You are actually just embarrassing yourself now.
No, the countries I listed above are not EU members. The international aspect is a clue- this is a matter of international and not European law. No EU treaty defines the territory of a member state. If you are trying to make the ridiculous claim that ‘the EU can’t throw Scotland’ out, I will refer you once more to the point that Scotland would be making itself a new state by democratically voting yes.
Firstly: When a part of the territory of a Member State ceases to be a part of that state, e.g. because the territory becomes an independent state, the treaties will no longer apply to that territory. In other words, a newly independent region would, by the fact of its independence, become a third country with respect to the Union and the treaties would, from the day of its independence, not apply anymore on its territory.
Secondly: the EU citizenship argument is also lacking, because: Citizenship of the [European] Union shall be additional to and not replace national citizenship.
Barroso (your favourite!) told the Catalan independence group that: The Commission confirms that, in accordance with Article 20 of the [TFEU], EU citizenship is additional to and does not replace national citizenship (that is, the citizenship of an EU Member State). It also confirms that in the hypothetical event of a secession of a part of an EU Member State, the solution would have to be found and negotiated within the international legal order. Any other consideration related to the consequences of such event would be of a conjectural nature.
??remember that according to the UK Treasury, no CU = no debt for a new iScotland. What a fantastic start!
This is really, really not true, as I have tried to explain to you before.
Here is the Director of Macroeconomic Research, National Institute of Economic and Social Research: I don’t think they could walk away from accepting public sector debt. The question is how much. It would be very difficult to walk away on two grounds. You are expecting the UK in a currency union either to co-operate because it depends on them to participate in a monetary union-as I said, it requires both sides-so that would be an unusual way to negotiate it, or, if you were to introduce your own currency and you started off by doing something that was clearly not responsible behaviour, then that would not be a very reassuring sign to international investors, whom you are presumably going to have to attract in the future.
Danny Alexander described the situation as 'pretty fanciful to suggest that a new Scottish state, if it wished to have any credibility whatsoever, economically or in the financial sector, would refuse to take on a share of the debts after negotiations. I notice that the First Minister himself said only last year that an independent Scotland would accept an equitable share. Given all the issues about credibility and so on, and the negotiations that go on with the European Union and other international institutions, any suggestion that an independent Scotland would say, "We’re not going to deal in that area at all," would make it look like a bit of a basket case.
All that oil etc wealth and no debt!
Scotland will need money on day 1 on independence. It will need to start issuing its debts on day 1. Oil wealth takes a while to come in- a few months at least. Futhermore, an economy which depends on oil needs a really watertight economy to deal with the fluctuations and volatility of oil.
(But watch rUK plummet in international credit ratings, with consequent higher interest rates for mortgages, loans, etc. Watch rUk businesses taking on billions of £ worth of pointless transaction costs, or losing trade. Watch them get royally fucked off with WM... Will WM sell out it's own voters, to make a "cut off your own nose" point? Possibly…)
?The UK treasury has already stated that it stands behind the whole of the UK debt. It wouldn’t suddenly be landed with an extra bill, because Scotland technically has no debt at this point.
Furthermore, Scotland gets more spent on it than it puts back in the UK pot, so the changes aren’t quite significant enough for your economic armageddon. By the way, can I refer you to your own comments on Robertson’s speech? The pot and the kettle are both black…
Finally, economies tend to act like dominoes. You have stated yourself that rUK would be iScotland’s biggest trading partner. What would be the knock on effect or your armaggedon too Scotland? Or would Scotland be —magically— immune?
?Or we can continue to use the £, without backup, which has it's own problems. Or we can set up our own currency. Pragmatism, and doing the best for rUK, suggests that WM will agree to CU.
You didn’t respond to my points the last time I made them to you, so I don’t expect an answer now, but why is it pragmatic? Yes, rUK would be Scotland’s biggest trading partners, but it doesn’t work in the opposite: rUK would do twice as much trade with America and four times as much with the EU. So under your logic, they should adopt either the dollar or the euro?
If they don't, it's no skin off our noses.
No skin off your noses? Let’s paint a picture. Independence day is on the 24th March. Now, as everyone knows- the end of the month is payday! So here comes the 30th March, and every central government worker in Scotland is looking forward to their pay. Except the Scottish government doesn’t have any cash reserves, because no debt equals no assets. Tax receipts aren’t coming in quickly enough- VAT is four months, corporation tax and schedule D is 20 I think. In fact, iScotland has no assets and that includes the computer systems used by the UK to run the tax system to start with.
So you need to borrow the money. Well, the Bank of England certainly aren’t going to lend to you now. So we’d have to go abroad, with no assets and no credit history except a morally dubious debt situation.
You think the international money markets will look favourably on that? What sort of credit rating would we have? We would have potentially acted ‘contrary to principles of international law’ here
But of course, I am scaremongering and bullying, aren't I?