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Not every border has to be a hard border. The Scottish border would not necessarily have to change at first because an independent Scotland would not be automat

Not every border has to be a hard border. The Scottish border would not necessarily have to change at first because an independent Scotland would not be automatically part of the EU or even the Schengen area. If Scotland wants to join and the status of Great Britain is still not clear by then, then that's another border issue to resolve. The situation with Northern Ireland is different because Ireland is part of the EU, and no one wants Northern Ireland mainly as a smuggling route between the EU and Great Britain. It has crossed my mind that some folks must have thought about smuggling/regulatory arbitrage as some sort of Brexit dividend for the UK as a whole, but so far this doesn't seem to be happening.

messe 4y ago
> The situation with Northern Ireland is different because Ireland is part of the EU It's also significantly worse, as there's only around 25 scotland-england border crossings, whereas there are over 200 border crossings between NI and ROI (more than on the entire eastern border of the EU).
physicsguy 4y ago
> The Scottish border would not necessarily have to change at first because an independent Scotland would not be automatically part of the EU or even the Schengen area The rUK government is likely to be as bloody minded as the EU has been and acting in it's own perceived interest (which is not purely financial). It would be able to make things very difficult for an independent Scotland if it so wanted.