Scottish Independence Referendum - 18 September 2014

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Plenty of countries use others' currencies, plenty use the euro without being EU members, and plenty peg their currencies to a big neighbour (most closely, Denmark).

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Plenty of countries use others' currencies, plenty use the euro without being EU members, and plenty peg their currencies to a big neighbour (most closely, Denmark).

Indeed they do, but if Scotland wants to join the EU I cannot use sterling without a currency union because if they do so, an independent Scotland would technically have no central bank. EU rules stipulate that member-states must have a central bank and so using sterling without a currency union is not an option if Scotland wants to successfully join the EU after voting for independence.

It wouldn't technically have no central bank. It could create a central bank that pegs its currency as Ireland did with sterling or as Denmark does with the euro. That may not be the SNP's proposal, but I'm not particularly in the business of supporting their arguments for independence. However, it would be possible to devolve exchange rate policy to the UK/Europe.

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It helps that the campaign is one party that isn't in the national government versus everyone else. It's a lot easier to be consistent that way. If you had two nationalist parties each paying an equal contribution and asking for an equal share of airtime, you'd get more inconsistencies.

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He's exaggerating, but not completely or objectively wrong. Even if the SNP were unambiguously committed to the western alliance, splitting NATO armies into smaller contingents weakens NATO by making the threat of collective action less credible, much as the UK's parliamentary vote forestalled collective action in Syria. He's correct that would have significant consequences for rUK and would weaken its self-confidence, as happened after the loss of India, as well as reducing its influence through smaller size. However, few of these arguments should matter for Scots who are not NATO enthusiasts, and the happiness of rUK isn't really the responsibility of Scots at all.

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The UK 1922 general election was held a year after the Anglo-Irish Treaty recognised Irish secession, but a month before the new Irish Free State officially came into existence. Even though they were still recognised as being UK territory for three weeks, the Free State constituencies did not elect MPs and ceased to exist. The south of Ireland had already seceded de facto, with its own courts, parliament, etc., and abstentionist republicans held almost all the seats of the future Free State in the House of Commons. So an election would have been an utter farce.

In contrast, Scotland has not yet established its own republican courts, revolutionary provisional parliament, etc., and any negotiation about a positive election result in September 2014 will last longer than May 2015 plus three weeks, so I don't think the Irish case will be a precedent for excluding Scottish MPs.

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In turn, the Conservatives would ditch Cameron and the Lib Dems, initiate an early election under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, and run on an English nationalist, hardline-negotiator platform. If the economy keeps doing well, who's to say how big a majority they could get by bashing Salmond, Scottish Labour and the two Eds?

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I think that's a bit optimistic from Labour's POV - who's really going to change their economic views, one way or the other, by a Yes vote? More to the point, economics would fall in importance as an issue if voters are more worried about negotiating with Scotland, and economic managment could become a strong point for the Conservatives rather than Labour if wages, employment and output continue to rise.

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Realistically, some or all of the SNP would end up as the centre-right party, as the Irish republican movement did in Ireland (though it ended up as two big parties and a bunch of small ones).

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The Guardian writes:

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which only proves once again that The Guardian's opinion and knowledge of Catholics is stuck around 1688.

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So did Ireland... The explanation is to follow the money. Both countries had large classes of rich landowners (officers) and landless peasants (privates).

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To summarise Sibboleth's explanation, Scotland gets 50%+1 because the British government has implicitly accepted those terms in Scotland and allowed a referendum, whereas the Scottish government has not done so for Shetland.

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A legal question, the Yes vote won what happens in the general election? will the Scottish MPs take their seats and be able to vote despite the fact that they will soon be out of the union? if Labour win due to the Scottish vote what happens?

I feel like a generation of future law students will suffer studying this cluster of a constitutional problem.

Short answer, Scotland's seats in Westminster exist under the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 as amended by order, and this would not change after a Yes vote unless the law were changed.

Long answer, there is relevant legal precedent to deprive Scotland of seats. The Irish Free State did not participate in the November 1922 election, despite Britain's only affirming Irish independence in December. However, Ireland had already created its own revolutionary house of representatives, courts, local government, etc., which were doing government work, so an election to Westminster would have been pointless and farcical at best.

This is precedent for the legality of any change to remove Westminster seats for a country on its way out of the union. But there is a big but. Ireland had already been in revolution since 1919 and there was a whole year to prepare the electoral arrangements between the agreement of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and its legal ratification by the crown. Surely the agreement between Scotland and the rest of the UK wouldn't be completed before the scheduled 2015 general election. It would be very foolhardy to abolish Scottish seats before they were definitely leaving the UK.

