Europe: Scotland's Dilemma

Scotland's streets are full of tributes to those who have helped

shape the country and wider Europe. Thinkers, poets, warriors. But no

Scotland is torn between two identities, it's pretty self and its

European one. Scotland can now no longer belong to both. This dilemma

is brewing in true and acute constitutional crisis. What effect

will leaving the EU have on those whose livelihoods have been shaped

by European membership for decades? What we need to know and no fast is

where our future is going to come from.

And how will Scotland cope as Britain leaves the single market?

80% of all the food we sell out of Scotland goes to Europe. Europe is

the ball game for our export right now.

Scotland did not choose this. It rejected a Brexit but Brexit is

being thrust upon it. What would that do for the 300-year-old union

between Scotland and England? We are being taken out of the EU

against our will. That is a democratic outrage. It is

not about whether there could be another independence referendum. Of

course there could. The question is should there be?

This week, the Prime Minister will trigger article 50 and pose special

questions for those in Scotland and Northern Ireland that did not vote

to come out of Europe. Nine months ago, just before the

referendum on European Union membership, I made this observation.

It seemed hypothetical at the time. With a vote to leave the European

Union propel Scotland for the to independence? It certainly changes

the independence proposition in ways we haven't begun to consider. It

would confront Scotland but the new national question. Which union do

you want to be part of, the British one of the European one? That is an

argument we haven't started to have. It is not hypothetical now, it is

real and urgent. The UK appears to have voted out,

Scotland has voted in. With 40 to protect our place in the

world's biggest single market and the jobs and that depend on it.

What I am proposing cannot mean membership of the single market.

We voted to safeguard freedom to travel, live, work and study in

other European countries. Brexit must mean control the number

of people who come to Britain from Europe and that is what we will

deliver. I want to take the opportunity this

morning to speak directly to citizens of other European countries

living here in Scotland. You remain welcome here, Scotland is your home

and your contribution is valued. Last summer's EU Referendum Bill in

the UK looking like two different countries articulate into mutually

hostile visions of the future. A second independence referendum, if

and when it comes, will be fought on different terrain. How does Brexit

change the independence prospectus? It makes it in some ways more likely

that Scotland will become independent but also more difficult.

It does. This time round, Nicola Sturgeon is linking Scottish

independence with EU membership. They are inextricable. That wasn't

the case first time round. He also had the problem in the SNP that a

good third of their members support getting away from Brussels so how do

she square that? Opinion polls suggest that some who

voted no to independence in 2014 have moved into the yes camp because

of Brexit. But what about those who want out of both unions? This is

Lossiemouth. Moray prize by selling whisky across the world and bringing

in tourists. In the EU referendum, they smack in close than any other

part of Scotland to Vote Leave. Why was it the closest?

I think the age demographic comes into it and the military factor. We

are very much an RAF, Navy and Army area and a lot of the people that

have settled here are very pro-the union. The SNP has made the

assumption that anybody who votes union. The SNP has made the

for independence will want to remain in Europe but that is just not true.

for independence will want to remain Most of them actually want to get

out of Europe. It is something I learned when I was an SNP candidate.

I hadn't appreciated it until four years ago.

Why do so many people here want to leave the British and European

Union? The SNP supporters in this area are

really staunch once. They are passionate. The bottom line is that

they really want independence. They are fiercely independent.

A few miles to the east, the river Spey empties into the sea. The river

feeds two of the country's biggest industries, whisky and tourism. The

mainstream currents of Scottish public opinion contained many

unexpected eddies. Moray is happy to send MPs from the SNP to Westminster

and Holyrood but in 2014 and voted no to independence. A substantial

minority who voted yes to independence went on to vote to

leave the European Union. A second independence referendum offering

independence in Europe at present back group, those who wanted

independence for Scotland but to leave the EU, with a new dilemma and

a new choice. Which union day want to leave more, the British one of

the European one? Whether you are for EU membership or

against it, something that unites many people is that these decisions

should not be imposed on us, they should be taken for ourselves. In

2014, the No campaign said to vote no to stay in the EU. Then we were

told to vote remained to stay in the EU. Scotland and both of those

things and are still faced with getting taken out of the EU against

our will. That is a democratic outrage and it resonates with many

people. How does that appeal to democratic

outrage measure up against economic anxiety? Moray is not a wealthy

area, margins are taken, many incomes low. Brexit raises questions

for all of us about the viability of the companies we work for and the

jobs that sustain us. Scotland's First Minister will have to appeal

to the public for whom there is already too much uncertainty.

