They lost the argument last time on economic grounds. Once brexit happens, the economic argument is exponentially weaker. Unlike the UK with the EU, Scoyland is a net recipient of uk spending, and Scottish independence only made sense at all on the basis of Englanf being in the same single market and customs union, and being outside schengen. The EU doesn’t accept new members who wont agree to join Schengen. Basically, independence would now be a much more radical and uncertain prospect than Scottish voters are likely to tolerate, given that they rejected it last time.
In any case, its irrelevant. Boris is telling Sturgeon to get stuffed on the grounds that she already had her “once in a generation” vote. She can come back in 20 years, although by then she will probably have long ago resigned in disgrace following the revelations to come with her predecessors rape trial and what she knew and covered up.
They lost it on economic grounds. Yet as the Brexit debate shows, that’s not the only place to win.
Scotland being a net recipient is not completely true - it is now, but wasn’t earlier and the amounts are far less
Scotland’s total public sector revenue was just under £54 billion in 2015/16. That’s around 8% of the total revenue in the UK.
In the same year the total public expenditure in Scotland was £69 billion. That’s around 9% of all public spending in the UK that year, so a greater proportion than the population.
So it looks like the UK “gives” £15 billion to Scotland - but that number includes the amounts spent on the Trident program which would then move south and on country-wide projects like the high speed rail program.
Overall it looks like the UK may “give” Scotland either about the same as it “gets” from Scotland or up to around £5 billion per year — that’s about $6 billion per year. however the question is how much is defense and country-wide related and how much isn’t? And it would be difficult to separate that out
Boris’ response to Sturgeon is exactly what she wants. She’ll play it as English oppression and domination over Auld Scotland. Expect this to only increase the pro-independence feeling