THE Scottish Tories are a bit upset. They’re demanding that Nicola Sturgeon reveal the Scottish Government’s plans for Brexit, because it’s wrong and disrespectful to the electorate when a government won’t tell the public what it intends to do about something as important to the country as Brexit, something that’s going to affect all our lives and opportunities and those of our children, grandchildren and generations yet to be born as well.
Except of course when that government is a Tory one in Westminster, in which case its refusal to come up with a plan is simply an example of the sage wisdom of a sensible government which doesn’t want to reveal its hand before negotiations start with the EU.
Unlike Theresa May, Nicola Sturgeon does have a plan. Her plan is to explore all options which allow Scotland to retain full access to the single market, to retain free movement of people, and to keep those benefits of EU membership that the Tories so recklessly threaten to strip from us. Moreover, against the express will of a Scottish electorate which voted to remain a part of the EU by a much larger margin than it voted to remain a part of the UK. And if the Tories rebuff those efforts, which seems increasingly likely, then Scotland will have another independence referendum and retain full rights and access to the EU as a member in its own right.
The strategy of the Scottish Government is considerably more of a plan than anything that’s issued from Westminster. When Scottish Tories demand a plan from Holyrood what they’re really saying is that they don’t like the plan and want another one more to their liking. Preferably one which entails Scotland rolling over and meekly accepting all the ordure that Westminster throws at us.
Tories getting upset with the Scottish Government for not having a plan to the Tories’ liking for Brexit is a bit like an arsonist getting upset because he went to all that trouble and effort to burn down the neighbour’s house and the neighbour has the audacity to commission an architect for plans to rebuild it.
What we discovered this week, via a leaked memo, is that the UK Government does indeed have a plan for Brexit, and that plan involves running around screaming with their underpants on their heads. Czech journalists learn more from an off the unironed cuff comment by Boris Johnson than the House of Commons gets told, and Theresa May’s insistence that she’s not going to reveal what Brexit means Brexit really means is because she doesn’t know and is still hoping that somehow the rest of the EU will simply roll over and give the UK everything it wants because we’ve got the most patriotic baking programmes on the telly.
The vacuum between our solar system and Proxima Centauri has more substance than the British Government’s Brexit plans, although to be fair there are many more alien life forms in the Tory Party.
With it getting ever harder to distinguish the UK’s system of government from a nervous breakdown, the chances of a second Scottish independence referendum increase, and likewise so do the chances that when that referendum is held that Scotland will vote for governmental sanity.
The Unionist establishment might have lost most of its faculties as far as Brexit is concerned, but they’re fully aware that Scotland is closer to independence than it has ever been. That’s why, despite the fact that there’s no firm proposal as yet for a second Scottish independence referendum, the Unionist parties and their followers are already campaigning to save the skin of the British establishment. One of the clearest tactics the Better Together campaign adopted during the first independence referendum was to associate the cause of independence with the SNP and to present it as an SNP project. They’re going to try to do that the next time too, in order to dissuade non-SNP voting people from supporting independence. That makes it all the more important why those of us who support independence need to start getting organised and start campaigning now, before the Scottish Government passes a bill for a second referendum.
We need party politics to get an independence referendum, but we won’t win that referendum with party politics. If we have an active and vital campaign that’s up and running, that enjoys the support of people of different parties and none, before the Scottish Government launches an official campaign, that’s going to make it a lot harder for Better Together MkII to claim that independence is all about the SNP. It means all of us will have the opportunity to define what a new and better Scotland can look like, and it means we can more easily reject attempts from the Unionist parties to drone on about specific policies of the SNP like they did the last time. We’re only going to get independence if we start thinking independently. You don’t need anyone’s permission to start campaigning. So let’s get going. We can all be the architects of a new and better Scotland.
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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