May says won't trigger EU divorce until UK-wide approach agreed

[Denzil_DC]

13. "Big deal", indeed!

Last edited Fri Jul 15, 2016, 04:23 PM - Edit history (1)

As things stand at the moment, Hollande has to say that.

Until Article 50's triggered, there aren't supposed to be any negotiations at all. Same goes for any other heads of state, who're observing the protocols. These are soundings that have been taken, along with ones we don't know about. The Scottish government could do that, as it wasn't tied by Cameron's ridiculous stricture on the UK Civil Service that it could think about that might be coming down the pike, but couldn't write anything down (and because our government at Holyrood's not, like, totally dysfunctional ...).

The article doesn't just give a quote from "someone from Britain" (it's actually James Ker-Lindsay of the London School of Economics). It quotes José Manuel Garcia-Margallo (not a Brit?). Rajoy isn't exactly looking like he'll last long in that post anyway at the moment.

Maybe you have a down on the LSE as a whole?

Spain is unlikely to veto an independent Scotland’s EU membership

The Scottish Government has indicated two possible routes to EU membership following a Yes vote on 18 September, under articles 48 and 49 of the current European Treaty. Either route would require unanimity among the 28 Member States. There have been some suggestions that Spain would veto Scotland to avoid creating a precedent for its sub-state nations, most notably Catalonia, where there is widespread demand for holding a referendum on independence on 9 November 2014.

Spain’s veto seems unlikely. José Manuel García-Margallo, Spain’s foreign minister, declined to state that Spain would veto Scottish accession when invited to do so. Instead, the Spanish Government has taken the line that the cases of Catalonia and Scotland are fundamentally different because the UK’s constitutional setting permits referendums on secession while the current Spanish constitution enshrines the indivisibility of the Spanish state and establishes that national sovereignty belongs to all Spaniards.

The Spanish government is trying to make a virtue out of necessity. They would find it politically difficult to oppose an independent Scotland’s membership. As Stephen Tierney and Katie Boyle observe, ‘if the UK Government is prepared to recognise an independent Scotland and work towards its membership of the EU with the cooperation of EU institutions and the overwhelming majority of the other Member States, then it is simply unforeseeable that this would be vetoed by an individual Member State’.

The bottom-line in Spain’s position is that internal UK politics are a matter for the UK. Spain would have no grounds to oppose Scotland’s independence when this prospect is entirely acceptable to the UK government. This is very different to the case of Kosovo, which declared independence unilaterally from Serbia and has therefore not been recognised by Spain. This is not to say, of course, that the admission process will be concluded quickly. There could be delays for administrative and political reasons. García-Margallo has already argued that an independent Scotland would have to join the ‘waiting line and ask for admission’, stressing the difficulties and lengthiness of the process.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2014/09/15/spain-is-unlikely-to-veto-an-independent-scotlands-eu-membership/

Published online by the LSE, but the author, "Dani Cetrà is a Research Fellow at the Scottish Centre on Constitutional Change (SCCC)".

Are you assuming that any individual EU member state could veto Scotland's application? Depends what route it took, and opinions differ:

An independent Scotland would only need majority to join EU, even if Spain wanted to block it, expert reveals

...

Professor Sionaidh Douglas-Scott {of Queen Mary University London} said full statehood could be achieved if a majority, rather than a unanimity, of EU members, backed it.

...

Douglas-Scott said: “If Scotland, whether as successor state or with some other arrangement, wanted to proceed under the umbrella of article 50, it would be looking for a majority, rather than unanimity.

“But if Scotland was looking for recognition as a new independent state, there might be pressure to go to article 49, which is the accession procedure, and that requires unanimity.”

Last night, a Scottish Government source said: “This is an interesting
contribution. Many key players in Europe are indicating they are open to finding a solution for Scotland. And if an independence referendum is the chosen route, then this suggestion, or something like it, may well come into play.”

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/independent-scotland-would-only-need-8343623

A second Independence referendum, and not least its timing in relation to the Article 50 negotiations, is certainly among the key options.

As for the currency issue, this was a major stumbling block during the independence referendum, with demands for cast-iron answers to questions that were only going to be answerable if negotiations took place if the vote had been Yes, so we've had it on our minds.

