Stand, and be Counted

Thanks to our high-level contacts in Bute House, we have received a smuggled copy of Nicola Sturgeon's post-Easter speech:

"This is for everyone who lives in Scotland. And when I say ‘everyone’ l mean everyone. Whether you are old or young (and especially if you are young). Whether you are a voter or not, born in Scotland, or not.

If you live in Scotland, then this is for you. Because we who live here, in this Scotland of many peoples, know that Scotland has been hurt.

It has been hurt by the continued abuses of the Westminster parliament. Abuses, and I use the word advisedly, highlighted by the Brexit process.

I am not going to restate my views - they are well-known - on Scotland and the European Union. I know that the people who live in Scotland have a range of views on that issue, and I hope that an independent Scotland will decide, in its own way and its own time, the relationship that it wants with the EU.


Instead, I want to talk about the awful, chaotic, mismanaged and damaging Brexit process.


The process led, if that is the word, by not one but two political parties utterly riven with internal dissent. The process that completely ignored the views of the governments of Scotland and Wales, and that failed to listen to the many and varied voices of the four nations. The Brexit process that was all about party factions and divisions, and nothing to do with you, your family, your job and your wellbeing.


The Brexit process has shown us, if we did not already know it, that Scotland is ignored at Westminster. Ignored, and abused, our MPs scorned, and our views dismissed. But this is not about hurt national pride. It runs much deeper. Because the Brexit process has shown us that the famously unwritten British constitution is not fit for any modern purpose. It fails to guarantee a voice to the four nations. And, now that we know that the Sewel convention is another broken, empty promise. it fails to guarantee powers for the Scottish parliament, meaning that anything that we, or the Green Party, or the Tories, Liberals or Labour propose in the Scottish Parliament, can be overturned at the whim of whoever happens to be in power in Westminster.


And Brexit has exposed the corruption at the heart of Westminster politics. Corruption in the form of lies, easily said, readily repeated across a complacent media, and painted onto the side of a bus. Many people have lost faith in politics - what little faith we may have had - because we have been so extensively lied to. That is bad news, very bad news, for democracy. It will take years to repair the belief in a political process that can find solutions to our shared problems. Politics has been corrupted, bent to the needs of the Tory party.


Brexit has also shown us the power of small nations in the European Union. Remember that Malta – which is smaller than the isle of Arran – had the power of veto over Theresa May’s Brexit agreement; powers that were never offered to Scotland.


But out of this chaos of Brexit waste, there is a new vision emerging. A vision of a renovated Scotland, a Scotland that can stand up on its own two feet. Stand up and say 'enough' to Westminster. Stand and decide where its destiny lies – in the corruption of Brexit Westminster, or in our own, modern, independent nation, governed by the people who live here.


To allow us all to consider, debate, and then decide Scotland's future, I have written today to the Prime Minister notifying her that we will be requesting a Section 30 order in Westminster, as soon as the new Parliamentary session starts.


I expect that the Government will follow precedent and grant our request.


But in case it does not, the Scottish Government will hold a public consultation in the form of a vote on the issue of Scottish independence. The Scottish Government has a triple mandate to do this, and we shall not shirk our responsibilities.


I said at the start of this announcement that this was for all of us who live in Scotland. We all have our own views on how this nation should be governed, and I would urge everyone - and I pledge to do this myself - to listen to the range of views that will be expressed as we delete our future. 

Let us all take that step together, as we stand up to be counted, for Scotland.”

Scotland And Brexit

The shambles that is Brexit has silenced almost everything else in politics for the last two years. It's a mess. But it is a mess with lessons for Scotland.

Listen

First, we need to understand what is happening in areas with social disadvantage, and listen to the people who live there. As Misha Glenny showed in a recent article in the Financial Times, disadvantaged areas in England (defined as places where less than 20% of the population are graduates, and at least 35% of employees work in low-skilled jobs) voted overwhelmingly to Leave the EU. In contrast, areas in Scotland with the same social profile voted to stay. Mr Glenny compares Wigan (64% Leave) with Paisley (64% Remain). Why this difference? What is it about deprivation in England that translates into this vote? Are the people who live in disadvantaged areas opposed to the status quo, and is this a causal link? Are people in these areas anti-immigrant, or do they have a greater sense of having been abandoned by Westminster? We need to know a lot more about how people living in Scotland's worst-off communities think. "The poor are another world," but it is a world we must listen to if we are to avoid building the kind of debate we have seen in Westminster.

Everyone at Westminster is shouting, and almost no-one is listening. Had Mrs May (it is inconceivable, but let's day-dream) involved the four nations of the UK and had she reached out beyond the four governments, to talk to the people of Wigan, Paisley and other disadvantaged communities, had she done that, we would have a very different Brexit today (and quite conceivably, no Brexit at all.)

Power and the Media

Second, power and influence. My friend, who voted Leave, reads the Telegraph; gritting my teeth, I have occasionally read it too. The Telegraph's Brexit is one step forward and three steps back into a sunny British Empire with Cricket and the Ashes as the principal measure of the health of the nation, and Brexit dismissed as a lot less difficult than the First World War.

People do not own newspapers in order to make money. They own newspapers in order to influence, normally to influence the debate around Government policy. The Barclay twins, who live on the nearly feudal Channel Isle of Sark, want power and influence. and the Telegraph editors are happy to comply.

