What if scotland votes yes

Scotland is offered associate EU membership, on a similar basis to Switzerland and Norway. Economic and financial talks between George Osborne and John Swinney break up in disarray. They do not speak again.

Union Flag raised on all public buildings in Scotland so that to can be symbolically lowered at midnight. Ceremony attended by the Prince of Wales and some world leaders sees Scotland as an independent nation born at midnight. Scottish ambassador to the United Nations takes his place, sandwiched between Saudi Arabia and Senegal in the general Assembly.

Scotland formally joins Nato and the Commonwealth, but the veto on membership of the EU is maintained by Spain. Appears grumpy throughout. A process of de-Englishification begins; the Queens head comes off the postage stamps, the pillar boxes and phone boxes start to be painted blue; all official road and other signage are made bilingual with Gaelic; English citizens are banned from owning second homes in Scotland. How transformed?

Parts of the state might not change much. Scotland has always had separate legal and education systems. The NHS, too, is already completely devolved to the Scottish government — for all the Yes campaign scaremongering about it. But a Yes vote would be a political earthquake. The economic fallout could be huge.

And we can only guess at the psychological impact. Here are some of the challenges we would face. David Cameron says he will not resign in the wake of a Yes vote.

He might have to think differently on Friday 19th in a dismembered UK. But neither his likely successor, George Osborne, or the Labour and Lib-Dem leaders, would come out of a Yes vote well. It would be very ugly — and just in time for the party conferences. Indeed, there is a case for an early general election this autumn. The May election would in any case be compromised. If it went ahead as planned, the role of the 59 Scottish MPs would look highly questionable.

A more realistic timetable might be as follows:. But there will be myriad of other issues, covering every government department, from macro-economic management, taxation and financial regulation to foreign policy, defence and national security, immigration, policing, transport, health, environment, agriculture, fisheries, education, research, welfare and social security, public sector pensions … the list is enormous.

When Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia it required 30 Treaties and some legal agreements to give effect to the separation, and they were still negotiating about some issues ten years later. At the start of the negotiations the two teams will need to agree which issues need to be decided before Scotland becomes independent, and which can be left until later. They will also need to decide in what order to discuss the main issues, and to draw up a timetabled agenda.

There will need to be sectoral negotiating teams covering each subject area: finance, defence, foreign policy etc. These will be similar to the ministerial and official teams which the UK sends to negotiate on different policies in Brussels. The UK team and the Scottish team will report back to their respective Cabinets, and there will need to be regular reports to both parliaments.

Because of this regular reporting, the negotiations will not be kept secret for long. There are many political complications surrounding the negotiations. The first is the political mood in the rest of the UK, which may influence whether the negotiations are conducted in a spirit of good will and generosity, or bitterness and anger. They may go through the classic feelings experienced by some couples going through divorce: hurt, rejection, bitterness, anger and mean spiritedness.

If that mean-spiritedness finds political expression, it may put pressure on the UK negotiators to drive a hard bargain with Scotland. And the question of whether to be mean or generous towards Scotland may become an issue in the UK general election, with UKIP the most likely contender as an English nationalist party. The second political difficulty faces the Labour party. If there is a hung parliament in and they have similar numbers of Scottish MPs, they will depend on those MPs to form a government.

But the Scottish MPs will depart when Scotland becomes independent: half way through the Parliament, on the timetable sketched out above. If the government then ceases to command confidence in the House of Commons, an alternative government must be formed within 14 days, or fresh elections held.

For example, can Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, be a leading member of the finance team? And when the independence legislation is going through the Westminster Parliament, should Scottish MPs be allowed to vote on the legislation?

Those are issues which must be resolved early on, in a paving bill or resolution of the House of Commons. This is yet to be decided. It is likely to be calculated on a per capita basis, according to population size. What would happen to benefits and taxes? Both benefits and taxes would become the responsibility of the new Scottish government. The Scottish Parliament would ensure that the personal tax allowance and tax credits increase in line with inflation.

Tax would stay the same until a new government, elected in , chooses how to change it. However, wide variations in forecasts for the revenue of an independent Scotland make it difficult to calculate potential changes for the individual taxpayer. The oil revenues in the North Sea have always been considered essential to the economic viability of Scotland as an independent nation state. Standard Life, the pensions-and-insurance giant based in the Scottish capital, Edinburgh, has warned that it would move large parts of its business out of Scotland in order to protect its customers in the event of secession.

As a contingency plan, Standard Life has started registering new English subsidiaries to which it could transfer parts of its business. Neither the Royal Bank of Scotland nor Lloyds Banking Group have announced yet that they would move their main bases to London, but companies would have 18 months until official independence to make any decisions.

Would Scottish citizens need new passports? This largely depends on whether Scotland can join the E. Scottish citizens would be entitled to a Scottish passport, but a U. Would passports be needed to cross the England-Scotland border?

An independent Scotland would be responsible for its own borders, but the Scottish government has signaled that it would not want to sign up to the Schengen free-travel area which covers much of western Europe.