Options at the moment include trying to qualify to join the eurozone (not necessarily compulsory, and in any case requires certain long-term economic conditions to be fulfilled, which could put it on the "pending" pile for quite some time as an aspiration, and not a bar to membership in itself), retaining sterling (nothing the rest of the UK government could do about it as other countries use it without impediment, though we'd obviously be hostage to decisions of its central bank), or reinstating the Scottish pound, or bawbee, or whatever, tied or not to the UK pound (amusingly, you'll get a better exchange rate for Scottish-issued currency at the moment than those notes issued by the Bank of England, though they're nominally the same value). And on a not unrelated note, there have also been noises about reinstating the Scottish Stock Exchange.

The more workable timeline than yours looks like it would be:

Scotland splits off, asks to be treated as an existing or successor EU member state, UK exits.

I don't think anybody - Sturgeon included - relishes the idea of another independence referendum so soon. I'd hoped we'd have another five years or so to get our ducks on a row before we even thought of putting the question to the electorate again, but events have taken over. And opinions are changing rapidly up here, among the media and elsewhere.

This is Nicholas Macpherson, one-time Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, who was very outspoken as a civil servant during the first indyref, breaking the tradition of civil service impartiality because he felt the fabric of the state was at stake:

The case for Scottish independence looks stronger post-Brexit

With the UK leaving the EU, there is a golden opportunity for proponents of Scottish independence to reappraise their economic prospectus. Clearly, membership of the EU will lie at the heart of it. That will enable Scotland to have access to the biggest market in the world without the uncertainties that are likely to face the rest of the UK for many years to come. It would also provide a historic opportunity for Edinburgh to develop further as a financial centre, as London-based institutions hedge their bets on the location of staff and activities. If Royal Bank of Scotland, the state-backed bank, relocates its headquarters as part of that process, that would strengthen the long-term sustainability of the Scottish financial sector.

How quickly an independent Scotland could join the EU is of course highly uncertain. Spain is unlikely to agree to automatic membership because of concerns about secessionist pressures in Catalonia. All the same, the EU has a huge interest in fast-tracking membership for a country whose citizens have been members of the bloc for 43 years and have voted to remain by 62 per cent to 38 per cent. Then there is the question of currency. In the run-up to the 2014 independence referendum, the Scottish National party government missed a trick by advocating a unilateral monetary union between an independent Scotland and the rest of the UK. The Treasury had had enough problems with fixed currency regimes in the 20th century without wanting to enter into one in the 21st. The history of monetary unions teaches us that they require more political integration rather than less — as the eurozone has discovered to its cost.

In any case, an independent Scotland would have no interest in seeking to tie its currency to a country that wishes to put more distance between itself and the EU. It is surely time, therefore, for the Scottish government to commit to creating a Scottish pound supported by its own central bank. That would not preclude the monetary authorities of an independent Scotland from shadowing sterling, just as the Danish central bank shadows the euro.

In the longer term, there could be a case for tying the Scottish pound to the euro. And a long-term commitment to joining the single currency would almost certainly be a requirement of EU membership. But that does not mean Scotland would have to adopt the euro — at least not straight away. Sweden is theoretically obliged to join the single currency. But more than 20 years on from joining the EU, the prospects of its giving up the krona seem vanishingly remote.

https://next.ft.com/content/1219f41c-4456-11e6-9b66-0712b3873ae1

Whatever happens, it's going to rely on a lot of goodwill among the existing EU members if we do end up going for remaining/seeking accession. It looks like we have quite a bit of that from what we can tell so far. How that will tie in and suit the rest of the UK (and let's not forget that the London mayor and Gibraltar, among many others, have been in talks with Sturgeon), and any fudge May might end up having offered to her to sell, is anyone's guess at the moment. We might even end up inventing a whole new model of relating to the EU, to go along with the Swiss, Norwegian, or even Icelandic models.

Let's not forget that once you scratch the surface of seemingly monolithic institutions like the UK and its relations with the rest of the world, you have anomalies like the Channel Islands and, not least, the Isle of Man.

"Brexit means brexit" may be a catchy phrase, but there are all sorts of accommodations that are possible. How much diplomatic capital the UK as a whole has in exploring these and tapping in to any residual goodwill - especially given some of May's appointments, which look more like clever party politicking than having an eye on any grand prize - I'm not sure at the moment.