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One of the most puzzling aspects of the EU Referendum campaign was the enormous support for the EU by the Scottish voters and the SNP.
The main reason for the demand for Scotland to be independent is that money flows out of Scotland to the South East of England. The politicians always talk about oil money but a major and more damaging flow of cash occurs as a result of the Scottish Trade Deficit with the rest of the UK:
About £11bn a year lost to the UK is £11bn directly out of Scottish pockets. Trade Deficits subtract directly from GDP. 7% of GDP is lost annually to the rest of the UK. The money is lost because many companies that operate in Scotland are English owned or foreign owned but operating through England. These companies base production, R&D, management and other high paid, high value activities near their corporate headquarters and use their Scottish activity to extract cash from the Scottish consumer without putting much back. This process is known as regionalisation, it turns Scotland into a region of the UK with a regional economy.
So who can blame the Scottish from wanting more control over their economy so that when they buy goods much of the money cycles back to Scotland rather than leaking down South?
The SNP solution to this problem is to join the EU. Had the SNP done their homework they would have checked whether the UK has the same problem in the EU as Scotland experiences in the UK.
Not surprisingly the UK is experiencing exactly the same regionalisation within the EU as Scotland is experiencing in the UK. About 4% of GDP is lost annually to the EU. The big difference is that the regionalisation of the UK is a more recent phenomenon and is being ignored by those who are passionate about remaining in the EU.
Scotland will be ever more affected by regionalisation within the EU. The SNP will blame it on the UK and Scotland will, like Catalonia, attempt to secede from the UK within the EU. However, by the time this happens any independence referendum will require support from the EU Parliament and the EU will have its own army. The current policies of the SNP, if successful, will guarantee that Scotland will never be independent. It makes you wonder who is paying the senior figures in the SNP.
Anyone who supports Scottish independence should be aware that “independence” means not being a region of another country – whether that is the UK or EU.
For a more complete discussion of Regionalisation within the EU see: The Eurozone Trojan Horse.
This post was originally published by the author on his personal blog: http://pol-check.blogspot.com/2018/05/scotland-regionalization-and-eu.html
