Now THAT's what I call a shrewd business woman

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Now THAT's what I call a shrewd business woman

Postby Arneb » Wed Jul 28, 2021 7:35 pm

Congratulations, Lizzy Two, on an exceptional piece of bargaining. Can you give me your lawyers' phone number, just in case I have to fend off a threat to my multi-million tracts of land in Scotland?

I've asked my Scottish friends before, and I'm doing it again: You lobby hard for the dissolution of the Union of Parliaments, why not then the Union of the Crowns? Why not go straight for a Republic? (And why keep the Pound, but that is another matter still)?
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Re: Now THAT's what I call a shrewd business woman

Postby Lianachan » Wed Jul 28, 2021 10:45 pm

It’s one step at a time. After independence, everything else then becomes up to us. For currency, it’s easier to keep the pound in the short term before setting up our own. Scotland won’t want to be tied to an English currency for long, given our great wealth of natural resources. Monarchy is more complicated, and would probably be decided in a referendum. The line of Scottish royalty that became British monarchs was ousted by (essentially) a Dutch invasion of England, which doesn’t sit well with a large number of Scots (and, particularly, Gaels like me). We had civil wars about it and everything. There are some people that support independence and would like to keep the monarchy, but I think these are a minority. My impression is that most folk up here who support the monarchy are British, not Scottish, if that makes sense. Rangers fans :)
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Re: Now THAT's what I call a shrewd business woman

Postby Lianachan » Wed Jul 28, 2021 10:51 pm

Oh, and can we now call her Liz the Biz?
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Re: Now THAT's what I call a shrewd business woman

Postby Arneb » Thu Jul 29, 2021 6:00 am

I suppose there is some 750 year old law by which you could be hanged for making fun of the sovereign, but it's worth a try.
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Re: Now THAT's what I call a shrewd business woman

Postby Heid the Ba » Thu Jul 29, 2021 8:45 am

I agree wholeheartedly with all my learned friend says above.
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Re: Now THAT's what I call a shrewd business woman

Postby Richard A » Thu Jul 29, 2021 10:20 pm

It reminds me of a conversation I had with an Irish republican friend at the time of the last Scottish referendum; he asked why the Scots would want to continue to be ruled by a foreign monarch. The point is that while all those Irish who wanted independence (i.e. all of them except the brethren of the Rangers fans) were very clear that the British monarch was a foreign oppressor, that view was not unanimously held by Scots. In the same vein, I remember the vicar of the church I went to in London, who often talked about his pride in his Scottish heritage, saying that Scotland had never been conquered by the English - referring to James VI becoming James I of England on Elizabeth I's death. And there's the complicating factor that King Billy ruled - at least officially - jointly with his wife Mary II. As Lianachan says, in Scotland, actually in Britain as a whole, a civil war ensued - it wasn't as clear cut as an English invasion. (Bonnie Prince Charlie's forces in fact crossed into England and got as far as Derby before the Protestant English forces turned the tide. One of history's many unanswered questions is: what would have happened if he'd consolidated after kicking the English forces back across the Tweed rather than following them further south?)

In fact, the post-independence history of several of Britain's former colonies shows a clear pattern of getting independence first and sorting other things out later. While some became republics immediately, others retained the monarch as the Head of State for a time - and some, such as Jamaica and Australia, have never got rid of her. (In Australia, the republican movement hit a major bump in the road when they failed to agree on how the new President should be appointed.) Currency likewise - some kept, in effect, the British pound for a time before adopting their own currencies. Even laws - our former colonies have seen fit to keep some of the laws we bestowed on them (not always for good, but that's another story). And when the Scots make their own decisions on these things, as Lianachan points out they will, they will have a number of models to choose from.

Of course, one particular issue with the currency is that the independence movement, from what I can tell, strongly favours an independent Scotland joining the EU. That will mean adopting the euro on accession (in all likelihood, although it's possible that there could be a delay, as with some of the Central and Eastern European Member States), so what currency it chooses to have in the interim could be less important.
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Re: Now THAT's what I call a shrewd business woman

Postby Lianachan » Fri Jul 30, 2021 7:59 am

“You’d have to use the Euro” was a commonly deployed threat from the vote no people, as if it was a bad thing. Anyway, it’s not technically true.
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Re: Now THAT's what I call a shrewd business woman

Postby Мастер » Fri Jul 30, 2021 10:41 am

Sweden has been exploiting the loophole for years.
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Re: Now THAT's what I call a shrewd business woman

Postby Richard A » Fri Jul 30, 2021 2:32 pm

To clarify, I did not mean the introduction of the euro as a threat - although I accept that some might have done. As Lianachan says, there's no reason why it should be a bad thing. What I meant was: given that an independent Scotland will likely join the EU, and hence adopt the euro, in the relatively short term, the question as to what currency it should have in the meantime isn't that pressing. It could keep the British pound (Salmond's proposal last time round), it could introduce its own currency pegged to the pound (what Ireland did for decades), it could introduce one pegged to the euro (as Bosnia did) or it could adopt it could adopt a fully convertible currency.

The real scaremongers last time round threatened that the UK Government and/or Bank of England could block Scotland from continuing to use the pound. That was always rubbish. A string of countries use other countries' currencies, with or without permission. Whether Scotland would want to is another matter, but that decision would be taken in Edinburgh, not in London.

