Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:49 pm on 9 July 2003.
Not for the moment.
On the question of whether a country ceases to be a country, Scotland entered into a Union of the Crowns and then a Union of the Parliaments, and I do not think that anyone could argue that, in spite of being in a currency union for all those years, Scotland ever ceased to be a country. Indeed, the fact that it never ceased to be a country is reflected in the new constitutional settlement that has had to be agreed for Scotland and Wales.