Scotland's independence referendum will be held on the 19th of October 2023.

[RandySF]

Link to tweet

?s=20&t=tfVF2KY692QXmjw7wOuujw

Yes
@YesScot
🚨 BREAKING: First Minister @NicolaSturgeon
Scotland’s independence referendum will be held on the 19th of October 2023.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 The campaign is on! Join over half a million people and pledge your support for Scottish independence at https://yes.scot/signup/

[edhopper]

1. Good

Fuck Johnson, Fuck Brexit. Scotland should be in the EU!

[CottonBear]

2. Question: Could an independent Scotland rejoin the EU?

[RandySF]

3. I believe it's part of their platform.

[Emrys]

9. As an independent country, Scotland could do whatever its people decide.

I think if and when independence is gained, there will need to be a number of additional referendums.

One will set out the new Scottish Constitution - which may include whether we're to be a republic or retain the monarchy as a titular head of state, though I expect that's an issue that will play our over the medium to longer term, as has happened in other (ex-)Commonwealth countries - and the other will be to do with our relationships with our neighbours.

Currently, the SNP's aim is to join the the EU, but after independence, a different government may be elected with different priorities. As EU accession is often a long, drawn-out process, it obviously wouldn't happen overnight, but at the least I'd expect membership of an EFTA-type body with freedom of movement as an interim measure, wherever that led in the longer term.

Our government has been very active in using its soft power to court support in the EU and wider Europe, and so far the responses have been very positive and encouraging.

[CottonBear]

13. Thank you for your thoughtful, informed, & reasoned reply.

Thanks from GA, USA!

[Emrys]

15. And thanks for your interest in our country! n/t

[CottonBear]

16. My family were Presbyterian Scots-Irish immigrants to NC in the mid 1700s

My son's grandmother was an English war bride and his cousins live in the UK, so we keep up with politics across the pond.

[Bucky]

4. Will they bring back the Stuart dynasty or become a republic?

Good job, Boris

[Xavier Breath]

5. Who gets custody of Nessie?

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Just to be clear, that's what the First Minister wants, and is seeking a judicial decision

on whether she can lawfully call a referendum without Johnson agreeing to it. If the legal decision goes against it, then the SNP will campaign the next UK general election (scheduled for 2024) purely on independence.

In an attempt to force the issue, Scotland’s first minister said the lord advocate, Dorothy Bain QC, had written to the supreme court in London at her request, asking it to establish whether the Scottish government had the necessary legal powers to stage a consultative referendum on its own.

She told MSPs her government wanted to stage a second independence referendum on 19 October 2023, using the same question put to voters in 2014: “Should Scotland be an independent country?”

In a statement at Holyrood, Sturgeon said that if the court ruled that would not be a lawful use of her government’s resources or breached its constitutional powers, the Scottish National party (SNP) would make independence its only policy at the next UK general election.

She told MSPs that would make the election “a de facto referendum” in which the SNP would be empowered to open independence talks with the UK government if it won a majority of votes. In the 2015 general election, the SNP won 49.97% of the overall votes in Scotland but 45% in 2019.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jun/28/nicola-sturgeon-seeks-supreme-court-ruling-on-scottish-independence-referendum-vote

[TheRealNorth]

7. Wonder how they divide up the North Sea oil?

[Haggis 4 Breakfast]

8. And this time, Scotland,

Make sure you keep tabs on putin's attempt to eff up your vote. Because that is exactly what happened last time. The disinformation/misinformation/dirty tricks social media campaign worked. Don't fall for it again.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Really? Putin's strategy is to cause division in opponents

It would have been quite convenient for him for the UK to break up, and for the UK's one nuclear submarine base to be in an independent country that wants it gone.

What the SNP does think Russia has done is stir up allegations of fraud in the 2014 referendum:

The SNP has warned it would 'naive' to assume Russia was not meddling in Scotland after it emerged pro-Kremlin internet trolls fuelled claims the independence referendum was rigged.

Experts have long regarded fake news of irregularities in the 2014 vote – first made by a Moscow-based state news agency - as a textbook example of Russian attempts to destabilise the West.

Now researchers have uncovered a huge push by social media accounts which usually support Vladimir Putin to share videos and links amplifying the inaccurate Scottish stories.
...
“The anger and disappointment felt by many Yes voters were entirely sincere, and are not the subject of this analysis; however, those sentiments were fanned by pro-Kremlin trolls, in a manner characteristic of Russian influence operations.”

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15771388.snp-claims-russia-likely-interfered-referendum/

[Emrys]

14. Yeah, I've never believed in direct vote tampering in the 2014 referendum.

The actual vote wasn't a million miles away from what polls had shown, and what I sensed in the air at the time.

There was hardly any need for such tampering given that 99% of the media at the time opposed independence - only one fairly low-circulation Sunday paper, The Sunday Herald, supported independence.

The Kremlin loves to project its own electoral "irregularities" onto the West as often as circumstances allow, and that's what it was doing. Much the same happened in the EU referendum, and I'm similarly skeptical about direct Russian influence on the vote there, as again the final result wasn't far off opinion polling. The question of Russian funding of certain operators in either referendum (and our wider politics) is another matter, and has never been properly investigated or resolved in either case.

The Russians also tried to stir it during the 2014 referendum:

Cameron's plea to Putin: help me stop Salmond
...
Itar-Tass, citing a source in the Conservative Prime Minister's office, said Britain was "extremely interested" in referendum support from Russia, which this year holds the presidency of the influential G8 group of rich industrial nations.
...
The Tass report, by one of the agency's correspondents, hit the Russian language news wires on Hogmanay.

Its opening paragraph reads: "Great Britain is extremely interested in the support of Russia, as holder of the G8 presidency, in two vital areas in 2014: the Afghan pull-out and the Scottish independence referendum."

In the traditional style of a Russian news wire report, this assertion was then attributed to a "representative" in the Prime Minister's office who was speaking anonymously.

The journalist then added a direct quote from the unnamed source talking of "two main issues whose resolution requires international formats, albeit of different modalities".

The Cameron Government insider then, according to the report, added: "Those are the withdrawal of combat units from Afghanistan by the end of the 2014 and September's referendum on Scottish independence.

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13140055.camerons-plea-putin-help-stop-salmond/

There's no doubt Cameron did try to enlist hostile reactions among EU leaders to the prospect of Scottish independence and possible EU membership, though the UK's soft power has deteriorated to such an extent that this is hardly a significant factor nowadays.

[enid602]

10. English destiny

The Queen? Oh, she’s out, touring the Empire. Should be back any moment.

[BannonsLiver]

12. Lots of people in the thread not reading the fine print.

[sunonmars]

17. You need to change the title, it is incorrect. There is no referendum. She may wish it but legally

at present, there is not.

Be Factual.

[TomSlick]

18. Scotland will have its referendum sooner or later.

Brexit has made it impossible for Scotland to remain under the control of Westminster. It may not be immediate but there must be another referendum.

Scotland's interests lie with Europe not England.