THIS is not the most auspicious moment to consider whether the UK might ever rejoin the European Union. As the unedifying, barely-democratic contest for choosing the UK’s next prime minister unfolds, Brexit has scarcely caused a ripple. With the cost of living crisis top of the public’s concerns, Brexit’s continuing economic damage should be, but isn’t, an issue.

To stand a chance, all the Conservative leadership contenders must cleave to their hard Brexit. They must also stand by Boris Johnson’s Northern Ireland Protocol bill and the fake narrative that accompanies it. Not so much a clean start, as a restated willingness to break international treaties and lie about why, from all the candidates.

Labour’s fear of the Brexit betrayal narrative means Sir Keir Starmer insists there’s no question of the UK even going back into the EU’s single market or its customs union. Yet, there are activists and organisations pushing to rejoin the EU and its single market. Even the LibDems suggest, fairly quietly, an eventual future back in the EU.

But, given Tory and Labour stances, are the only realistic hopes for rejoining the EU in Northern Ireland and Scotland – via the Irish re-unification and independence routes? Perhaps not. In its latest poll, YouGov found 60 per cent thought Brexit was the wrong decision, 40% the right decision (excluding "don’t knows"). But with the Tories focused on talking up UK-EU conflict, and with Sir Keir aiming for just a few tweaks to the current EU-UK trade deal, any serious political debate on rejoining the EU looks distant indeed.

And, crucially, rejoining the EU would be a decision for Brussels too. After the chaos and stand-offs of these Brexit years, a rapid UK return would not be welcomed. Watching British politics’ continuing decay, few would contemplate the UK back in the EU in the next 10-20 years, should the UK’s politics ever normalise again.

Read more: The Ukraine crisis could make Scotland’s path to the EU easier

The hope that the UK could perhaps fairly rapidly rejoin the EU’s single market is a forlorn one too. It’s always been a rather strange idea that a large democracy like the UK could apply all EU single market rules while having no say in them or accept EU trade deals without a seat at the table. In the face of Brexit neuralgia, that looks even more unlikely.

All this is both good and bad news for Scotland’s chances of independence in the EU. Rejoining the EU is one of the core arguments for independence, from its potential economic benefits to the wider security, sustainability, cultural and political advantages too. And if there’s no chance of the whole UK going back into the EU, then the only route for pro-Europeans in Scotland is indeed independence. But, if England and Wales do not move closer to the EU’s single market, then the border between them and Scotland, in an independence scenario, will remain significant.

Meanwhile, both Tories and Labour agree that the UK is perhaps a voluntary union but one where there’s no chance of an agreed independence referendum in the foreseeable future. This leaves the Scottish Government routes of a Holyrood-mandated referendum, if the Supreme Court agrees, or making the next General Election a quasi-referendum.

Yet Nicola Sturgeon is doubtless as aware as anyone that EU member states will be looking for an independence decision and process to be legally and constitutionally valid, which certainly, for the EU, means in agreement with London. But UK-watchers in Brussels are not politically naive. They realise that there is a political dynamic going on here as the SNP moves to get another vote, one way or another, on independence.

Few expect the Supreme Court to say a Holyrood-led referendum is legal, but if it did, then that would surely tick one of the EU’s boxes. And if opposition parties then boycotted that referendum, this might look, from across the Channel, like another symptom of the UK’s failing politics more than a Catalonia-type scenario.

The more likely scenario is that opinion on independence will be tested in the next General Election – by 2024. This SNP move is both bold and risky. Yet, whether opposition parties like it or not, there will be an independence campaign from now into the next election. If it comes off, with more than 50 per cent of the vote for pro-independence parties, then the EU will be watching, as closely as anyone, what happens next.

Read more: The reality of Brexit has busted the pro-business Tory myth

For the strongest political impact – in Scotland, the rest of the UK and across the EU – the pro-independence vote will surely need to be substantially over the 50% mark in the election. If that campaign, not least in the face of the failings and flounderings of the Tory Government in Westminster, cannot raise support for independence in the EU to 55% or higher in a sustained way, both in opinion polls and at the election, then it could suggest the 50:50 stand-off on the issue is set to continue.

But if the independence-election vote succeeds, then it will set off a debate in Scotland and England on political and democratic consequences. In Brussels, there is likely to be continuing sympathy for the goal of rejoining the EU and some concern around the break-up of the UK (plus some schadenfreude). There would, too, be close EU attention to whether a serious political dialogue or an unstable political and constitutional stand-off ensues.

In the end, if Scotland chooses independence, there will have to be talks, and an agreement, between the UK and Scotland. A unilateral declaration of independence will not cut it. But those, on the unionist side, who hope Brussels will look at a Scottish independence vote in a General Election as unconstitutional and invalid, should perhaps take a long, sober look at the state of Westminster’s politics and at the EU’s view of the UK.

The EU will stand back from Scotland’s constitutional choice. But if it chooses independence, the path back to the EU will be open for Scotland – in a way that it won’t be for the UK for a long time to come.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald