There are no guarded land borders in the EU. Citizens pass freely between member states without being required to stop and show passports or submit to customs checks. This is because of a treaty called the Schengen Agreement, to which the UK is not a signatory.
However, the UK’s only current land border, with the Republic of Ireland, is also completely open - as part of an arrangement called the Common Travel Area - despite the historic danger of terrorist attacks.
German - Belgian Border
The UK government claims that an independent Scotland would have to sign up to Schengen, which would in turn require border posts to be set up between Scotland and England to comply with the Agreement’s rules and to protect the rUK against mass illegal immigration through Scotland.
There are all sorts of complex and technical reasons why none of this would be the case, but again the common-sense analysis is the simplest and clearest.
The Scotland-England border is almost 100 miles long, with little to nothing in the way of natural physical barriers. The expense and manpower required to build a fence or wall and police it would be astronomical, as well as politically and economically inconceivable. Once again, pro-Union MP Eric Joyce makes the point bluntly:
“Why would England choose to make itself look like a banana republic, pointlessly spend billions of pounds and make itself a laughing stock across the world?
Not for reasons of security, because all the security arrangements at present on the UK mainland would still be in place with a common UK travel area. Simply, apparently, to make some kind of weird psychological attack on their immediate neighbours.
And would English taxpayers and travellers stand for that? Would the businesses behind the Tory party accept the logistical nightmare their government wished to inflict upon them? Would the security bods, who know what happens when bordering states don’t co-operate, accept such a dangerous situation? No, of course they wouldn’t.”
If your intention is to prevent illegal immigration, only a full-length and permanently-patrolled fence or wall would suffice, because otherwise the immigrants would of course simply walk into England across the fields - dodging only the occasional sheep - rather than going through checkpoints on the roads. And such a barrier just isn’t going to happen.
There will be no border posts at Berwick.