What I don't know is whether Scottish MPs could be deprived of their seats after a valid election, even if their constituencies were no longer valid in future elections because well um they were now in another country. The cleanest solution would be a dissolution of Parliament.

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To summarise Sibboleth's explanation, Scotland gets 50%+1 because the British government has implicitly accepted those terms in Scotland and allowed a referendum, whereas the Scottish government has not done so for Shetland.

True. But the Parliament would still have to act to implement the referendum decision. As far as I understand, it has not committed to the exact shape of Scottish independence. It would be, let us say, interesting

I suppose you could put the rump statelets into Northern Ireland...

But, on a more serious note, the wording of the referendum is clear and accepted by both sides and would appear to preclude detachments of parts of Scotland. The UK recognises Scotland as a political entity in a manner that is not true for the Scottish Borders or Shetland. The Canadian federal government may earnestly desire to own northern Québec or it may be trolling, but Westminster doesn't want to commit anything to potential enclaves around Selkirk or Aberdeen, or expensive little island statelets. It would be a pretty brave government that tried to keep Scotland in the union after a Yes vote.

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The referendum is nothing to do with popular sovereignty. It is a device which will be used by Parliament to form a future decision on Scottish independence. Everyone accepted 50%+1, probably because this isn't some limit on imperfect representative democracy but a consultative exercise of everyone eligible to vote. Denying independence on, say, a 65% vote would have consequences. It's questionable to argue that a 51% victory would reflect ephemeral, transient whims, whereas a 51% slim defeat reflects earnest, longstanding consensus.

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The referendum is nothing to do with popular sovereignty. It is a device which will be used by Parliament to form a future decision on Scottish independence. Everyone accepted 50%+1, probably because this isn't some limit on imperfect representative democracy but a consultative exercise of everyone eligible to vote. Denying independence on, say, a 65% vote would have consequences. It's questionable to argue that a 51% victory would reflect ephemeral, transient whims, whereas a 51% slim defeat reflects earnest, longstanding consensus.

Actually since the elderly are the most solid No voters you could argue that a small defeat is a lot more transient than a small Yes victory.

Yes, you could. But cohort effects are usually weaker than the impact of age on political preferences. That caveat is not an iron law, though. Scottish independence wouldn't have got this close to victory 30 years ago, when the UK's population was younger overall. So it's likely that there is some cohort effect as well as the (natural?) preference of older voters for the familiar and the traditional.

The referendum is all about political gain and nothing else.  If Yes wins, then the SNP would essentially become Scotland's "Natural Governing Party" by default.

Hardly. Look at Westminster. On bread-and-butter, sovereign-level political matters, Labour outpolls the SNP 2:1 even when losing the UK as a whole.

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Thanks to Clyde1998 for the useful correlations.

Yes, the Catholic thing was mentioned on here at the time (on the results thread, not this one), but it's good to see it confirmed that it appears in the data.  In most areas, of course, we only have authority-level data, but it was also observed in the results thread that in the more local data released by North Lanarkshire council Airdrie was more No than Coatbridge.  (For those who don't know, these are neighbouring towns but Airdrie is very Protestant and Coatbridge very Catholic.)

The socio-economic factors make sense as well; I noticed at the time that in the Glasgow area the middle class suburban districts (East Renfrewshire and East Dunbartonshire) were quite strongly No while the rest of the area tended to Yes.

I think there was a tendency in the media to expect that areas with SNP MPs would be strongest for Yes, but it didn't play out like that (barring Dundee East, I suppose).

Is it the case that:
1. Yes vote is "caused" by low socioeconomic status, in the sense that status pre-existed the vote and there does not seem to be any omitted variable;
2. Catholic districts are correlated with low socioeconomic status;
3. Controlling for 1, Catholic areas would not be significantly more likely to vote Yes
?

We need a logistic regression.

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I suppose my question was about whether there was any difference between Catholics and Protestants of similar socioeconomic status.

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The BBC is actually broadcast in the Republic of Ireland (Eire) due to RTÉ paying the BBC to do so.

I don't believe this is true. You can receive some BBC channels on the Astra satellite or by cable, but the Irish broadcaster doesn't pay for it - they are competitors at some very small margin (e.g. showing EastEnders). The equivalent would be to pay a Scottish cable company for their subscription package including UK channels.