Why hasn’t Scotland gained independence from the UK?

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This is the script for my video posted on July 9, 2026. Watch it on TikTok.

The Scottish independence movement has been pushing for Scotland to split from the United Kingdom for literally centuries. But these days, the picture is a bit more complicated than it was hundreds of years ago, thanks to a tangle of issues including political strife, Brexit, and nuclear weapons. So what exactly is preventing Scotland from gaining independence, and what impact would a Scottish departure have on geopolitics?

Before the 18th century, Scotland was independent. From 1296 to 1357, the Kingdom of England attempted to subjugate the Kingdom of Scotland, but they ultimately failed thanks to decisive victories from famous leaders like William Wallace and Robert the Bruce.

But in 1603, James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne as James I, uniting the crowns but not the parliaments. The two kingdoms remained separate states sharing a monarch.

But in the 1690s, Scotland attempted to establish a colony called New Caledonia, not to be confused with the French island in the South Pacific, on the Isthmus of Panama. The colony was a catastrophe, with about 2000 of its 2500 settlers ultimately dying, and the venture wiped out about a quarter of Scotland’s liquid capital. Combined with seven years of famine and English trade barriers, Scotland found itself bankrupt, and its elite were inclined to unify with England.

In 1707, the Acts of Union created Great Britain, though Scotland’s distinct Roman-based legal system, Presbyterian church, and other unique institutions were preserved, maintaining a distinct Scottish civil identity that remains alive today.

There were complications over the following three centuries, like the Jacobite risings that sought to restore the Catholic Stuart dynasty, but even with this the union remained intact.

The modern Scottish independence movement is commonly considered to have started in 1934 with the merger of the National Party of Scotland and the Scottish Party into the Scottish National Party, or SNP, which is Scotland’s largest political party today and champions both social democracy and Scottish independence.

The 20th century saw Scotland’s case for independence grow, in part due to the country’s strong industrial output, the discovery of oil in the North Sea in the 1970s, and a general sense, particularly in the era of Margaret Thatcher, that Scotland was being governed by parties it hadn’t voted for.

In 1997, a referendum on devolved government for Scotland, which is to say a parliament of their own, passed with about 74% of the vote, and since 2011 the SNP has been the clear majority there.

In 2012, Scotland and the British government signed the Edinburgh Agreement, which authorized a legal, binding referendum on Scottish independence that would actually be respected, and in 2014 a referendum was held.

The referendum had two sides: Yes Scotland, and Better Together. There were some key influences on the outcome. Britain ruled out allowing Scotland to remain using the British pound sterling if they split off. Scotland made optimistic forecasts about oil prices and thus their economic prosperity post-independence as well that were treated by many as a dangerous assumption. And ironically, the Better Together side argued that Scottish independence risked Scotland being excluded from the EU.

On a historic turnout of 85%, about 55% of Scottish people voted no. And then in 2016, when Scotland voted 62% to remain in the EU, Britain left anyway. This completely changed Scotland’s circumstances and widened the democratic deficit between it and the rest of the UK. Brexit undermined one of Better Together’s most central arguments.

In the years that followed, new variables like the Internal Market Act of 2020 were seen by the Scottish government as eroding their devolved powers by letting the British parliament override specific areas they were meant to control. In 2022, the UK Supreme Court unanimously held that the Scottish Parliament cannot legislate for even a consultative referendum without the British government’s consent.

Beginning in 2023, Scotland’s political environment began to face serious upheaval. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon abruptly resigned, and a police investigation into the SNP’s finances ultimately ended with the party’s former chief executive, Sturgeon’s estranged husband, pleading guilty to embezzling over 400k pounds, though Sturgeon herself faced no charges.

The 2024 UK general election saw the SNP collapse from 48 seats to just 9, while Scottish Labour surged to 37. Then in May 2026, the Scottish Parliamentary election resulted in SNP remaining the largest party, but it failed to gain a majority. Just weeks later, the Scottish parliament voted 72 to 55 to demand what’s called a Section 30 order, the legal mechanism that made the 2014 independence referendum possible. But the UK government immediately refused.

So why is the British government so insistent that Scotland stay in the union? Well, there are several reasons, perhaps the greatest of which is the fact that all of Britain’s nuclear weapons are submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and all of its four nuclear-armed submarines are hosted at His Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde in Scotland. The warheads themselves are also maintained and stored in Scotland at nearby Coulport.

While there are hypothetical relocation options in places like Devonport in Plymouth or abroad in the US or France, these would be less than ideal and a permanent relocation anywhere would be very expensive. Beyond that, Scotland hosts other critical bases like RAF Lossiemouth, whose P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft anchor NATO’s policing of the critical GIUK gap in the North Atlantic, a chokepoint for Russia’s Northern Fleet.

There are other obstacles too, like the fact that Scotland would have to apply as a new EU member anyway, that 60% of Scottish exports go to the rest of the UK and would face undesirable trade dynamics after a split, and that the UK has ruled out sharing the pound in a formal currency union, meaning an independent Scotland would either keep using the pound with zero control over its own monetary policy, launch a brand new currency, or commit to eventually adopting the euro.

Not to mention, oil and gas production from the North Sea has collapsed to about 20% of what it was in the year 2000, and the basin continues to decline. Scotland’s potential for renewable energy is huge, but so is the investment required.

At the end of the day, Britain does not want to lose Scotland, and Scotland would face an uphill economic battle if it left. But even as the SNP has faced scandals and electoral collapse, support for independence has never really moved. And with a pro-independence majority still sitting in the Scottish Parliament and the British government still saying no, the question isn’t settled, it’s just stuck. The issue is also heavily influenced by similar dynamics and outcomes across Europe, like Ireland or Catalonia. No one expected Brexit to happen either, but it did, and it’s always possible that things could evolve to the point that the UK really does get divorced.

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