Scottish independence

[Cort Haus]

Scotland will never achieve independence, since it’s as integral to the United Kingdom as England, Northern Ireland or God forbid Wales or Cornwall.

It's not as integral, but far more integral than the others. The United Kingdom is the union of England and Scotland. Wales and NI are just colonies. And please, let's not pretend that Cornwall is a nation. It's embarrassing.

Apologies for all the bold.

[Cort Haus]

It would appear to me that England is by far the dominant player in the UK equation, hence the equivalency of the UK and England.

England has the far larger population, and the larger landmass. The weather is not quite as dreadful as in Scotland, and we are not plagued by midges.

Historically, Scotland has been very well represented at the top of British politics, disproportionately so for its population size. Today, constitutional arrangements see Scotland having a dominant position in some respects, as they have their own parliament which can decide on many aspects of Scottish life, as well as their own legal and education systems. Scottish voters get to influence English life by voting for MPs in Westminster while English voters have no say in Holyrood. This is known as the West Lothian question.

However it may appear, the United Kingdom is not England.

[Dauphin]

A clear example of disproportionate power is that Scotland's parliament voted to have no university tuition fees. Scottish MPs, however, voted for tuition fees in England and Wales; the bill was passed by a majority smaller than the number of Scottish MPs who voted (net) in favour of the bill.

[MikeH]

Scotland seceding from England to me seems kind of silly. Are there really such stark differences between England and Scotland? The island's not even as big as many US states.

Look in terms of population not land mass. We have the same population as your 28 smallest states combined. Or the same as your two biggest. You know the differences between your states, why should the differences between our regions, which have comparable populations to US regions, be any different?

Because of the compact size of Europe these differences occur geographically closer, but it's because the population density is higher, and there's way more history. Texas hasn't been on and off at war with California for a couple of thousand years like adjacent areas of Europe have been, but their ideological differences can still be pretty huge.

[MikeH]

I mean, Scotland and England only officially unified in 1707 (although there was a single king 100 years before), it's still relatively new.