EU critic backs staying in to stop an independent Scotland
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THE United Kingdom could break up, with Scotland going its own way, if Britons vote to leave the European Union, a longstanding EU critic and former Conservative leader warned yesterday, saying that as a result he was likely to vote to stay in.
The comments from William Hague, who once campaigned vigorously to keep Britain out of the eurozone, followed hard on the heels of a similar warning against “Brexit” from the EU by former Conservative Prime Minister John Major.
In an article in the Daily Telegraph, Hague said voting to quit the EU in a referendum likely to be held next year could help the Scottish nationalists’ attain independence. He said he would back remaining in the bloc despite his own serious misgivings about the EU.
Hague, a former foreign secretary, also said Britain leaving the EU would weaken the bloc itself — something that he did not want to see come about.
“We will have to ask, disliking so many aspects of it as we do, whether we really want to weaken it, and at the same time increase the chances, if the UK left the EU, of Scotland leaving the UK,” Hague wrote.
Despite the EU’s many failings, he said, it provided stability for fragile democracies in central Europe. It would also not be in Britain’s interests for the bloc to fall apart with such volatility in the Middle East and the world’s economies.
Prime Minister David Cameron met fellow European leaders in Brussels last week to try to drum up support for a reform of Britain’s relationship with the EU, prompting a number of senior Conservatives to publicly express their opinion on an EU exit, including former defense secretary Liam Fox saying it was time to “end the pretence” that Europe would change to accommodate Britain.
Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform think-tank, said Hague was well respected in the party and noted his comments, coming days after Major, could be designed to move the debate beyond Cameron’s drive for EU reform.
“There will be a transition from saying ‘I want to reform the EU so it will work better’ to saying ‘the EU is a good thing in itself’,” he said. “It’s no coincidence that Major and Hague have come out in this way.”
Hague said Scottish nationalists, who strongly support staying in the EU, could use a vote for Brexit as grounds to hold a second referendum on independence, rejected by 55-45 percent of voters in Scotland last year.
Nearly half of Britons are leaning toward voting to leave the EU, a survey last week found.
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