"It's not technically true that joining the EU would have to mean adopting the euro." I'm not convinced. Economic and monetary union is a centrepiece of the EU. When it was introduced, a number of countries carved out an opt-out as a condition of signing Maastricht: the UK, Denmark and Sweden. I don't think that option will be given to any new entrants (including the UK if we ever get to rejoin) - Arneb, would you agree? A lot of the Central & Eastern European new entrants kept their currencies because they didn't meet the convergence criteria - and Greece would have done but for a fudge for which both it and the EU paid later - although several have joined the euro since. (How the likes of Poland and the Czech Republic have got away with continuing not to adopt the euro when Lithuania and Slovakia have is something Arneb may be better placed to comment on.) But as Lianachan has pointed out, that's not something that's likely to apply to Scotland.
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Re: Now THAT's what I call a shrewd business woman

Postby Arneb » Fri Jul 30, 2021 5:25 pm

Maybe Richard over-estimates my legal competence :D .

But I tend to agree. The process of entering the Euro is indeed quasi-automatic: Once you qualify, you WILL adopt the Euro, is what the treaty says. The exception are the two original opt-out countries, the UK and Denmark - a status that probably wouldn't be granted to candidate countries nowadays, I guess.

OTOH, if a newly-admitted Scotland really, really didn't want to join the Euro, there'd be myriad ways to postpone the deed ad infinitum. It's Brussels, after all. The core criterion, adherence to the stability criteria, is hard to meet and very easy to miss, so starting with intentionally missing fiscal targets, Scotland would have ample opportunity not to join if she didn't want to. Sweden has been doing it since before the Euro's inception in spite of her lack of opt-out status, simply by not joining the European Monetary System II. If you are really keen on it, you can do it.

But that may be a moot point.

One, Scotland might simply want to join the Euro because they think it is a good thing. And, you know, they may be right: Granted, Greece is difficult. But the other countried that joined after its creation (Slovenia, Malta, Cyprus, Slovakia, and the three Baltic countries) didn't have qualms about joining, aand don't seem to harbour intentions to leave. On the contrary, they were quite enthusisastic and worked hard to qualify.

Two, we don't know how this Euro thing will pan out. Maybe, if Scotland doesn't want to join, the EU may not be keen on forcing her in either. It's not that the arguments against the Euro (in principle or for particular country to join it) are all just irrelevant or made-up or nonsense. The Euro might very well still fail spectacularly or be quietly buried. We don't know where Europe will be when/if a possibly independent Scotland may or may not be admitted.

So yes, technically, there is a formal automatism to join, but politically, to say Scotland "has to join the Euro once she enters" is really just bullshit. A, because she might want to instead of being forced, B because she could postpone it to kingdom come if she really didn't.
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Re: Now THAT's what I call a shrewd business woman

Postby Richard A » Fri Jul 30, 2021 5:32 pm

Indeed, Sweden has dodged it so successfully, I'd forgotten it doesn't in fact have an opt-out like Denmark does. Which of course makes sense because something else that's easy to forget is the 1995 enlargement - Sweden, like Austria and Finland didn't in fact join until 1995.

So maybe there is a point in thinking seriously about what currency an independent Scotland would want to have.
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Re: Now THAT's what I call a shrewd business woman

Postby Arneb » Fri Jul 30, 2021 7:55 pm

Richard A wrote:So maybe there is a point in thinking seriously about what currency an independent Scotland would want to have.


I suggest we say, let's crosss that bridge when we come to it. It's not that Scottish independence is something we can expect in the next few years with any certainty.
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Re: Now THAT's what I call a shrewd business woman

Postby Мастер » Sat Jul 31, 2021 5:44 am

Of the pre-2004 EU 15 (one of which has now left), two had opt-outs, the UK and Denmark. Sweden did not. The other twelve have all adopted the Euro.

The 2004 expansion was ten countries, of which seven have adopted the Euro (Malta, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Cyprus).

The 2007 and 2013 expansions included three countries, none of which have yet joined the Euro.

So of the 27 countries in the EU, 19 use the Euro, and eight do not.

Of those eight, one has a negotiated opt-out (Denmark). The UK did also, but they quit the whole project anyway.

Of the other seven, Sweden has been dodging the Euro since introduction (sometime between 1999 and 2002, depending on which event you count). Poland, Czechia, and Hungary have managed to avoid the Euro for 17 years now, Bulgaria and Romania for 14 years, and Croatia for eight years.

The requirement (absent a special opt-out or other arrangement) is that the Euro be adopted as soon as the country meets the requirements. The rather creative method Sweden has used is to make sure they don't meet the requirements, something which is possible to do. Whether the EU will decide to close that particular loophole in any subsequent enlargements, I do not know.

But under current arrangements, it seems quite possible to avoid the Euro for decades if you're really determined to do so.

If there is an independent Scotland in the future, we don't know whether it will be by a careful, well-planned and well-executed withdrawal from the UK, or something more chaotic (maybe more like the UK's withdrawal from the EU). If it's chaotic, I think the currency of an independent Scotland would be the British pound, at least for a year or two. If they execute it better, then there may be an independent Scottish currency from day one.

Note that when things are chaotic enough (and I certainly hope this doesn't happen to Scotland), the people decide what currency to use irrespective of what the government decides the "official" currency is - take Zimbabwe for example. When Russia was experiencing high inflation, some shops adopted the innovation of marking the prices in US dollars, even though you still paid in roubles. That way, they only had to update the exchange rate when the rouble had lost value, rather than going around the shop and remarking all of the prices.

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Re: Now THAT's what I call a shrewd business woman

Postby Arneb » Sat Jul 31, 2021 11:33 am

Мастер wrote:In the POW camps during the war, they used cigarettes :)


Not only there. Cigarettes was the currency of choice on all black markets up until the Währungsreform in Trizonesien of 1948.
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