Are Brexiteers who oppose the secession of Scotland from the United Kingdom hypocrites? Aren’t arguments for Scotch sovereignty and independence equally applicable in relation to rule from Westminster, as from Brussels?

Such comments circulate, as the elections loom tomorrow for the Scottish legislative assembly. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is hopeful that another SNP majority will give her nationalist party leverage to force Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, to give the Scots one final heave to sever the Union.

Brexiteers claim, and with good reason, that parallels are thin. Britons voted in the 2016 referendum to wrest back powers from Brussels. The Scots voted the other way, and its nationalists are eager to cede powers back to the EU. And on terms not so favorable as those originally held out to the United Kingdom when it joined the then European Economic Community, and those subsequent concessions won as a condition to further membership.

Re-admittance would require dropping the pound for the euro and submitting to EU policy on agriculture and the fisheries, among other requirements Scotland would have to accept. As well as a hard border with the rest of the UK, particularly England.

“Scotland in Union” notes that “60 percent of export trade” is with the rest of the UK, “three times as much” as with the entire EU. Let alone the thousands who cross the border daily, for work and pleasure. No matter, when ideology trumps pragmatism.

As Alyn Smith, SNP spokesman on foreign affairs admits, “We don’t want special deals” with the EU. “We want a normal status.”

Scottish Nationalist politicians are fully aware of these drawbacks to membership. Instead, they cloak the hard realities by relying on a “bread and circuses” approach, dwelling on the welfare bonanza they see on offer by a Scotland free of the UK and on the reflected glories of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, both of whom, nationalists boast, knew how to respond to English encroachments.

Unfortunately, this is more creative than anything Unionists have offered the Scots thus far. Boris Johnson has stated that independence referendums are “generational” decisions, a BoJo guarantee etched in water. Brexiteers aware of their Isles’ rich history since the Act of Union 1707, therefore, contemplate Scotch secession with a mixture of dread and sorrow.

And what does Queen Elizabeth II think of the prospect of the loss of Scotland? She cannot be any more sanguine than George III was about America; its loss drove him to despair. Once, there would be trips north to Holyrood Castle for consultation. Having crossed the English border, she becomes a Scottish Queen — head of the Church of Scotland and of a legal and heraldic system distinct from England.

Yet now, advancing age and Covid keep Elizabeth at Windsor. Nor can she delegate members of the Royal Family in defence of Union. Political discretion dictates otherwise and, frankly, few of the Royals can speak with the Queen’s authority and esteem.

Time may be on the side of Union, however. Or as the motto goes, “Fortune Favors the Brave.” As in luck, and economic prosperity. Brexiteers are not ignorant that policies of the Conservative government have damaged the prospects of economic dynamism held out by independence. Compared to the European Union, though, the UK still looks good in comparison. Deregulation and bilateral trade deals can only benefit the whole of Britain.

As for “luck,” a recent profile in the New Yorker of Nicola Sturgeon is a case in point. Writer Sam Knight tries his best to portray her in the most favorable light, — emphasising her skills as a politician and her personal popularity. She still comes out short.

Ms. Sturgeon likes to govern by the maxim of Canadian poet Richard Lee, “to work as if we are indeed living in the early days of a better nation.” Yet the facts speak otherwise. “Scotland is still marked by deprivation,” Mr. Knight writes. “One in four children lives in poverty” and its education system, “once considered the best in the UK, has continued to decline.”

Indeed, Scotland’s public debt is so high that it is currently ineligible for EU membership.

Given an opportunity to argue their case, Unionists can defend Scotland’s role in the United Kingdom. They will demonstrate that Scotch nationalists are putting their own aspirations ahead of the common good. Secessionists aim to yoke Scotland to Europe and destroy 300 years of communal co-operation.

Yet all is not lost; one recent poll has Scottish support for the Union rising to 49%, against 42% for separation.

It would be churlish of your Brexit Diarist not to acknowledge that The New York Sun has taken a rather jaunty attitude toward the prospect of an independent Scotland — and, for that matter, toward the Act of Union itself. Sun editorials have reasoned that the Union might be well-rid of Scotland and Northern Ireland, given their vote, during the 2016 referendum to stay in the EU.

That argument, though, is harder to credit given the rapidity with which the newly independent U.K. has moved leftward under Boris Johnson.

The chatter for Scottish independence reminds me of Edmund Burke’s observation: “Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.”

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