Isn’t it ironic? The PM’s in danger of playing into SNP hands over Brexit

FORGET that oil is running out and the damage this will do to our economy. The priority should be the irony drought which is devastating our politics. Today, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will meet Prime Minister Theresa May to discuss Brexit.

Mrs May says she wants a ‘new, grown-up relationship’ with SNP ministers. That is the last thing Miss Sturgeon wants.

She would rather be treated like a child, belittled, so she can come back to Bute House and bleat that the world is unfair. It is the basis of her case for independence.

She does not want to be treated like an adult – because that would mean she would have to make adult decisions and treat the people of Scotland like adults.

That is not on Miss Sturgeon’s agenda. She wants to keep us in the playpen.

The demand that Scotland should remain in the single market after Brexit is impossible. It is not because ‘Westminster’ will not let us, it is because it is a legal impossibility and the European Union will not let us. That is why no one in the EU is speaking to Miss Sturgeon.

Insults

This weekend the trade deal between Canada and the EU – after seven years of negotiations – was blocked by Wallonia, a region of Belgium. The frustration in Brussels was palpable.

After that experience no one there is going to offer a separate deal to a secessionist administration which is part of an out-going state. How could that be in their interests? That truth will not be told, if it has crossed Miss Sturgeon’s mind. Let’s just get angry.

The irony is that her view of Scotland could not exist without England. English insults – real or perceived – live in her head. Without them she would have no definition of Scottishness.

In preparation for her meeting, her foreign affairs spokesman, Alex Salmond, described Brexit ministers as ‘planks of wood’. Hardly the language of a diplomat.

It is more than rich that the man who appointed Fiona Hyslop as education secretary, followed by Mike Russell and then Angela Constance, should call the ministers of any other administration ‘planks of wood’.

I have little time for Brexit ministers Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox but if they are ‘planks of wood’ it would be generous to call those three Scottish education secretaries ‘cut-price MDF’. The irony blindness of Nationalist politicians is unfathomably deep.

At the weekend, Scottish Green Party leader Patrick Harvie told the world that Scottish nationalism was so much more inclusive than those racists south of the Border. Come again? Inclusive of everyone apart from the English, it would seem.

The great new hope of the Nationalists, MP Mhairi Black, has compared the UK Government with the Nazis, while her party gets a speaker at their conference to speak wearing a parody badge of those Jews were forced to wear.

It feels that far from being confident of winning a second referendum, the Nationalist cause is becoming rather desperate.

Last week, almost a decade after it first tried to introduce the policy, the Scottish Government won a case at the Court of Session to impose the minimum pricing of alcohol.

The minister in charge, Aileen Campbell, warned the drinks industry not to appeal against the decision and to respect Scotland’s ‘democratic will’.

Now, I wonder what Miss Black’s historical perspective tells her about governments telling individuals that they would be wrong to seek access to the courts. The executive should never suggest citizens cannot seek justice through the law.

As for it being wrong for institutions to argue against the ‘democratic will’ of Scotland, is that not what the SNP is doing by campaigning for a second independence referendum?

Perhaps the warmth of having your backside on the seat of a ministerial car freezes the brain. They either don’t see the irony of their position or wilfully ignore it. In their Scotland, Robert Burns would be banned merely for asking for the gift to see ourselves as others see us.

I do not know if Miss Sturgeon likes fern cakes but if she does, they could be crucial to her talks with Theresa May today. If the icing is too soft the meeting will be a disaster. Too hard and it will be an insult to Scotland and generations of Scots going back to William Wallace.

What she will never consider is what the UK Government and the EU can realistically deliver. It is not in her personal interest to do so, even if it would be in the interests of Scotland.

But, in turn, Mrs May needs to wisen up to the SNP’s tactics. Her spokesman’s slap down last week of the Scottish Government that it has no mandate for a second referendum was a schoolboy error.

It is exactly what the SNP wants them to say. Without a positive vision, the Nationalists think they can achieve ‘Scotland the Brave’ by making it appear ‘Scotland the Insulted’.

Ignorance

The Nationalists will continue to toss up balls of outrage in the hope that Westminster will hit them and cause despair north of the Border. Number Ten has seemed happy to blunder into the trap.

David Cameron, to be fair, got that. He never took the bait, while Theresa May’s team cannot even smell it.

One of her joint chiefs of staff, Fiona Hill, is from Largs. I know her and, despite the flak she has received from some sections of the Press, she is a thoroughly good thing – clever, well-intentioned and more than competent.

But my fear is that many Scots, however long they have lived elsewhere, believe their very Scottishness means they understand the nuances of Scottish politics. That partial knowledge can be a greater hindrance than total ignorance.

In Cameron’s Number Ten he had as an adviser Andrew Dunlop, a Scot with the self-awareness to recognise what he did not know but who had a network of opinion formers he could rely upon to inform the Prime Minister. Theresa May needs the same – and quickly.

Perhaps I am wrong to suggest that there is an ‘irony drought’ in Scotland. Perhaps it might as easily be described as a flood of irony, drowning us and making any kind of rational debate impossible.

One thing does seem clear. The Nationalists think the road to self-determination requires a drought of self-awareness.