A third issue is that Scotland joining the EU would be subject to a negotiation, and there’s usually no justification for ruling outcomes out before a negotiation has begun. Last, even if a state did make this argument it almost certainly wouldn’t be accepted by the Yes side. When Rajoy simply implied that Scotland would have to renegotiate membership (rather than “negotiating from within”) he was derided by the Yes campaign and Spain was generally written off as a scaremongering foreign power that had no right trying to interfere in a Scottish issue.

What bothers me about the EU issue isn’t so much whether Scotland would or wouldn’t be allowed in the EU. It’s pretty clear that Scotland could become an EU member eventually – Barroso implied this as well. The issue is really about how long the transition would take and what the membership terms would be. Much like the currency debate, we seem to have lurched into a kind of extreme binary conception of the problem – “in or out of the EU, with or without the pound” – which obscures all of the details that actually determine what’s in our interest: e.g. the status of the rebate, the status of our hotchpotch of opt outs in EU Justice and Home Affairs measures, fishing quotas, and so on.