If Scotland votes for independence on Thursday, it is is obvious that with eighteen months to Independence Day on 24th March 2016, the accelerator pedal will be flat to the board in severance negotiations.
Once a ‘Yes’ vote is the result, the United Kingdom owes Scotland nothing nor does Scotland have any leverage over it.
Negotiations will be the hardest of hardball because the continuing Union will have to reduce as far as possible the scale of the hit its people, its economy and its government will inevitably have to take in the wake of Scotland’s departure. And the hand of its wide awake population is firmly creeping up its back right now, ready to control the moves.
Scotland’s departure will inflict extensive damage on the continuing United Kingdom. It is folly to imagine that this will have no negative consequences.
There is no popular mood to ease Scotland’s passage to independence; and this is only the start of it.
Here’s a snap indicator of attitudes: constituency members in part of East Sussex were asked questions on Scottish independence. More than half said they wanted to see border controls between Scotland and the continuing United Kingdom. More than three quarters said they did not want to see a currency union with Scotland.
Where will the negotiations take place?
The relative status of the parties concerned and the immediate availability of high level officials as needed, dictate that top level negotiations must take place in London.
There may well be site visits to Scotland by junior officials from time to time, as descent into the nitty gritty gets under way; but with Scotland separating from the United Kingdom, there will no longer be any need for the usual niceties of holding some talks in the junior partner’s home base.
This will not be negotiation between equals. This will be negotiation between a senior partner and a departing junior one, between a union with responsibility for a continuing population of 58.3 million and one with responsibility for 5.3 million.
What will be the batting order of issues negotiated?
Currency will have to be dealt with first – because so much else depends upon it; and because the business community will need to know as soon as possible what the monetary and fiscal landscape for doing business and for investment in Scotland will be.
Several of its members will have decisions on their future to make.
Senior nationalist Jim Sillars’ has just revealed [damagingly unrepudiated in any way by the First Minister] that there are plans for immediate employment legislation to delay and restrict the freedom of movement of Scottish registered businesses in an independent Scotland.
In the light of this intimation, no such business with potential future directions to decide, will wish to take the risk, in the highly erratic and retributive volatility around the Scottish Government at this time, to be caught still in Scotland by Independence Day.
So there is real pressure for an early decision on the currency an independent Scotland will use.
Alongside immediate currency negotiations will be the opening of talks on EU membership; on NATO membership and on the future of Trident. The outcomes of these issues will provide the essential framework for the nature and operations of an independent Scotland. The most senior teams will be engaged on these matters.
While their discussions and negotiations proceed, other teams will be negotiating the unimaginably wide-ranging plethora of other matters to be discussed and agreed.
The Scottish Government is reported as having identified assets of £30 Billion in cash value that would be this country’s due in the allocation of assets and liabilities. With Scotland’s share of the United Kingdom national debt currently estimated as around £100 Billion, this would leave a newly independent Scotland with a debt of around £70 Billion – before the Finance Secretary implemented his declared intention to borrow around £7 Billion in the first three years.
A fall in the value of Sterling in the money markets following a ‘Yes’ vote and any impacts on the rates charged for United Kingdom government borrowing, via the yields paid on gilts – will increase the level of the current current debt, raising Scotland’s share to be calibrated on the day Scotland becomes independent.
It is not hard to see how even attempting to meet Alex Salmond’s deadline of 24th March 2016 for Independence Day will require the simultaneous negotiation of many issues – at speed.
Some issues, like the relocation of cultural artefacts of importance to each of the two states are likely to take more time to agree than might be imagined – with the logistics of implementation on the wrong side of nightmare.
While all of these negotiations are ongoing, both Scotland and the continuing United Kingdom will be pressing on with the complex business of designing and implementing revised and new systems of administering all aspects of separate government.
The next eighteen months will have no room for passengers anywhere in the current United Kingdom.
Both governments anticipate that negotiations on some operational and a welter of peripheral matters will continue for several years after Independence Day, with a continuing cost to both states.
This is the constitutional equivalent of the surgical separation of conjoined twins, with the imperative being to ensure the functional survival of both.
Public information
The public in all four member states of the current Union will require to be kept informed on what is being negotiated and on what decisions are being reached.
They will have every possible right to expect that requirement to be an imperative for their political representatives to respect.
Protocols for the issuing of the required public information will need to be framed agreed and made known at the outset, to ease the stress involved to the general public throughout the United Kingdom; and to leave individuals as well as businesses in a position to make informed decisions on the management of their own affairs throughout a time of inevitably substantial upheaval.