Europeans make up sometimes up to 90% of our business in June, July

and August. It is important they are made to feel welcome. 40% is quite

normal but I know that hotels in London where it is 100% of staff.

That is going to give us real issues. It is not as if this is a

new problem for our industry because we have had immigrants, either from

the Commonwealth or from Europe, for as long as I know. But what we need

to know and needs to know fast is where our future workforce is going

to come from. In Britain there is 1 million people

roughly employed in hospitality industry. If you could get 800,000

people to move to our industry, we are immediately 200,000 people

short. Trade changes. This is the railway

station from which whisky was sent around the world. The distillery

remains and the industry is one of Scotland's great success stories and

Brexit is unlikely to change that. The rest of the food and drink

industry in Scotland cannot be that confident. This industry is no

bigger in Scotland's economy than oil and gas. This factory makes

shortbread and other distinctively Scottish products. More comes of

this production line in a day than many of us could eat in our

lifetimes. It generates this level of business because it is free to

sell across Europe. Will those markets still be open after Brexit?

No one knows. 80% of all the food we sell out of

Scotland into international markets goes to Europe. Europe is the ball

game for our export story right now so one quarter goes to France alone,

so ongoing access to that market is going to be critical.

How much of a threat does Brexit represent? Presumably after Brexit

those who buy the products will continue to buy them.

I don't think demand will be a problem. Scotland has an increasing

reputation as a land of food and drink, producing quality products.

But there are huge unknowns about what Brexit means. If we have huge

export taxes on our products, we could become uncompetitive very

quickly. The Scottish Government asked the UK

Government if Scotland could negotiate a separate deal to stay in

the single market. The leader of the Scottish Conservatives says that is

not possible. It is not about what I think it is

about what is the 27 other nations think and they have said no. The

Foreign Minister from Spain said no. Other European leaders said that is

not on the cards. We negotiate with the UK as a whole, we don't go see

with different bits of the member state.

We don't suggest that that will be straight forward without legal,

technical and political complexities but we set out world's complexities

will be on the basis by which they could be overcome. But then that we

would -- within that we would reluctantly see Scotland leave the

EU but have measures that support our economy.

Scotland, Britain as a whole, has not lose bids are dependent on

European markets. We chose a European destiny in the early 1970s.

Before that, for generations, we had for the most part bought and sold to

the British Empire. The Empire that sheared enterprise between England

and Scotland, bound securely into the United Kingdom.

Scotland was an enthusiastic partner in imperial Britain and it faced and

frantically West. This stretch of water, the River Clyde, became

Scotland's trading superhighway to the prosperity of the planet.

Glasgow became the second city of the Empire, built on trade and then

industry. Then in 1973 that all changed. Britain turned to face

east. Placing its back to the old Empire. This place started going

into steep decline. No more heavy industry, eventually no more

shipbuilding. No more ships from South Africa and Molly are coming up

the Clyde lead in the projects. The anger and poverty and despair that

brought with it placed enormous strain on Scotland's union with

England. It was the social context within which support for Scottish

independence grew to its present level. Are we going to go through

dramatic change of that sort again as result of leaving the European

Union and what will it do to the union with England?

The position of the union was that it was probably at its strongest for

obvious reasons immediately after World War II but also because in the

50s, apart from Labour, there were also Conservative governments who

were sensitive and aware of ensuring that there was no sense of

Westminster imperialism. That came to an end and there were a series of

impositions on critically insensitive impositions when the

nation was going through a crisis through re-industrialisation and we

know what happened there. Some people say that we not a

Scottish party but neither are we an English party, naughty Welsh party,

nor an Irish party. We are the party of the whole the United Kingdom.

Since then, the union has been semi-stabilised in the period since

the 80s. Westminster, at least in relation to

the offers of flexibility, in relation to what Edinburgh seems to

want as far as negotiations are concerned, has been implacably

opposed. In fact, the attitudes remained me very much of the

inflexibility Sean, not by the Scottish office, but by Westminster

politicians during the Thatcher either of the 1980s.

