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They're not China, they're Canada.
Politically irrelevant backwater just north of an actual powerful country. Being "progressiver-than-thou" about Britain is Scotland's national identity. Just another not-really-a country making stupid laws to stick it to The Man (meaning the people who protect their borders and fund their government).
That makes sense.
I do think Canada has better long term potential simply because of their abundance of natural resources and low population density.
Scotland also has an abundance of natural resources and low population density. The SNPs two-faced messaging of "Taking back the North Sea Oil from the thieving English will allow an independent Scotland to have Scandinavian public services with British taxes" and "Independent Scotland will be a green superpower" is darkly amusing.
While also not growing the industry:
https://scottishbusinessnews.net/labour-tax-and-snp-policy-on-oil-and-gas-a-threat-to-the-scottish-economy/
It's one thing to believe in a magic money tree, but it's quite another to think that the magic money tree will survive without water.
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Maybe this is the correct analogy. I kept thinking that American rural (and often rural non-city everywhere) tends to code red-tribe. And this goes as far as seeing African pure indigenous black having country music weddings on YouTube. Still does not feel like a perfect model but Canada, Scotland, and some Nordics seem to lean more left but I usually associated that with not having black people and being more willing to redistribute/socialism within their own people than wokism.
Northern countries like that have high urbanization and low population density simultaneously because big chunks of the country are basically empty. Even überprogressive places like Quebec and Sweden have fairly conservative rural areas, there’s just not a lot of people there compared to the big cities.
Quebec is more ethnat than both the rest of Canada and France ime. They’re economically more social democratic than Albertans, sure.
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