INTERNATIONAL diplomacy is a long slog – credibility is slowly built up over years, relationships nurtured and contacts gathered, and can be thrown away in moments. It has long been said that states do not have friends, they have interests. Most diplomacy happens in private, with little immediate payback or applause, this is why politicians do not tend to be diplomats and vice versa.

It is also where I find my present foreign affairs role at Westminster fascinating. I get to have conversations with people who would never speak to a newspaper or anyone likely to speak to one, and (usually by the third or fourth meeting) I hear some fascinating perspectives and insights to how Scotland is perceived internationally. Sadly, little of it for public consumption so you’ll just have to trust me that they are happening!

And philosophy matters. I get on well with the EU and representatives of European countries because I want Scotland to be one of them. We are naturally at home working with others. As a smaller state internationally working with others comes as second nature. We are proudly pro-independence, but don’t delude ourselves the world revolves around the scraps of wet and windy rock in the North Atlantic we call Scotland. I’m less convinced the same can be said for elements in the UK Government right now, as an intriguing row reveals.

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The European Commission and European Parliament, prior to Brexit, had six missions across the UK. The Commission had offices in London, Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff, and the Parliament in London and in Edinburgh. These were internal offices in that the UK was part of the EU, and the Commission’s Cardiff and Edinburgh offices, sadly, have been closed. The Belfast presence remains operational given the special status of Northern Ireland, a point of contention with the UK Government. But it is safe to say that the EU’s efforts in the UK are now focussed on London, with the European Commission giving up the lease on Europe House round the corner to Westminster to the EU’s External Action Service, the EU Foreign Mission. As an intriguing note, Europe House is in Smith Square, and used to be the Conservative Party HQ – those pictures of Margaret Thatcher waving out the window celebrating whatever victory would these days be from the office of the EU’s chief diplomat to the United Kingdom.

And it is that title – diplomat – that has been the cause of such contention lately. The EU officials prior to Brexit were afforded full diplomatic status, yet now that the UK has left the EU at precisely the time the UK is no longer in the room in Brussels and needs goodwill more than ever, the UK has decided to downgrade that status. Talk about defeat from the jaws of victory. Of all the hills to die on, this isn’t it lads.

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I’ll confess when I first heard it I dismissed it as an oversight or miscommunication, but not actually it is deliberate and calculated, or to my mind entirely miscalculated but deliberate nonetheless. The logic goes that the EU should not have diplomatic status because the EU is not a state, but a glorified trade association. This may come as

news to the folks in Europe House given they’ve had the last few years being derided as a super state and political union, but that is the official position of the UK. It would be defensible if the EU were a new organisation just arrived off the boat in London, but it is not. This is a positive, deliberate downgrading of the status of the EU mission at a time when it really matters.

The EU-UK Agreement exists and is going to with every day that passes be proven to be as negative as it is unsustainable – and even at that the bumps in the road as it is implemented will require open communications channels and a lot of goodwill. Channels the UK has decided to downgrade. The fishing folks, the farmers, the hauliers are all going to have issues to be dealt with for weeks and months yet, now is not the time to pick a row nobody cares about.

I have put in an Urgent Question at Westminster to bring the Foreign Secretary to answer on the record why on earth they think this is sensible, let’s see if the Speaker chooses it. I have also written to Boris Johnson, let’s see if he rethinks. But it all brings home why I want to see Scotland independent. One of the big arguments Unionists will use against us is that we’re already represented in the world, by the UK. They often talk as if this is news to us, and I respond each time that I fully acknowledge the UK presently speaks for us, but it does it badly. This is a real world example which will have real world consequences, and Scotland can do better.