Why doesn't England just leave the UK?

Fretwired

ewal said:

Myranda said:

Would we keep the pound? Would the other three members of the UK lose the NHS, the pound, centralised government the Bank of England, legal system, etc. and be fine with that? Seems to me that England leaving the UK overnight would create a legal challenge that would mean we would get super sued... like hundreds of billions in damages

Just for the record - Scotland already has it's own centralised government, legal system, NHS, and Education etc

But no currency, central bank or seat in Brussels.

Maybe Sturgeon might like to buy our seat in Brussels - the Tories have flogged everything else off so why not our membership. The SNP could represent the UK.

BintyTwanger77

camf said:

Before the Scottish referendum, we were told that if Scotland left the UK, it would immediately no longer be part of the EU... bumped! Ejected! So why doesn't England (and Wales?) just jump ship? Then according to the 'facts' Scotland were given prior to the referendum, England could then be immediately out of Europe, leaving Scotland and NI (who both had majorities wishing to remain in Europe), happily remaining in the UK's place. Even better for England... they get rid of Scotland AND the EU in one move. Wouldn't that work out for perfectly for all you Brexiters?

Yeah... I know. But still...

Can we give them Dundee, though?

camf

Fretwired said:

But no currency, central bank or seat in Brussels.

Maybe Sturgeon might like to buy our seat in Brussels - the Tories have flogged everything else off so why not our membership. The SNP could represent the UK.

That's not really how the concept of a United Kingdom works. After all, we Scots kindly gave you a king in the first place (see James the VI of Scotland). So all these things are not really England's to give. They belong to the United Kingdom. They'd have to be divided up nice and fairly... you know, like people want to happen between the UK and the EU... or is that England and the EU?

ICBM

Fretwired said:

Nice try ... the Royal Navy's home base is Portsmouth in England and the Royal Navy is English as it was setup by Henry VII and expanded under Henry VIII. Parliament is in England .. all the cash is in England, the pound is English, it's the Bank of England, the City is in London .... you can keep the half finished aircraft carriers and the nuclear subs .. enjoy spending the billions to decommission them .. ;-)

Nope… the premise is that England and Wales leave the UK. The Royal Navy and the other armed forces are the forces of the UK, not of England. We'll relocate the Navy to Faslane and Rosyth, and presumably somewhere in Northern Ireland, and we already have a base in Gibraltar. Get your own .

England doesn't even have a parliament - Westminster is the UK parliament. You should probably start by setting one up. Actually I think this should happen even if the UK stays together - it would solve the problems of the Westminster parliament trying to do two jobs at once.

Fretwired

camf said:

Fretwired said:

But no currency, central bank or seat in Brussels.

Maybe Sturgeon might like to buy our seat in Brussels - the Tories have flogged everything else off so why not our membership. The SNP could represent the UK.

That's not really how the concept of a United Kingdom works. After all, we Scots kindly gave you a king in the first place (see James the VI of Scotland). So all these things are not really England's to give. They belong to the United Kingdom. They'd have to be divided up nice and fairly... you know, like people want to happen between the UK and the EU... or is that England and the EU?

I can see sarcasm is wasted on this forum .... ;-)

Fretwired

ICBM said:

Fretwired said:

Nice try ... the Royal Navy's home base is Portsmouth in England and the Royal Navy is English as it was setup by Henry VII and expanded under Henry VIII. Parliament is in England .. all the cash is in England, the pound is English, it's the Bank of England, the City is in London .... you can keep the half finished aircraft carriers and the nuclear subs .. enjoy spending the billions to decommission them .. ;-)

Nope… the premise is that England and Wales leave the UK. The Royal Navy and the other armed forces are the forces of the UK, not of England. 

England doesn't even have a parliament - Westminster is the UK parliament. You should probably start by setting one up.

When England and Wales leave everything would have to be shared out  (as was the case when Scotland planned to leave). As the Royal Navy is based in England and mostly manned by English sailors it makes sense that it becomes the English Navy. England does have a parliament - Westminster. It can just repeal the Act of Union send the SNP home and go back to being the English parliament it once was.

We'll keep the Queen but Charles can bugger off to Scotland.

