Scottish independence: ‘Scots should vote on EU’

The SNP government should be ready to ditch its plans to join the EU after independence, a former party leader has said.

Former SNP leader Gordon Wilson believes Scotland should be in Europe. Picture: Jane Barlow

Gordon Wilson has warned that the EU is slowly becoming an “imperial power” and Scotland should instead sign up to the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). This option should be put to Scots in a multi-option referendum on Europe after Scottish independence.

Mr Wilson described the EU as a “proto federation” as he launched a report entitled Options for Scotland in Europe yesterday.

“As the monetary and surveillance programmes take effect, then increasingly it will become a federation, and beyond that of course it will have its own armed forces – in other words it will become a world power, an imperial power,” he said.

“That may not be acceptable to some people in Scotland who quite like the European Union as it is at the present time.”

Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein are among the nations in the EFTA.

Mr Wilson said he was happy with the EU at the moment, but the benefits were set against growing fears over the “federation” model that was gradually evolving.

“If I were to add them up then my preference at the moment, for safety’s sake, would be EFTA,” he said.

Former Tory leader Annabel Goldie yesterday said Mr Wilson’s call for a referendum on European membership was “logical” during a Holyrood debate.

“I am surprised that his logic doesn’t extend to the current leadership of the SNP,” she said.

Ms Goldie said the Tories had proposed a “sensible and desirable” referendum on EU membership. “But if Scotland is independent, we are to be given no say at all on what terms and conditions Alex Salmond has signed us up to,” she said. “And that seems to me, in relation to Mr Salmond, completely inconsistent. It is also paradoxical and completely unacceptable.”

Culture secretary Fiona Hyslop said: “The reality is that it is in everyone’s interests, throughout the whole of the EU, for Scotland and its citizens to remain a part of the EU.”

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