While no specific date has been announced for a national
independence referendum in Scotland, the campaign for Scottish
citizens’ hearts and minds is well underway with the launch of
the ‘Better Together’ campaign by the unionists (who want to
stay in the Union) on 25 June 2012, and the ‘Yes Scotland’
campaign by nationalists a month earlier. A range of issues have
already been brought up during the independence debate, with the
economy appearing to be the number one concern given the current
gloomy economic climate. Concerns over banking – namely, whether
an independent Scotland would be big enough to support its
banking system – looms large in this debate. Unionists point to
the fact that the Royal Bank of Scotland had to be bailed out by
the UK Treasury to argue against independence. The Scottish
National Party (SNP), on the other hand, cites small, prosperous
Northern European countries such as Norway and Denmark to argue
that ‘being small and independent is better’. Indeed, on many
issues both sides have