NOW, 2014 seems like an eon ago. A time when the UK was a very different place. It was a time when most people in Scotland still trusted the BBC to report fairly on Scottish politics.
It was a time when the myths of Britishness enjoyed such a strength of belief that not even the most fervent independence campaigner could make a serious dent in them.
That’s been the biggest change in the febrile five years since Scotland voted against independence – we’ve discovered that the Britain which Scotland voted to remain a part of is a Britain that never existed. Scotland voted for a red white and blue fairy story, one which those selling to us always knew was a lie.
The biggest lie of all is that Scotland was voting to remain a partner in a Union, that it would be a much loved and respected member of a family of nations.
At every turn during the Brexit process, the British government has ignored the views of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish people. Our representatives have been marginalised, sidelined, insulted and casually dismissed.
Yet even worse than that, the British government has used Brexit as an excuse to hollow out the devolution settlement and undermine the will of the Scottish people as expressed in the devolution referendum. Brexit has taught us that when the British government talks about respecting the will of the people, it’s only some people whose will needs to be respected and it’s not the Scottish people. Even if by some miracle Brexit could be avoided, that all by itself counts as a material change in circumstances which would justify another independence referendum.
It’s a bit like being sold on a deal because you were promised it included admittance to an exclusive and luxury club and then discovering that you are only going to be allowed on the premises because they need an unpaid janitor to unblock the toilet.
Instead of a seat at the top table and a key role in the club’s decision making processes, we get a lifetime of mopping up a mess that someone else created. And we’re expected to be grateful for it. It’s a Union benefit, you know.
We were told that it was only by remaining a part of the UK that Scotland could continue to ensure that its democracy was secure and stable, but British democracy has been turned by Brexit into a global joke.
We’re being taken out of the EU on the basis of a narrow referendum victory where the winning side broke every rule in the book, plastered lies on the sides of buses and promised an impossible fantasy land of magic trade deals and easy negotiations where the rest of the world would bow down before the immense might of Britain. We won the war, after all. Brexit is what you get when you substitute commando comics for a proper understanding of your place in the world.
Now we are told that it would be a betrayal of democracy for the people to have another vote on Brexit, but somehow it’s perfectly fine for the Prime Minister to keep bringing her discredited deal back to the Commons time after time. This week she may attempt for the third time to get it passed if she thinks she can get the votes. There is a long standing parliamentary convention that motions are not repeatedly brought back for the consideration of parliament when they have already been rejected during that parliament.
This government has ignored that convention, and will continue to ignore it until it either runs out of time or it manages to get its motion through. [check re: bercow] This is the perfect illustration of the dangers of the UK’s famously unwritten constitution. It puts into high relief the lie that Scotland was told in 2014, that we need the institutions of the UK to protect us from political extremism and uncertainty. We now know that the UK’s constitutional arrangements provide no defence from a government hell-bent on acting like a dictatorship. And we also know that there is nothing in the structures or institutions of the UK which can protect Scotland from the malignities of the rampant English nationalism which underlies Brexit.
It seems that just about every week for the past few months we’ve been told to expect a crucial vote in the Commons. The votes come and go, and nothing changes. The only constants are uncertainty, and Scotland’s continuing marginalisation.
But even if by some fluke Theresa May does manage to get her deal through Parliament this week, that won’t be the end of the Brexmess. It will only be the beginning. The deal that has been negotiated it’s the final settlement, it’s only the divorce, and this was supposed to be the easy bit. Negotiations on the future relationship between the UK and the EU haven’t yet begun. When those negotiations do commence, they’ll be blighted by the EU’s loss of trust in the UK created by the bad faith and constant confusion of the UK. Those negotiations won’t be led by Theresa May, the chances are that they will be headed by a new Conservative leader who will be even more europhobic and in thrall to the Conservative party’s no-deal supporting membership and the Brextremists of the European Research Group.
What we can be sure of is that whoever is negotiating, Scotland’s interests will not be front and foremost amongst their considerations. We can be sure that Scotland’s interests will be sacrificed in order to buy the UK some advantages in some other areas. Expecting the Westminster Parliament to stand up for the interests of Scotland is like expecting a bank robber to campaign for the integrity of the banking system. Scotland is just a resource to be plundered and used, our interests exists solely to be sold off in order to purchase gains that the British establishment really values.
Brexit has changed everything. It’s destroyed the myth of British exceptionalism. It has turned so many of the arguments against independence on their heads. No longer can we be told that independence is parochial and inward looking, that it’s independence which is based on romantic notions of a past that never existed -that would be Brexit Britain.
But most of all, the entire situation has made the scales fall from the eyes of the people of Scotland and forced us to realise that the comforting tales of partnership and Union that Scots once told themselves are as mythical as the unicorns being pursued by the devotees of Brexit.
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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