You still don't have a central bank or a currency .... ;-)

littlegreenman

Fretwired said:

England does have a parliament - Westminster. It can just repeal the Act of Union send the SNP home and go back to being the English parliament it once was.

After a referendum of course

ICBM

Fretwired said:

When England and Wales leave everything would have to be shared out  (as was the case when Scotland planned to leave). As the Royal Navy is based in England and mostly manned by English sailors it makes sense that it becomes the English Navy. England does have a parliament - Westminster. It can just repeal the Act of Union send the SNP home and go back to being the English parliament it once was. 

We'll keep the Queen but Charles can bugger off to Scotland.

You still don't have a central bank or a currency .... ;-)

We have a currency - the Scottish Pound. It's currently locked 1:1 to the English Pound, but there's no reason that has to continue. In fact it's already happening in Hong Kong - http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/business-consumer/travellers-scottish-bank-notes-better-1863134 . And we don't actually need a central bank - Mags will explain why .

I don't have any objection to sharing out the forces - you can have the big expensive useless things you seem to like so much for fighting foreign wars and waving a big stick at the UN, and we'll keep the ones we actually need.

CHRISB50

You use 'we' a lot ICBM. I thought you were English?

ICBM

CHRISB50 said:

You use 'we' a lot ICBM. I thought you were English?

I was. I now identify as Scottish . I'll never be a 'Scotsman' - my accent will always prevent that - but I do think of myself as a Scot now.

Fretwired

ICBM said:

Fretwired said:

When England and Wales leave everything would have to be shared out  (as was the case when Scotland planned to leave). As the Royal Navy is based in England and mostly manned by English sailors it makes sense that it becomes the English Navy. England does have a parliament - Westminster. It can just repeal the Act of Union send the SNP home and go back to being the English parliament it once was. 

We'll keep the Queen but Charles can bugger off to Scotland.

You still don't have a central bank or a currency .... ;-)

We have a currency - the Scottish Pound. It's currently locked 1:1 to the English Pound, but there's no reason that has to continue. In fact it's already happening in Hong Kong - http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/business-consumer/travellers-scottish-bank-notes-better-1863134 . And we don't actually need a central bank - Mags will explain why .

I don't have any objection to sharing out the forces - you can have the big expensive useless things you seem to like so much for fighting foreign wars and waving a big stick at the UN, and we'll keep the ones we actually need.

The pound is the pound which is guaranteed by the Bank of England. The Scots pound is just a collection of fancy bank notes and wouldn't help people in N Ireland or Gibraltar. Without a currency union with England or a central bank the Scottish financial services industry would head south, it would be hard to borrow money and there would be issues with the EU.

Other than that a sound plan .. ;-)

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/02/indepdent-scotland-not-join-eu-without-central-bank

Sambostar

ICBM said:

CHRISB50 said:

You use 'we' a lot ICBM. I thought you were English?

I was. I now identify as Scottish . I'll never be a 'Scotsman' - my accent will always prevent that - but I do think of myself as a Scot now.

ICBM

Fretwired said:

The pound is the pound which is guaranteed by the Bank of England. The Scots pound is just a collection of fancy bank notes and wouldn't help people in N Ireland or Gibraltar. Without a currency union with England or a central bank the Scottish financial services industry would head south, it would be hard to borrow money and there would be issues with the EU. 

Other than that a sound plan .. ;-)

NI have got their own pound too, which could be tied to the Scottish one - I'm not sure about Gibraltar. The rest may well be true . But there's very little really left of the Scottish financial services industry unfortunately - most of it is effectively just branch offices for London-based conglomerates now, no matter where there supposed head offices are.

Still, it's not all bad news - we've got most of the oil (especially the currently un-exploited discoveries), and one of the highest renewable energy potentials per capita in the world, so I'm sure we could work something out.

CHRISB50

ICBM said:

CHRISB50 said:

You use 'we' a lot ICBM. I thought you were English?

I was. I now identify as Scottish . I'll never be a 'Scotsman' - my accent will always prevent that - but I do think of myself as a Scot now.

Why? You're English aren't you? 

