An Independent Scotland: Opportunity for Liberty? - Liberty.me

An Independent Scotland: Opportunity for Liberty?

Tags: independence liberty Referendum Scotland

Luke Ashton April 21, 2014 at 1:04 am

With the Scottish Independence Referendum coming up this fall, there are a lot of exciting things going on. What I would like to know: do you think an independent Scotland will be a more liberty-open country, separate from the UK? Or is it better and more opportune for Scotland to stick with the UK?

I am actually going in a week to Scotland to study the linguistic, ethnic, and cultural lines that influence the referendum with my college, so some insight here might give me some good questions to ask while I’m over there.

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Prenna April 21, 2014 at 3:11 am

<span style=”color: #5a5a5a;”>What I would like to know: do you think an independent Scotland will be a more liberty-open country, separate from the UK? Or is it better and more opportune for Scotland to stick with the UK?</span>

I’m pro-independence, though I don’t live there any more so won’t be voting in the referendum, but in terms of liberty the situation is complicated. Scottish politics is dominated by the big government left at the moment. The interesting situation to come out of the referendum will be what happens to the Scottish National Party. If it’s a yes vote, the SNP’s whole reason for existing will have been achieved. I believe this will free the various factions in the party to start in-fighting and maybe tear the party apart. If it’s a no vote there will have to be a massive re-assessment of SNP strategy.

There are a lot of positives to independence and not a lot of negatives. I just think it will be a long, long time before ideas of personal liberty start to get a voice in the Scottish political landscape.

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Alexander J. Malt June 4, 2014 at 1:46 pm

I think it’s important to realise something about the Scottish independence movement – it is not libertarian; it is socialist. Based on my conversations with a few pro-independence Scots, the main reason a lot of them want to leave the UK is that they feel that they need more welfare, more protectionism, and even outright nationalisation of industry. Short term there’s little hope for liberty in Scotland. (Incidentally, same in pretty much all other European independence movements – the overwhelming majority of people I’ve met who are in favour of an independent Catalonia are resolutely socialist).

That said, I think every libertarian should encourage as many independence movements as possible because reducing the size and power of governments everywhere will naturally limit their ability to engage in the sort of stupidity they’ve been doing for the past few centuries.

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