Should Scotland be an independent country?

I'm trying to think of a way of putting this.

Problem with this is in the process of simplifying something complex to stop bad-faith actors like h_r you end up losing meaning, or even changing it - see the countless comparisons of UK to household finances.

Put simply: that we could and did agree to be bound by the rules, and that we could and did then say that we did not wish to be and left, shows that we at all times maintained sovereignty. We pooled it with others for a while (over 40 years), and during that time we either did what we'd agreed to do, or we got taken to court to make us do it - Denning was wrong to assert that Parliament could over-rule EU law when Parliament had already said that it would not. See the IMB for a modern re-run of this, and the absolutely universal opinion (apart from our AG, for obvious but desperately sad reasons) that this was illegal.

But I suspect you know this and are arguing in bad faith, which means you'll ignore the fact that although we had 73 MEP's decisions in the European Parliament went our way almost all the time. Some of that is that we saw the way that the wind was blowing of course, but we had huge influence - were one of the big three who drove the EU agenda.

Now? Now we can't explain to Scotland why it would want to stay, and the best we have is denying a referendum or telling the Scots that they're too thick and poor to survive without us.

Here's an interesting wrinkle - if it looked like Scotland was going to do it, break away and rejoin the EU then I'd roll the dice, move up there. I'd take my tax contributions with me, and if enough people who wanted to be EU citizens did the same then I suspect tax income would be somewhat healthier. Who knows what that'd look like in reality, but there's a lot of strong feeling about what's been taken from us by bigots and spivs. if only it didn't rain so much.