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Comment by deca6cda37d0 | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn’t the whole brexit thing be easier if there wasn’t a UK anymore and 4 individual countries. Scotland for sure and Northern Ireland I guess want to stay in the EU. England wants to leave. Wales I’m not sure about.

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Not everyone in England wants to leave either. Not everyone in Scotland wants to stay.

Politics is always a matter of compromise. Allow Scotland to stay while England leaves, and give everybody some time to move if they're unhappy with the direction of their country.

How would that even work? Individual country laws between England and Scotland couldn't clash with EU laws. That would then infringe on England's independence.

Three way merge? I've heard there are tools to help with this.

I mean England gets to be as independent as they want, but so does Scotland.

This is a really bad idea. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India

If "everyone" were the threshold we apply, politics could never get anything done. Scotland voted 62% remain, that is a pretty strong mandate for remaining. Stronger than the 51.9% leave vote for the UK overall.

I think the point is that this wasn’t a representative vote done by area.

“Scotland” didn’t vote anything.

Voters in Scotland contributed to the overall result just like everyone one else.

Bigger questions for me:

Why such a small majority can bring in such a devastating change?

Why are the wreckers allowed to have multiple attempts but those that are want to save UK’s current membership and sweetheart rebate deal one allowed one referendum where the details of the “deal” are not known?

With the added weight that Scotland voted in 2014 to remain in the UK.

The 2014 referendum question was "Should Scotland be an independent country?" "No" had 55.3% of the votes (with a very high turnout of 84.6%)

This is not that simple. It wasn’t a first past the post election in any area. It was based on overall majority for the whole.

As it happens a majority of people in Wales voted for leave but that's not the same as "Wales voted leave".

The 38% who voted leave in Scotland count just the same as the 47% who voted remain in England.

If more people had voted remain in Scotland (38-62) or Northern Ireland (44-56) we wouldn’t be in this situation today.

(The same is obviously also true for people in England and Wales).

This is about as politically realistic as the alternative: for the EU to break into its constituent parts instead so that a simple ROI-UK deal could be arranged without involving trade policy with Hungary, Portugal, etc etc

Some are, some aren't - I flew out to Spain recently and unexpectedly got fairly emotional at the prospect that it might be my last time through the "EU Citizen" channel.

I also see far more EU flags flying from peoples houses than Union Jacks - but then I am in Scotland!

Sorry, I edited the comment above to make it less likely to start a flamewar and now your response has lost context but yes: not everyone is a unionist. However there are enough of them that breaking up the UK is non-trivial (and full disclosure: I hope that continues).

I felt the same about the Notre Dame fire. That was our church burning down.

I'm not sure that Scotland and Northern Ireland would automatically be allowed to "stay" in the EU - wouldn't they need to reapply for membership as new entities?

As far as I understand it they would have to reapply, but if I recall correctly back when the referendum on Scottish independence was a thing the EU said that they'd fast track their application, whatever that means.

Again, if I recall correctly.

Scottish independence will happen eventually.

Yes but it would be a mere formality as they are already part of the EU. Especially for NI which would be joining an existing EU state, not getting independence.

A neat solution would be for England and Wales to jointly declare independence, leaving a UK consisting of Scotland and Northern Ireland.

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