I have never rooted for my country to fail , so the tables have not turned . <| sep |> The UK ' s largest trade partner by a large margin is Scotland . The EU ' s is not the UK . The EU has to maintain the 4 freedoms which the UK is unwilling to accept , whereas I doubt there would be such an impediment to a UKScotland FTA . The biggest difficulty in continuing UKScottish trade would be regulatory divergence , but given the UK is going to need to continue to trade with the EU this divergence should be limited . Edit In fact , a reasonably likely outcome of Brexit is that the UK goes for the Swiss solution , joining EFTA , but negotiating their own trading relationship with the EU . Whereas Scotland joins EFTA and the EEA agreement . Membership of EFTA would ensure free trade between EFTA members and free movement to the UK would only be limited to Scotland , Norway , Iceland , Litchenstein and Switzerland . Something which would probably be acceptable to England since it excludes poor countries .