Not being argumentative just intrigued.

quarky

As I said after June 23rd. We should have declared our intent via Article 50 straight-away, but said we want to keep all the conditions around trade/freedom of movement, payments, so no signifcant economic shock. etc. 

Once that was done, we could have as long as we wanted to roll back the superstate crap, and in the meantime.secure our own trade agreements without having to worry about the EU being all petty. Looks like it is too late though and we can give up an any real claim to be a nation anymore, we are just a region of the EU.

ICBM

CHRISB50 said:

Why? You're English aren't you? 

Not being argumentative just intrigued.

I was born and raised English, yes. But I've lived in Scotland for much more than half my life now, and I have Scottish children. I culturally identify more with Scotland than England - in fact it's one of the reasons I came here in the first place. I'm as much a 'Scot' as someone like my (step)grandpa was 'British' - he was Polish, but became a naturalised British citizen and considered himself British even though he always spoke with a thick Polish accent… the same as many other first-generation immigrants who call their new country home.

Fretwired

ICBM said:

Fretwired said:

The pound is the pound which is guaranteed by the Bank of England. The Scots pound is just a collection of fancy bank notes and wouldn't help people in N Ireland or Gibraltar. Without a currency union with England or a central bank the Scottish financial services industry would head south, it would be hard to borrow money and there would be issues with the EU. 

Other than that a sound plan .. ;-)

NI have got their own pound too, which could be tied to the Scottish one - I'm not sure about Gibraltar. The rest may well be true . But there's very little really left of the Scottish financial services industry unfortunately - most of it is effectively just branch offices for London-based conglomerates now, no matter where there supposed head offices are.

Still, it's not all bad news - we've got most of the oil (especially the currently un-exploited discoveries), and one of the highest renewable energy potentials per capita in the world, so I'm sure we could work something out.

Bad news on oil though. Shell think we are less than five years away from peak oil and given there's enough oil which can be cheaply fracked to last 200 years the oil price will remain low. There may be oil in the North Sea but it may be uneconomic to get it out of the ground. Gas powered power plants will have to close under the Climate Change Treaty so demand will fall.

ICBM

Fretwired said:

Bad news on oil though. Shell think we are less than five years away from peak oil and given there's enough oil which can be cheaply fracked to last 200 years the oil price will remain low. There may be oil in the North Sea but it may be uneconomic to get it out of the ground. Gas powered power plants will have to close under the Climate Change Treaty so demand will fall.

The interesting thing about oil is that we may be starting to see a shift away from it - obviously there's still huge demand, but alternatives are starting to take off now. I still can't see it being worthless even in fifty years' time though - it's still a necessary product for reasons other than fuel, and regardless of how much you can extract by fracking and other less-efficient processes, it's still a finite and diminishing resource.

I completely agree that the SNP was extremely unwise to base their economic strategy on the price of it though.

Fretwired

ICBM said:

Fretwired said:

Bad news on oil though. Shell think we are less than five years away from peak oil and given there's enough oil which can be cheaply fracked to last 200 years the oil price will remain low. There may be oil in the North Sea but it may be uneconomic to get it out of the ground. Gas powered power plants will have to close under the Climate Change Treaty so demand will fall.

The interesting thing about oil is that we may be starting to see a shift away from it - obviously there's still huge demand, but alternatives are starting to take off now. I still can't see it being worthless even in fifty years' time though - it's still a necessary product for reasons other than fuel, and regardless of how much you can extract by fracking and other less-efficient processes, it's still a finite and diminishing resource.

I completely agree that the SNP was extremely unwise to base their economic strategy on the price of it though.

We're better off together .. we'd lose the banter and the SNP need a bogeyman on the border ... :-)

fob

ICBM said:

I was born and raised English, yes. But I've lived in Scotland for much more than half my life now, and I have Scottish children. I culturally identify more with Scotland than England - in fact it's one of the reasons I came here in the first place. I'm as much a 'Scot' as someone like my (step)grandpa was 'British' - he was Polish, but became a naturalised British citizen and considered himself British even though he always spoke with a thick Polish accent… the same as many other first-generation immigrants who call their new country home.

Another 'genuinely intrigued' question: if England are playing Scotland (football, rugby, chess) who do you root for in your heart?