The Telegraph, the in-house journal of the Tory Party, helped to create the mass of Conservative voters who favoured leave, achieving something quite remarkable in that it even persuaded Britons living on the Costa del Sol and enjoying Spanish healthcare, sunshine and sangria to vote leave, apparently unaware of the bullet in their foot, and the mote in their eye.

So which are the media in Scotland with power and influence? Will The Press and Journal come out in favour of independence? No, I don't think so either. And what, oh what, are we to do with the BBC? Overwhelmingly, people in Scotland watch the telly, so getting the BBC onside would be a major coup. Again, highly unlikely. Which leaves us with social media. Set aside the ease with which people of power can buy influence in social media, we will have to hope that the Reverend Stu at Wings, the Wee Ginger Dug, and the erudite James at Scot Goes Pop, are the seeds of a million social media flowers. 

Where is the Backstop?

Third, and even more scary; what will be our "Northern Ireland Backstop"? By which I mean, which currently obscure, unthought of issue will leap up and bite us in the bum after we vote Yes? The most obvious possibilities are;

• The nuclear submarine base at Faslane
• North Sea oil and gas, and the territorial limits thereof
• And, conceivably, the Orkneys, which have consistently voted No

Any of these issues could trip up the negotiations to separate our conjoined nations. Money will be at the heart of a divorce agreement but that is something we all know and can anticipate (and was, indeed, anticipated in the detailed white Paper that preceded the last Referendum). But it's the Backstop, the last thing you'd think of, that I fear the most.

Decline and Fall

But Brexit has also shown us the opportunities. By shining a very bright light into the corridors of Westminster power it has shown us how easily an Empire can decline and fall.

The decline of Imperial Britain is obvious in its Parliament, whose benches are full of Oxbridge white, male, public-school educated chaps, people from privileged backgrounds, with far too little experience of difficulty, deprivation. Brexit has exposed them in all their shouty, tousle-haired egocentricity. These (very) privileged few will now steer this land through a series of crises, because they completely fail to understand that too much wealth, and thus too much poverty, destroys a county.

Brexit is horrible, and will do great damage to Scotland, and to democracy. We need to listen and learn, so that when at last it is our turn, we can win Indyref2.

The Bright Side of Brexit

You could not have asked for a better bench-test of the Westminster system of governance than Brexit. A bench-test that Westminster, and the society that maintains it, has failed dramatically.

The Brexit campaign was built on racism. The campaign focused on the control of immigration, blaming ‘immigrants’ for the job losses and the poverty in the UK. This is a technique that has been used by mendacious governments, kings and tribal leaders since we were plankton. ‘Those amoebae look different from us. They are the cause of our discomfort. We are better than them. Let’s get them out of our pond.’

Poverty and unemployment in Britain are not the result of immigration. They are the result of a sick Westminster neoliberalism that soaks the rich. The City has not suffered, but the poor kids on the streets in Pollok, have.

The focus on immigration was led by the Mail, the Sun and the Telegraph, all of them newspapers owned by wealthy individuals who will lose nothing (and may win yet greater riches) as the result of Brexit. And here is the second ingredient in the Brexit bench-test. The tabloid devils were supported by the BBC, which equals or betters Russia Today as a government propaganda channel. No-one can demonstrate that Mr Putin is influencing RT, just as no-one can demonstrate that Mrs May is influencing the BBC, but both channels express an editorial line that suits the government of the day.

There may have been an imaginary halcyon day in which British journalists were an objective balance to the power of government – a functioning Fourth Estate telling truth to power – but those days – if they ever existed – have long gone.

The bent bananas argument for Brexit, led by the equally bent Boris Johnson, has been broken by the facts of Brexit. The argument was that Brussels had created a series of rules and regulations – including one governing the quality of fruit including bananas – that were an imposition on Britain’s freedom to do business. Boris and the Brexiteers argued that we should escape the shackles of EU regulation so that Britain could trade freely with the world. A hypnotic argument, amplified by the tabloids and the Telegraph.

And now we face reality; the EU is the UK’s largest trading partner, and so we will inevitably want to continue buying and selling there. So we will continue to have to abide by their rules on bent bananas, data protection, car parts and a thousand other products and services. But this time, we will no longer have a say, no longer have MEPs, or a seat on the committees that draft these regulations. We will be in a worse position, a weaker position, than we were before Brexit.

Brexit is the dark force in English politics. It has brought out the worst in the Westminster system of governance.

But it has a bright side. A bright side, for Scotland.

Because Brexit has shown that the ‘Union’ of Scotland and England is nothing of the sort. It has shown that Scotland is merely the colony of an ageing imperial power. The Scottish parliament, set up after years of demands and proposals, has no power. Brexit has shown that the ‘Sewell Convention’ is worthless, a slip of paper shredded in a Tory fart. The Westminster power grab – taking back any remaining powers that the toothless Scottish parliament had – has been supported not only by the Tories but also by a Labour party that has definitely lost its way.

And this is our hope. That the people of Scotland will realise, thanks to Brexit, that their parliament, their government, their power has once again been ripped away from them by the greed of Westminster. This is the bright side. This is independence.