The questions, answered
Every concern raised about Scottish independence deserves a serious answer. Here they are — sourced, checked, and in plain language.
Scotland and the World
- Could an independent Scotland rejoin the EU? Yes. The real questions are the route and the clock — and the EU's door is open in a way it simply wasn't in 2014.
- What about the border with England? One word, two different questions — people and goods. The first has a hundred-year-old answer. The second depends on choices Scotland hasn't been allowed to make yet.
The Economy
- Isn't Scotland too wee to be independent? Scotland is a perfectly ordinary size for a country — half the world's nations are smaller, and the ones most like us are among the richest and happiest on Earth.
- What currency would an independent Scotland use? The pound in your pocket works on day one, and after that Scotland chooses from a menu other countries have used. A decision, not a crisis.
- Doesn't Scotland run a huge deficit? On paper, yes — and this page won't pretend otherwise. But the paper measures Scotland as a region of the UK, run from Westminster. What it can't tell you is what an independent Scotland's books would look like.
- What happens to my pension? The pension you've built up is yours — the UK government confirmed as much in 2014. Pensions cross borders every day. What changes is which parliament makes pension policy.