What happens at that and flexibility does no break the union? In Scotland

stayed in the EU for the rest of the UK left, this border would become

not just the edge of Scotland, but of a single trading bloc stretching

to the Black Sea. This was not the proposition in 2014. This is

something quite new, the possibility that a hard customs border might be

drawn across the island of Britain. For Scotland, that's still a

hypothetical question. But for Ireland, that's very real.

This road bridge crosses the border between the United Kingdom and the

Republic of Ireland. It's one of more than 200 places where you can

make the crossing, and it really is an invisible border. You could drive

across here without noticing you'd left one country and entered

another. After Britain leads the European Union, it was be legal of

citizens of 46 other European countries to come here to the

Republic of Ireland and get a job and claim benefits and use the

services. But a few yards in that direction, there would be no

automatic right to do any of that. That change is what Northern

Ireland's biggest party, the Democratic Unionist Party campaigned

for. Why did they DUP back Brexit?

There's number of reasons. The European Union is very good at

creating regulations, it created hundreds on agriculture alone.

Ultimately, we believe that power is better invested at the local level

will stop so we want more power to the local authorities, to regional

assemblies, and ultimately to Westminster. Not to be pestered into

Europe whether it's little accountability.

Do you except that Britain's decision to leave the EU hope poses

huge problems for the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland?

Oh, yes comic huge problems. Do we have a hard or soft border? Both

Britain and Ireland have indicated they would prefer to have a

free-flowing border. The truth is we had something like 16,000 troops

here and many police officers and several roads close, and didn't stop

things getting across the border. So I can't see that they will be able

to enforce a hard border with two or-3000 customs officers.

The nationalist SDLP are fiercely pro-European. Likely Scottish

governments, they want the UK to the gutted a special status for Northern

Ireland that would keep it inside the single market. And keep the

border open. -- negotiate a special status for Northern Ireland.

Three years, we have spent time getting rid of the border, nicking

sure people could freely move and do business across the island and

integrate. The Good Friday Agreement made sure that both the Republic of

Ireland and Northern Ireland were members of the European Union. We

have the ability as Irish nationalists to integrate in that

context. Taking all that away an that context is very damaging to our

political and economic progress. What is the special status for

Northern Ireland that you want to secure in Europe? What does it look

like? It look so much like what we have

now. Whether not we remain members of the European Union, it doesn't

need to look like that. We can do business and we can move across

Ireland. We don't have to try and harder now border. In fact, it isn't

possible. There were 260 border crossings from the North to the

South. The idea that you could control that border in some way just

doesn't make any sense to me. I believe the problems we will face

will be much less than the problems the Republic of Ireland will face as

a result of the Brexit vote. I think the Irish Government will have a lot

of difficulties to deal with, not least that the country that the

exporter most do is outside of the European Union. -- that they export

most do. The opening of the Irish border has

been transformative. 20 years ago, there were watchtowers and military

checkpoints here. You can't come down this way.

This border ground was sunk in poverty and unemployment.

Partition devastated the economy of this area. It was a thriving port,

midway between Belfast and Dublin. And that locational advantage with

partition was a major disadvantage. It was tied up in the hard border.

Our Sister Towler across-the-board, Dundalk, was labelled Al Paso. The

rural hinterland was stigmatised by the British media during the

troubles as bandit country. Little wonder no-one wants a return

to hard border. London and Dublin both say cross-border trade should

remain free. But how, when the UK might well be porting goods from

around the world that contravene EU might well be porting goods from

import rules, could you stop those goods moving illegally across this

border and into the European single market? Again, no one knows. But if

you live here, it's the most urgent question.

