Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser
Scotland must make best of bad situation
This past week will perhaps be the most written-about in history.
After Thursday’s Brexit vote we saw the value of the pound drop to its lowest level in 30 years. Hundreds of billions of pounds were wiped off the value of our businesses. The governor of the Bank of England sought to settle the collapsing market in an unprecedented statement.
Most astonishing of all was the revelation that the Leave campaign had no plan for what would happen if they won. There was no 700-page plan like we had in Scotland in 2014, there wasn’t even a side of A4.
The empty rhetoric on taking back control, pledging £350m a week to the NHS or cutting immigration was fictitious, dangerous and ultimately meaningless words.
Those promises from Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson which secured huge swathes of disenchanted England unravelled before breakfast on Friday, leaving us out of the EU minus a plan.
The Prime Minister was right to resign but he is now the lame leader of a group of Tory MPs ready to tear themselves apart and, rather than hold the Tories to account during this pre-negotiation stage, we have a Westminster Labour leadership coup to deal with. Hardly the recipe for a negotiation in the country’s best interests.
In a welcome contrast Nicola Sturgeon has shown the leadership so lacking at Westminster. Over the weekend she communicated a very clear path for Scotland, based on the will of the people. After helping secure a decisive Remain vote in Scotland – every area of Scotland - the First Minister’s leadership is beginning to unify this country behind a clear vision of our place in the world.
As a result the Daily Record has agreed she is right to say a second Scottish referendum is on the cards.
We cannot be ripped from Europe against our will. It is a democratic and constitutional outrage.
Former Labour First Ministers and senior Scottish ministers have suggested they will support Scottish independence if given the choice again. The current Scottish Labour leadership has said all options will be reviewed.
Scotland is galvanised for what comes next. A poll for the Sunday Post suggested that 65 per cent of Scots would now support Scottish independence.
We no longer have the option of the UK that people voted for at the referendum in 2014. This is a different UK, a divided UK, a UK divorced from Europe and distanced from Scotland. It is clear from Thursday that Scotland’s view of its place in the world is very different from our nearest neighbours’.
The campaign which won so well south of the border was inward-looking and based on fear. It was right wing, antiimmigration, xenophobic, regressive and roundly rejected in Scotland.
We are set for a period of long economic and political uncertainty but Scotland could have the opportunity again to shape its own destiny, to make the best of this outrageous situation to ensure our democratic decisions are respected and our economic future is strong.
If that opportunity does arise we should take it.
The promises from Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson unravelled before breakfast