For England. Not for Ireland, Scotland or Wales. They'll immediately start the process to rejoin the EU. Happy days ahead. You'll always have London, they'll pay the bills for the rest of the country.
Why would those countries accept another countries debt? This type of thing was answered during the Scottish independence referendum, the same with currency etc.
Because the UK government holds the power to let them be independent and the UK debt is also debt from money spent on Wales, Scotland and NI. If they're not going to take on their share of money spent on them then why would they be permitted to become independent? That's a debt of £268 billion for Scotland right out the door.
Not just that, even if Scotland refused the debt and just left, what country would ever lend money to a country that effectively defaults.
Scotland would make Zimbabwe seem investable. The morons on this sub who seem to believe that Scotland's can walkaway without 8% of the UK national debt are just high on paint.
Countries don't routinely borrow from other countries, it's not what happens. Countries issue money for use by the population in it. That is debt because money is an IOU, literally the most basic form of debt.
Scotland certainly cannot keep this debt share as an independent country even if it wanted to. It would have to issue enough of its own currency to replace all of England's money in Scotland, for England's money will be of no use to people living and working in Scotland.
This process is actually a relatively trivial one as the government simply needs to issue enough of the new currency to replace all of the currently in circulation English pounds at an agreed exchange rate.
So if Scotland is only responsible for 8% of the national debt, is the money being shared equally? Shouldn't that figure be higher? The fact you say it's not shows that they are not getting their fair share being part of the UK. Same for Wales and N. Ireland
Like the other guy said Scotland is around 8% of the UK population so the easy way of figuring their debt liability is just finding out what 8% of the national debt would be.
There's actually a bit more to it though and that would be including the Barnett formula, since Scotland gets roughly 20% more tax spent there per capita than the rest of the UK. If Scotland managed to get on the legal path to independence I bet you there will a lot of bargaining over the Barnett formula vs raw population percentage as that be another roughly 1.6% of national debt Scotland would be taking with it. The entire process would be extremely complex.
Yes I understand what your saying. It would be very complicated. Would they not have to also take into consideration what part of the debt would be attributed to Scotland rather than it just going off population alone?
Eg if the uk debt was £100 but £80 of that was spent on soley English projects, eg such as train lines, would it be right to still attribute 8% of that debt to Scotland? And vice versa if eg 80% of that debt was spent on Scottish projects? Im assuming it would be very hard to get an accurate figure no matter what
You could make those arguments yes, but there's tons of multi-beneficiary spending going on too. Like the armed forces for example. It's not going to be clear cut which money was spent where, the fairest options are by population or by public spending distribution.
The 8% figure is calculated based on population percentage, it has no bearing on spending or historical uses for the debt that was accrued. It's the fairest way to do it.
Debt in this context is not like Scotland owes England or the UK (which is really just England writ large), it is the sum of all UK debts in Scotland which includes all the money in circulation in Scotland.
It's a shame that we only have one word for debt because there's a big difference between personal debt such as a credit card balance or mortgage and between money in and of itself which is all called debt, even though it has an entirely different nature to credit card debt.
Lol and you think that England could stop those nations from going independent if they so chose?
That's saying you don't think people have a right to self determination.
you think that England could stop those nations from going independent if they so chose?
Depends on what you mean by that. Wales and Scotland do not have the legal authority to make that call. Their devolved powers do not include the ability to unilaterally declare independence, and the only exception to that is Northern Ireland due to the Good Friday agreement.
Now if you're actually saying that England couldn't physically stop these nations from becoming independent I think you should seriously look at the population differences between the nations of the UK.
‘Cherry picking’ real statistics. Then declaring others are flawed. Hilarious. England and its people know full well they depend on Wales and Scotland for their wealth. Hence why you are all on here bleating away against the breakup of the UK and not promoting it.
Please enlighten us, what wealth do Scotland and Wales generate for England? Absolutely every statistic out there shows both nations are heavily subsidised.
I genuinely couldn't care less if the UK broke up and your argument about all being on here... What are you doing here?
I mean you can just Google spending per capita for each nation and realise you're actually wrong. England is the worst receiver of public funds, and most of what England gets is mainly sent to London. The people being robbed here isn't the Scottish.
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u/ManuelTzetzes Sep 14 '26
For England. Not for Ireland, Scotland or Wales. They'll immediately start the process to rejoin the EU. Happy days ahead. You'll always have London, they'll pay the bills for the rest of the country.