Our Politics newsletter is now daily. Join thousands of others and get the latest Scottish politics news sent straight to your inbox. Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

WITH polls suggesting that there would be majority support for a Yes vote if there was an independence referendum tomorrow, I think it would serve us well if we all paused, took a breath and thought things through.

First of all let’s be clear about what has just happened.

The UK democratically decided to leave the EU. Lots of us don’t like that outcome or the way it was achieved by the Leave campaign but that’s democracy and there’s no point crying over spilt milk.

It was a UK-wide vote for Leave – within which Scotland, as well as Northern Ireland and London, voted in favour of Remain.

(Image: Getty Images)

This means something has fundamentally changed since Scotland voted to stay in the UK.

Many of us voted in the independence referendum partly because we thought the best end-game was Scotland being in the UK and in the EU.

For us it was rational to vote No because only a No vote made that outcome possible. Right up until midnight last Thursday that still seemed the most likely outcome.

The SNP manifesto on which they were returned to power included an explicit option to seek another independence referendum “if there is a significant and material change … such as Scotland being taken out of the EU against our will”.

It is therefore completely reasonable that the SNP should explore ways of securing a separate EU deal for Scotland, up to and including revisiting the question of Scottish independence.

We live in extraordinary times. As I write this, the Tories have no leader, the Labour Party are in meltdown and nobody knows what Brexit is actually going to mean because negotiations with the EU haven’t even started.

If ever there was a time to pause and reflect and just wait to see how the dust settles, it is surely now.

Some interesting options might be available for Scotland without becoming independent.

Greenland and the Faroe Islands are regions of Denmark which have their own unique agreements with the EU, so the EU has compromised before.

It makes sense to explore all options, as Nicola Sturgeon is quite rightly doing.

But what of independence? I’ve heard some say, “The UK had the courage to leave the EU, why shouldn’t Scotland have the courage to leave the UK” or, “If the economic case didn’t stop the UK leaving the EU, why should it stop Scotland leaving the UK?”

These are understandable emotional reactions but the economic cost for Scotland leaving the UK (or if you prefer, the courage required to do so) is an order of magnitude greater than that for the UK leaving the EU.

Scotland receives an effective fiscal transfer from the rest of the UK of more than £9billion a year. The SNP themselves admitted as much during the fiscal framework negotiations.

To put that in UK terms, it would be the equivalent of the UK receiving £90billion a year, or £1.7billion a week.

If they’d been able to plaster “Vote Leave to lose £1.7billion a week” on the side of a big red bus we’d probably have seen a different EU referendum result. The economic cases are simply not comparable.

Some are suggesting that the next indyref question would effectively be: “Are you willing to pay the price of leaving the UK now if it keeps us in the EU?”

(Image: SWNS)

The problem with this way of posing the question is that we don’t yet know whether Scotland staying in the EU is even on the table.

We don’t have our own currency, and our stand-alone deficit would be so large that we clearly don’t meet the EU’s entry criteria.

There are also EU countries keen not to encourage separatist movements of their own who may use their veto to block Scotland joining.

Even if the EU were to make remaining an option for Scotland, it would be likely to come with some pretty

significant conditions.

Are we ready and willing to join the euro? Would we be willing to adopt a deficit reduction programme that required slashing public spending by more than 15 per cent if the EU made this a condition of remaining?

It’s quite possible that one of the implications of Brexit might be the meltdown of the eurozone – would we be voting to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire?

Of course, it’s also the case that it’s not clear what remaining in the UK looks like now. For example, will the fiscal framework that currently guarantees us that £9billion fiscal transfer survive the repercussions of Brexit?

If we decide to maintain open borders with the EU (where 15 per cent of Scotland’s exports go) we would at the same time be opting to create borders between Scotland and the UK (where 64 per cent of our exports go). It’s hard to see why we’d choose to do that.

Of course, this is all very logical but it may well be that the emotional case over-rides these rational economic arguments.

Following last Thursday many of us may just feel in our gut that we want to democratically uncouple ourselves from a mass of population with whom we simply don’t seem to agree any more.

But if a pollster was to ask me how I’d vote in the next independence referendum, my answer would be simple: Come back and ask me when I’ve calmed down a bit and I have some idea of what I’d

actually be voting for.