Westminster is so out of touch

I’ve just been in, with other new MPs, to see Mr Speaker in his very grand house.

We sat round a long Gothic table with the Thames framed by high, arched windows.

He served shortbread.“I went out and bought it especially,”he explained.

The new speaker clearly loves his job.

He was bursting with energy.

The speaker’s secretary, dressed in black kneebreeches, silk stockings, a frock coat, and a cravat, sat by his side.

The speaker’s secretary’s secretary didn’t seem to have been invited.

We talked about modernising parliament.

I’ve now been an MP for eight weeks. Westminster has yet to issue my staff email addresses.

This matters because we have a mountain of case work. And with no permanent pass of his own, I’ve had to escort my researcher Niall around. If he strays too far, a Commons doorman will very politely return him to my close supervision.

I don’t think he’s been treated quite like this since primary school.

The Tory benches are very animated.

Lots of their new MPs clearly didn’t expect to win and seem in a permanent state of astonishment. Almost all of them appear to be ferociously pro-Brexit.

Many don’t appear to care much whether it leads to Irish reunification, or Scottish independence.

The English nationalists have triumphed over the unionists and any price is a price worth paying for Brexit.

Scotland has been dragged out of the EU against our will and I find it immensely sad.

I belong to a generation which has enjoyed all the benefits of membership— the right to live, love, learn and work across the greatest free trade area the world has ever known.

And while we pool sovereignty in the EU, each country retains its independence.

I’m sometimes asked at Westminster why I want to leave the UK but stay in the EU.

I explain that Denmark—a country similar in so many ways to Scotland—has, as an independent member of the EU, the right to its own foreign, defence, and macro-economic policy.

It has a seat at the United Nations.

Scotland, as a member of the UK, has none of these rights.

And although we were promised during our independence referendum that the UK would be a“union of equals”, Boris Johnson bellows“no”across the chamber whenever reasonable requests are made.

No Dane would put up with it.

No Scot should.