The Act of Union 1707: An Economic Union
From the archive — published in 2018 on the original Chokkablog, kept as it was written.
Image Source: By Scottish Parliament
Given the absence of any punctuation, the introduction is pretty hard going - but when you read the specific provisions they're actually pretty easy to understand.
Originally there were 25 clauses of which 15 were economic in nature. A number of the provisions have since been repealed - reading just those still in force we can see very clearly that the Act of Union explicitly provides for the UK being (in the language of Brexit) a Single Market and a Customs Union.
Quoting directly from the Act (highlighting mine):
- "IV. That all the Subjects of the United Kingdom of Great Britain shall from and after the Union have full Freedom and Intercourse of Trade and Navigation to and from any port or place within the said United Kingdom […] And that there be a Communication of all other Rights Privileges and Advantages which do or may belong to the Subjects of either Kingdom"
So that's Free Trade and Free Movement - "VI. That all parts of the United Kingdom for ever from and after the Union shall have the same Allowances Encouragements and Drawbacks and be under the same Prohibitions Restrictions and Regulations of Trade and lyable to the same Customs and Duties on Import and Export …"
So that's a Customs Union - "XVIII. That the Laws concerning Regulation of Trade, Customs and such Excises to which Scotland is by virtue of this Treaty to be lyable be the same in Scotland from and after the Union as in England …"
So that's Single Market Regulation - "XVI. That from and after the Union the Coin shall be of the same standard and value throughout the United Kingdom as now in England …"
So that's your Single Currency
There can be no doubt that the Act of Union was explicitly and in large part an act of Economic Union - and the provisions that make it so are still in place, so we're not getting distracted by an historical curiosity here.
It's not surprising therefore that those arguing for separation from the Union have been stymied by the economic arguments and appear breath-takingly hypocritical when they argue the economic case for remaining in the EU while dismissing the economic case against Scotland leaving the UK.
That the economic arguments for remaining in the UK trump those for remaining in the EU is relatively clear when we remember that the UK market, according to the Scottish Government's own figures, is currently four times more important to Scotland than the EU.
This is a fact that the SNP actively obfuscate and mislead about. Take this press release from December 2017 which boldly states:
"The single market is made up of almost 500 million consumers – over eight times the size of the UK market. It is the destination for 42 per cent of our exports, contains eight of our top 12 export destinations and contributed £11.6 billion to the economy in 2014."This is staggeringly misleading. We know from the Scottish Government's own figures above that 16% of "our" exports go to the EU, so where do they get the 42% from? If you exclude the UK as an export market then (per the figures above) the EU represents 43% of Scotland's trade outside the UK. There's no doubt that the "our" in this press release is referring to "us Scotland", so the 42% figure is - not to put too fine a point on it - flat wrong.
It took me a while to work out where the figures quoted come from - they're close to but don't match figures in the latest ESS data (published a year ago) and that bugged me. The clue is in the fact that they quote a "worth to Scotland" figure from 2014 - and sure enough in a press release dated 07/12/2017 they quote stats from ESS 2014, despite the fact that their own ESS 2015 data had been available for nearly a year when that press release was written. They don't gain anything from using out-of-date statistics - it's just shoddy work that makes a fact-checker's job harder. So the £11.6bn figure is needlessly out of date, the latest available figure is £12.3bn
As for "contributed £11.6 billion to the economy", the equivalent (and up-to-date) statement would be that "exports to the rest of the UK contributed £49.8bn to the economy in 2015".
They go on to say
"According to the Centre for Economic and Business Research an estimated 300,000 jobs in Scotland rely on our trade with the rest of the EU."I'm guessing this is the source for this stat, an analysis which unfortunately doesn't show how many Scottish jobs "rely on our trade with the rest of the UK" if we were to use comparable assumptions.
Fortunately Fraser of Allander have done such an exercise and their findings are clear and unsurprising: more than four times as many jobs in Scotland are supported by trade with rest of the UK than are supported by trade with the rest of the EU.
We know - because Blair McDougall submitted a Freedom of Information request asking the question - that the Scottish Government hasn't carried out any analysis on "the economic impact of an independent Scotland being outside of a customs union with the rest of the UK (assuming for example the rest of the UK had left the European customs union and Scotland voted to become independent)".
I'm not surprised.