‘Brexit changed everything’: revisiting the case for Scottish independence

Seven years after the referendum, writers including Val McDermid and William Boyd capture the mood of their country, and ask what it would mean to leave the UK

Val McDermid
Some time before Donald Trump lied his way into the White House, the Scottish people were the victims of their own Big Lie. Ahead of the 2014 independence referendum, the Unionist campaigners told us time and time again that the only way we could continue to be part of the European Union was to remain within the United Kingdom.

We were quite fond of the EU, here in Scotland. We'd spotted all those signs by the vastly improved roads in the Highlands and Islands that told us the EU and Scottish government had jointly funded them. We'd noticed that most of the young people running our bars and restaurants and hotels were able to boost our tourism trade because of EU citizens' freedom of movement. We had seen startup businesses owned by European immigrants employing local people, often in areas of low employment. I'd certainly noticed that Scotland had become a more outward-facing country. In my own corner of the cultural landscape, I'd seen how we Scottish crime writers aligned ourselves with our Scandinavian counterparts.