Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon meets with UK Prime Minister Theresa May. PAimages/Andrew Milligan. All rights reserved.
Everyone is trying to figure out what Brexit means. Theresa May says Brexit means Brexit and is for the whole UK – but doesn’t mean a border (or not a hard one) with Ireland. Brexit minister, David Davies says the UK will start to negotiate dozens of trade deals in the next two years. And in Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon sets out key criteria (ranging from democracy to solidarity to voice) that any EU option for Scotland should include.
In Brussels and EU capitals, politicians and officials consider what their red lines will be in the upcoming talks while waiting for the UK to tell them what it wants Brexit to mean. Meanwhile individual businesses, financial and other markets, EU citizens in the UK, and UK citizens elsewhere in the EU start to make their own choices - with UK economic indicators pointing towards likely recession.
Much ink has and will continue to be spilt considering options, variants on existing models, new models and their implications. But in essence, Scotland has four options – two imply staying in the EU, and two would mean life outside the EU.
However, if Brexit does mean Brexit, the UK essentially has just two options, either a Norway-type solution, or a bespoke Canada-style trade deal.
How Scottish, UK and EU politics, preferences and negotiations unfold in the coming months will determine whether Scotland ends up with a different relationship to the EU from the rest of the UK (rUK) and what form that will take. But Scotland’s four EU options do not all look equally feasible.
Scotland’s four EU options
