Recently, misleading presumptions about what international law requires and seeming indifference to the necessity of negotiations following a possible pro-independence vote in Scotland on 18 September have framed the referendum debate. Politicians can always craft arguments around faulty presumptions and then make a dire outcome sound eminently plausible. But the fate of Scotland cannot be so easily disposed of by George Osborne.
The Chancellor’s 13 February speech in Edinburgh, in which he rejected any currency union between Scotland and the remainder of the United Kingdom (rUK) in the event that Scotland’s voters approve independence, was partly based on the presumption that the rUK would be the “continuator” state of the existing United Kingdom. This means that the United Kingdom would continue as essentially the country it currently is (shorn of Scottish territory), oblivious to any equitable claims by Scotland and dictating that Scotland start from scratch, or with a “clean slate”, to establish a resurrected independent nation.
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