I didn't sign up for this, this is not my day job, I'm not a

politician, I don't want to be doing this. But I have grown up in this

place, and I've seen it at its worst, and I've happy Rutledge of

participating with others in its reverb. -- I've had the privilege of

participating. In its rebirth. And I reverb. -- I've had the privilege of

don't want to lose that. Membership of the European year has

also transformed the Irish Republic. Europe is at the heart of its

national identity, and has been key to normalising its once acrimonious

relationship with the UK. Written and Ireland joined the European

Community on the same day in 1973. It is shared membership of that

Community on the same day in 1973. single European market that has made

that border between them unimportant to the point of invisibility. In

Dublin, there is widespread dismay at the prospect of new border

controls, and specimen too. The question is how hard the border

is. Even the softest borders, with Switzerland, with Norway, that are

around the European Union, have a requirement for customs clearances

for document checking, etc. So that'll have to be the minimum

there. That be disruptive. Even if you have that going to take place in

some magical way that British customs will be embedded in Irish

sports, which I can see, politically, then that has a

consequence. There have to be additional costs imposed on

exporters in the North going to the South and vice versa. Whether not

there's free movement of people is a different issue. Free movement of

people isn't a free movement of work, and free movement of work

isn't free movement of goods. And all three have somehow been

completed. Ireland's border question finds an

echo in Scotland. For if, as London and Dublin both desire, is found to

allow trade to continue freely across the border, wouldn't that set

a precedent for an independent Scotland trading with a UK outside

the EU? Other parallels between Ireland and

devolved Scotland and a predicament that Brexit puts a devolved Scotland

in? Critically having voted overwhelmingly to Remain?

I think it does. This is one of the tent is playing out in Ireland.

There is an awareness growing at a solution for Northern Ireland could

also have ramifications in Scotland. So this idea is growing that is a

border solution was found, said that then be a case used by an

independent Scotland, or a pro independence campaign in a future

referendum. To say, you did it for Northern Ireland, why can't you did

it for Northern Ireland, why can she do it with us?

-- why can't you do it with us. The border is one question, others

remain. But currency with an independent Scotland use, how would

it close the gap between what it spends on what it races in taxation?

For that gap is wide. And did it, should it, join the EU? This is the

territory on which a second independence referendum would be

fought. I can confirm today that next week I

will seek the 40 of the Scottish Parliament to agree with the UK

Government of the details of a section 30 order. The procedure that

will enable the Scottish Parliament to legislate for an independence

referendum. I think, just now, we should be

putting all our energies into making sure we get the right deal for the

UK and for Scotland in our vigorish issues with the European Union.

That's my job as Prime Minister. Right now, we should be working

together, not pulling apart. Should be working together to get that

right it for Scotland and the UK. That's my job as Prime Minister. For

that reason, I say to the SNP, now is the time.

independence referendum in its tax independence referendum in its tax

-- tracks by agreeing to negotiate a separate deal for Scotland. Why

would she do that? I have not had anyone in the S to

tell me how a deferential deal only differentiates in geography. How can

someone working in RBS working in Edinburgh had something different

and have the EU negotiations gets some thing different from someone

working at the same office, but in London? How can a fruit farmer in

Perthshire get something different from one in Kent? I have asked again

why this differentiation doesn't seem to apply, but geographic

differentiation does. No-one in the SNP can tell me.

I know you are doing work on the currency question, we can no longer

say we will shed the pounds? I'm not been difficult here, but I'm

not going to jump steps and get into detailed discussions now. What I

accept and have always accepted, is that Scotland is, those of us who

advocate independence have a duty to Ansa the questions people need

answers to, and that includes questions about economic stability

and around the currency. In this context, it will undoubtedly include

questions about our relationship with the European Union. Firstly, we

are in a process just now when I have judgment is to make, and so

does the Prime Minister, and I will make those in good order and based

on what I think is best. I am to jump ahead several steps.

When it comes to fighting for independence in a second referendum,

we be straight and say, Scotland Islington inherits as an independent

country Qu bec deficit. There will be pain, spending cuts, tax

increases are big borrowing or accommodation of all three.

I will always be straight with people. Scotland as part of UK has a

big deficit. We have had apart the past five years spending cuts. Exit

is undoubtedly going to make the UK's deficit worse. It will lead to

greater spending cuts in the UK and greater pain as a result. The

question for Scotland is not how do we escape magically a deficit, is it

how do we best equip ourselves to deal that deficit and growth our way

into a more sustainable position with our own values underpinning the

decisions we take two that is the decision that would be in play

Scotland was making that choice again.

This week, Nicola Sturgeon will seek authority for a second independence

referendum. Theresa May was a no, not yet, and begin the process to

take the UK out of Europe. Scotland voted to stay in both unions. It's

being told now that it can't have both. That's also being told it

can't choose. The decision will be made at Westminster. The political

strain that will place on the Anglo-Scottish union is surely

clear.