Actually, this is not by any means certain. The Scottish border is not as porous as the Irish one, and there are only around 20 road border crossings between the two. Most of them are very small and minor, so by my count, there would only be five major international border crossings. They would be on the M6, A7, A68, A697 and A1. The other ones would probably be EU + rUK only, and possibly only open from 5/6:00 until 22/23:00.
The major issue are the rail crossings, but the ECML at least could have border controls in Waverley, and the WCML in Glasgow, with Newcastle and Carlisle as the first/last stops accordingly.
So, I don't think a hard border is necessarily unrealistic in the long run. The question is whether there are benefits to Schengen that the current CTA doesn't provide, and whether or not the rUK would tolerate EU ID card holders having free access to Scotland in the same way that they have free access to the UK from Ireland.
Do you not think, though, that few if any people would tolerate border restrictions between two countries in which there have been absolutely none for a very long time?
The anger would be immense and protests would be on a scale not seen in modern history, I suspect, and I also suspect that the feeling of popular opinion would bring down whichever government, be it the UK or the Scottish government, that tried that one on. Many of us were prepared to protest, repeatedly, about Brexit; multiply those protests a hundred times to give a picture of what I believe would happen if a hard border between England and Scotland were introduced.
If EU issues are a driving force to any hard border, it's more likely the UK would be forced to re-introduce freedom of movement if Scotland became part of the EU. Only the most extreme right-wingers would believe that the reintroduction of freedom of movement to and from the EU is worse than introducing hard border controls between England and Scotland, surely. Even more so given that the current fashion for restrictions on freedom of movement will surely have faded somewhat by then.
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