Meet the other group of secession-minded nationalists in Britain: A few hundred miles north of where the details of Brexit continue to be debated, members of the Scottish National Party met in Edinburgh this weekend for their spring conference. There was one topic on everyone’s minds: independence. And by the end of the conference, it was on their calendars too. In closing remarks Sunday, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced that the Scottish Parliament will be advancing new legislation on an independence referendum next month, hoping to give Scotland the second opportunity in five years to leave the United Kingdom.



The theme of the conference, displayed in bold black type on bright yellow boards as far as the eye could see, was hope. They’ll need it. While the left-leaning Scottish National Party may be the third-largest party in the United Kingdom and the governing party of Scotland, they’re up against formidable odds. Not only is the British Parliament opposed to Scottish independence, but opinion polls suggest a narrow majority of Scottish voters are too.

Day by day, however, the ongoing Brexit fiasco both makes the case for and raises the odds of Scotland’s independence bid.

As with most political issues in the U.K. these days, an independence referendum, or IndyRef2 as they call it here, is largely about Brexit. All 32 of Scotland’s councils voted to remain in Europe in the 2016 Brexit referendum, meaning that the decision to leave was effectively, and characteristically, an English imposition. Having endured three centuries of uneasy marriage with England and many more centuries of bickering and bloodshed before that, many in Scotland have understood Brexit as a historic offense—and they are committed to making it the last of its kind.

“Scotland has been treated with contempt,” Keith Brown, a member of the Scottish Parliament and the Deputy Leader of the SNP, told me. Another member of the Scottish Parliament, Michael Russell, decried the “medieval notion of a sovereign parliament.” Deidre Brock, an SNP member of the British Parliament, echoed the outrage. “We are furled to the United Kingdom’s decaying dreams of empire,” she said.