THE European Union is establishing its negotiating team for the Brexit talks. It’s panto season, and more and more it’s looking like the EU is getting together a band of Europeans who are going to point and laugh at the idiocies of the brick-footed Brexit Brits who are trying to pass Boris Johnson, David Davis, Liam Fox and Theresa May off as dwarfs in order to save money. Which, to be fair, is perfectly reasonable as they’re intellectual dwarfs. Sadly they’re going to end up costing us a fortune.

It’s bad enough for supporters of the red, white and bleugh that the EU’s lead negotiator has hinted that the Brexit talks will be held in French. Because as the French proverb has it “C’est le ton qui fait le chanson” – it’s the tone that makes the song. The tone that’s coming from Europe isn’t pleasing to Brexitish ears and the song is one which Westminster doesn’t know the words to, silently making mouth movements when it comes to the chorus in the hope no-one will notice. The tone of the negotiations will be determined by the people the EU is choosing to do the negotiating. The EU Parliament will be represented by Guy Verhofstadt, a man who has already expressed his support for Scottish independence and agreed with Nicola Sturgeon that if Scotland votes for independence before the Brexit process is complete, then Scotland’s entry into the EU will be automatic.

Europe is singing a chanson d’amour for Scotland, and giving nul points to the Brexiteers.

Then, we learned this week that one of the 12-person team of MEPs who will oversee the Brexit process for the EU Parliament will be Catalunya’s Josep Maria Terricabras, who will be joined on the group by Sinn Fein’s Martina Anderson. The group is being chaired by Martin Schulz, the President of the European Parliament, who met with Nicola Sturgeon when she was in Brussels in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote.

Important members of the EU Parliamentary group are unlikely to look favourably on a UK Government which seeks to deny Scotland another independence referendum in order to maintain its membership of the EU and forge a different path from the isolationists of Brexit.

Terricabras is a member of the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, a left-wing pro-independence party which is one of the closest allies of the SNP in the European Parliament. Terricabras is also the president of the Free European Alliance, the bloc of pro-independence and regionalist movements to which the SNP belongs and which is allied with the Greens in the EU Parliament.

Irritatingly for those who are insistent that Spain will block any moves by Scotland towards independence, Terricabras will be the only Spanish representative on the EU Parliamentary Brexit negotiating body.

Even more irritatingly for the red, white and blah faction in Scottish politics, after being selected for the negotiating team, Terricabras told the Spanish press he saw his role in the team as being: “To see how [Brexit] evolves and what possibilities there are for an understanding with Scotland, and for a new relationship for Scotland with Europe, and for the Catalans this seems to me to be extraordinarily important.”

The latest development comes hot on the heels of Nicola Sturgeon’s visit to the Irish Senate, where she received a standing ovation, and a series of Irish senators queued up for selfies with her. One after another, senior members of the senate stood up to tell her how they supported Scottish independence and supported Scottish membership of the EU as an independent state.

That was the Scottish Furst Meenister being snubbed by the way, in case you’re of a Unionist persuasion.

The response of the more frothy section of Unionist support on social media, which is most of it, to be honest, was to trawl the Rangers Supporters’ True Blue Book of Irish Insults for epithets to hurl at the Irish Republic. Because that’s really going to endear the British to the Irish government during Brexit negotiations. This even included a certain prominent Unionist supporter and apparent academic who described Ireland as a “potato republic”, because that’s not racist at all. Oh no.

But then the person in question is already frothier than a Fairy Liquid cappuccino and independence supporters should encourage the Unionist campaign to keep using them as a spokesfoamer as every time they open their mouths another bit of the Union drowns in the spume.

Meanwhile, Tory MSP Murdo Fraser tweeted passive aggressively about how the Irish were no great friends of the British, despite all Britain has done for them. You know, like causing a famine that resulted in the deaths of more than one million Irish people and driving three million into emigration. Because that’s really the way to make friends and influence people.

And that’s the real problem for the UK during Brexit negotiations, and the real strength of Scotland. The UK relies on bullying and bluster, but bullying and bluster won’t work when your opponents are the ones in the strong position and know that they’re the ones in the strong position.

Scotland, on the other hand, knows how to make friends, and that will pay off for us in the longer term as the rUK declines into its self-imposed irrelevance.