only add tariffs if the EU adds tariffs on our goods and services.
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