By Dan Iron

It's now looking likely that the promised referendum to decide whether the United Kingdom either leaves or remains in the European Union will take place sometime in 2016.

Recent opinion polls have shown that it is a possibility, but only a possibility, that Scotland will vote to remain, while the UK as a whole will vote to leave.

Of course it's early days, but we in the Independence movement and the Scottish government should work out a position to take if that is the outcome.

Nicola Sturgeon has already said that if there were to be an overall vote to leave, then each constituent part of the UK would have to vote to leave too. We can expand on this position by saying:-

1. We have voted to remain citizens of the EU.

2. In 2014 we voted to remain citizens of the UK.

3. We assert that the people of Scotland are sovereign.

The principled stance would therefore be that we stand up for our rights as a sovereign people. Our citizenship of both the UK and the EU cannot be removed without our consent. This will be supporting the rights of all the people of Scotland not just those supporting independence. A motion to this effect should be brought before the Scottish parliament. The unionist parties would therefore be forced to come to a decision. Either they support the motion or explicitly reject the idea of the sovereignty of the people of Scotland. This will bring the idea of sovereignty into sharp focus, something that should have been more discussed during the Independence referendum campaign.

We then await developments. If the UK government proceeds with withdrawing from the EU it will be they who will be removing our rights as citizens of the EU. The unionists will probably go along with this. However there will be a large number of people, the people who are not committed to the Union, but who voted No in 2014, who will be forced to make a decision. There will be no "status quo" option. Of course, we don't know what their reaction will be. We might hope that there will be a demand from them for another Independence referendum. The committed unionist, on the other hand, will be forced to deny our sovereignty explicitly. They will find it difficult to remain "proud Scots but".

We have no way of knowing how this scenario will play out but it will be the principled position to take.