I had an interesting conversation with @dhothersall today about Scottish Independence. We don’t agree about it at all, and the conversation didn’t really bridge that at all. But what I don’t think I’d really realised before was how Brexit has affected viewpoints in Scotland. (1) https://twitter.com/dhothersall/status/1343946276833009664

I supported independence in the first place because of a deep-seated mistrust of the British state, and our inability to reform it. So independence seemed like a great opportunity for Scotland to carve out a different route, and to maybe help weaken the British state.

And Brexit for me just reinforced this belief. It has shown the British state to be incompetent, greedy, and damaging to those of us who live here. Brexit has made independence seem like an even *better* option.

But for people who started out opposing independence, many of them couldn’t see how breaking up a union could be a good thing. Surely we’re better off working together?

And Brexit has reinforced that belief. It has weakened all of us by tearing the UK out of the EU. To them, Scottish Independence is just more of the same. It will be yet more disruption that will just hurt and weaken everyone.

And I’m fascinated about this from a Systems Thinking point of view. The same event - Brexit - has made some of us more likely to support independence, and others more likely to oppose it. The initial differences in our starting positions has been magnified.