Will Scotland Vote “yes” to Secede from the United Kingdom In September?
Mainstream media is full of stories from around the world, but one story that isn’t receiving the coverage it deserves is what’s happening in Scotland.
On September 18, Scotland voters will vote yes or no to a complicated question: Should Scotland be an independent country?
According to the BBC, since the Scottish National Party won the 2011 Scottish Parliament election by a landslide, it gave them the mandate to stage the referendum.
Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said that Great Britain no longer serves a purpose and that an independent Scotland would be one of the world’s richest countries, thanks to its oil wealth.
On the other side, Prime Minister David Cameron called Great Britain one of the world’s most successful social and political unions.
North Sea oil and gas are central to Scotland’s case for independence.
Salmond recommends earmarking a tenth of revenues to form an oil fund familiar to Norway’s.
Those in opposition of independence argue that oil and gas will eventually run out.
Another spot of contention is what would be Scotland’s currency?
An independent Scotland wants to still use the pound as its official currency, but Britain’s three main political parties, the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats, won’t go for that. Watch the debate on currency below:
But the majority of Scotland doesn’t want independence, according to a recent poll.
In a poll that took place on August 5, 2014 for the BBC, 55 percent of Scotland would vote no on the referendum. Thirty-five percent would vote yes, and 11 percent don’t know.
“It will be the biggest poll in Scotland’s history in terms of turnout,” said Historian Tom Devine.
Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister, said that people should disregard opinion polls: “…And many of the people who will be voting will be people who are not touched by opinion polls and opinion surveys, which tend to discount people with no voting record, and I think that’s going to be a major factor.”
According to Forbes, it is in Scotland’s best interest, business wise, to remain as part of Great Britain.
Isolating itself from UK’s established banking system would complicate things.
“Banks that could remain in Scotland would also face difficulties. Upon independence, Scotland would have to develop, fund, and staff a new financial regulatory authority, establish a central bank and approve a mechanism for insuring consumer deposits,” wrote Jodie A. Kirshner, a law professor at Cambridge University.
So this secession movement would mean Scotland would keep more of its own money. However, Scottish leaders are not talking about creating a Libertarian utopia. The Scots’ plan is to make the revenues from oil production public in order to pay for free education and other social welfare programs.
In 2012, the Cato Institute’s David Boaz wrote,
“…the land of Adam Smith has become one of the poorest and most socialist parts of Great Britain. So maybe a libertarian shouldn’t look forward to Scottish independence. On the contrary, I think it’s easy for Scotland to whine and demand more money from the British central government. An independent Scotland would have to create its own prosperity, and surely the people who produced the Enlightenment are smart enough to discover the failures of socialism pretty quickly if they become free, independent, and responsible for their own future.”
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