BREXIT has hit Scotland hard – costing the country billions in terms of lost exports, reducing opportunities for our young people to study abroad, hurting businesses reliant on seasonal EU workers to keep their doors open, and much more.
This comes against a backdrop of some 62% of Scots voting to stay in the EU in 2016, and subsequent polls showing continued high support for the bloc.
But despite this the Scottish Conservatives – who were previously in favour of remaining in the European Union – have been at pains to defend the UK Government’s hard Brexit in recent years.
At the Scottish Conservative conference this weekend, things were no different.
READ MORE: Boris Johnson compares fighting war in Ukraine to voting for Brexit
Our reporter was on the scene to ask various Tory politicians if they could list benefits of Brexit to Scotland, and the results were intriguing.
Aberdeenshire councillor Ann Ross told The National: “I think Brexit is done, it’s dusted, we need to move forward. I think you can see the benefits in the economy.
“If you look at the economy and see the United Kingdom despite the pandemic business is picking up, the high streets are starting to get busier again, people are spending money, there’s new confidence in the country.”
Later, Banff and Buchan MP David Duguid was asked for his take.
“Since we’ve left the EU we’re free to work on our own individual trade agreements with countries around the world. Many of which are the same as the ones we had in the EU, but also new ones as well.
“There’s lots of very exciting changes that we can embark on for example the most recent new one was Chile … Chile has just recently allowed pork products for the first time from the UK … a huge market for lamb and beef exports had opened up … something that wasn’t happening when we were in the EU.
“These haven’t happened all at once but they are continuing to happen. Outside the EU we can be a lot more agile.”
The pork market Duguid refers to is worth an estimated £20 million for the first five years.
It comes after tens of thousands of pigs had to be culled last year due to a severe shortage of skilled labour in the UK’s meat sector after Brexit, at a big cost to farmers.
The loss in the first six months of 2021 was around £130m, according to the National Pig Association – more than six times more than the Chile deal will provide by 2027.
Watch the clip below to see Tories challenged on Scotland’s so-called Brexit benefits.
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