The Scottish Independence referendum of 2014 was lost by the incredible naivete of the Scottish government in allowing foreign born EU and English residents to vote on an issue which does not concern them. This foreign resident population was then 17% of the Scottish population, only 83% were Scottish born.
Independence is a Scottish heritage issue and has been for a thousand years in the past and in the future too. The resultant outcome of the referendum did not reflect the wishes of the Scots born themselves.
Only native born Scots should have been allowed to vote.
It is not up to an English or EU or Asian person to decide whether Scotland is a country or not. All these foreign residents have countries of their own and citizenship of them. It is only Scots who have no nationhood and no citizenship of their own country.
The mathematics of the 2014 referendum result indicate that if only Scots born had been allowed to vote, the referendum would have returned a YES win by 5.4% according to calculations by the University of Edinburgh.
Now in 2024 that number is substantially higher, it is never polled but best estimates are that at least 60-75% of native born Scots favour independence, many strongly.
This is easily more than enough in the eyes of world institutions like UN, EU, NATO, and The World Court of Justice. Westminster’s opinion and laws would no longer matter on the issue.
Westminster itself was not this naïve in the Brexit referendum in which it denied EU citizens and foreign residents a vote, without complaint from any quarter.
The reason the UK government did this is that EU citizens would obviously vote to remain in the EU. Just as they did in the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum, and just as the English living in Scotland voted to have their own English government continue to rule Scotland.
In practice this amounted effectively to a 17% advantage to the NO vote, an advantage completely impossible to overcome since anything less than 67-33% then brings a loss result to YES for independence.
It is hard to conceive why the Scottish government agreed to this astoundingly shortsighted ground rule. It is an obvious recipe for failure when 17% of the population is English, EU and other foreign residents. It is in virtually all of these people’s interests to vote against independence and avoid the disruption of changing their residency and financial situations.
These foreign residents should have been offered not a referendum vote but a citizenship and a passport in an Independent Scotland. They should never have been given the opportunity to decide IF Scotland is a country or not. This is a matter only for Scots to decide. This was a spectacular governmental error and led directly to the failure of the referendum on independence for Scotland.
Such a politically naive error should never again be repeated under any circumstances.
It also suggests a new solution to the Westminster blocked constitutional path to Scottish Independence.
See A New Path To Independence 2024 for discussion of this issue.
