LET’S BE THE BREX OF FRIENDS
CALL FOR TRUCE IN HOLYROOD’S CIVIL WAR
Activist Labour and SNP should bury the hatchet and unite over Euro battle
The civil war between SNP and Labour is vicious because they share so much – trading voters, members and policies over the years.
But with no clear road to IndyRef2, now is the time for a truce.
Mainstream opinion in Scottish Labour wants the UK to remain in the single market. Mainstream opinion in the SNP wants that for both Scotland and the UK, at least – and mainstream Scotland agrees.
Both sides have their nutty fringes, from Tommy “The Perjuror” Sheridan and his cybernat hangers-on to the sinister Stalinists too close to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for comfort.
Normal politics must continue. Scotland has a working government and parliament with a full legislative programme. Westminster doesn’t.
This monstrous Octo-Bill on Brexit – eight arms connected for one purpose – will dominate Westminster, not for one year, but two, and after Prime Minister Theresa May’s concessions in Florence, perhaps another two after that.
At its heart is a political horror show: A technical power, an antique dragged out of the museum and dusted off – Henry VIII-style powers.
Tory ministers, as the kings in parliament, can write laws by decree: Michael Gove, Liam Fox, Queen Andrea Leadsom and all.
This is only for things kissed by EU law, but that’s a slobber-load since 1973.
One only needs to examine the precedents to become very worried very quickly.
In 1972, the old Northern Irish parliament was prorogued and replaced by Henry-VIII-in-theNorth. Now, Westminster has prorogued itself. It wasn’t good government then and it won’t be now.
In the election, May sent two sidekicks off and they wrote a manifesto that exploded on contact with reality.
The Brexit bill is this only 12,000 times worse.
When I was a kid, the telly had endless public information films about house fires, fag ends, burning sofas and everybody dying (ask your granny). Then we made inflammable sofas illegal.
When David Cameron’s hippy guru Steve Hinton was on the rampage, this was the first regulation he tried to torch.
This is what will be going on for 24 EU laws every working day.
Lobbyists who know which burning sofa has how much loose change down the back are nudging and fudging already.
Normal politics will out, if you find a trace of lipstick on something you can “fix” it with a decree, as they intend to “fix” devolution.
To fight this war we need experts – our MPs need help.
During the IndyRef, the SNP built a machine: self- organising groups, software systems, fundraising and an open coalition.
We should offer these skills to friends of the EU in and out of parliament to build a public campaign of experts to surface all the meddle and muddle, to find the political bombshells hidden under Henry VIII orders and explode them, to stop this farce as soon as we can.
Once we have done that, we can fall back to fighting each other.
While I admire the energy that the wider Corbynist movement has brought to Labour, I am not going to pretend I love Corbyn. Nor do I demand love back.
But I will put out a hand to anyone, the lost pro-European Tories even, in this, the current fight.