Die hard Brexit means status quo no longer option for Scots
THERE is only one word to describe Theresa May’s approach to the EU: separatism. The new Iron Lady will have nothing to do with the institutions of the European Union: single market, customs union court and so on. This is not so much hard Brexit as die hard Brexit.
“Access” to the single market will continue, she insists, but on Britain’s terms. If the EU doesn’t accept them, it will be an act of “calamitous self harm”, which it probably will be. The harm will be to Britain, not the EU; not from “punishment beatings”, as Boris Johnson colourfully put it yesterday, but from losing the privileges of single market membership.
Scotland should be grateful to Mrs May because this clarity brings into sharp focus the decision facing Scotland. We either join with England in this venture of “global Britain”, trying to recreate the age of empire hand-in-hand with Donald Trump, or we remain with Ireland as part of the EU. All the half way houses have been knocked down. There will be no Norway-style solutions and no special deals. This really is decision time and it is clear that independence is the only way to keep Scotland in the single market.
Oddly, the only people who don’t appear to accept this fully are the Scottish Government. Yesterday, the SNP External Affairs Secretary, Fiona Hyslop, insisted that the Scottish special deal was still in play. She accepted that neither the UK nor the EU will allow Scotland to negotiate a unique arrangement; no matter because the UK Government, she said, could do it for us.
She told the BBC’s Gary Robertson: “It’s a one deal, one negotiation and within that the UK must present the case for Scotland to have a differentiated position.” This involves Scotland remaining the single market while the UK leaves it. I don’t know where Ms Hyslop got the idea that the hardline Brexit Secretary, David Davis, might negotiate this on Scotland’s behalf. He’s made clear that the UK in its entirety will be leaving the single market and there’s no option for any part of the country to remain in. The best that will be offered is more powers for Holyrood, which may be thin gruel.
Pressed on which powers would be repatriated to Scotland, Scottish Secretary David Mundell was equivocal yesterday. He mentioned workers’ rights and the status of EU citizens, which apply on a UK basis. He didn’t agree that Scotland would be in charge of replacing the Common Agricultural Policy or the Common Fisheries Policy. While conceding that these responsibilities are at present devolved to Holyrood, he stressed that the UK would have to set up a new “UK single market” first.
This is an important point. The powers repatriated from Brussels on trading standards, employment rights, environment, fish and fowl will go by default to the UK. In the past, all Scottish legislation had to be in accordance with European law, from the quality of the water on beaches to GM crops. After the European Communities Act is repealed, Scottish legislation will have to be in accordance with UK law. The relative autonomy that the Scotland Act provided, because it made the Scottish Parliament subject to over-riding European laws, will be extinguished as the remit of the European Court of Justice ceases. We already know that the UK Government no longer believes that Holyrood has any statutory right to give legislative consent to alterations to its powers. It is difficult to see how Holyrood’s powers will be significantly enhanced by Brexit.
Obviously Scotland will be offered some concessions. No doubt the system of farm payments, worth about £400 million a year, will continue at least for some time. Scotland will still have its legal system and control of health and its education, so the likes of tuition fees will not be restored. Nothing much will change overnight, but Westminster’s powers of decision making over Holyrood will inexorably increase as Europe’s fades.
There was talk before the EU referendum about Scotland getting immigration policy, and even VAT, but these have been ruled out. Control of borders will be decided on a UK basis and immigration from Europe blocked. Scots will have to start breeding fast if they are to make up the 24,000 extra bodies that will not be arriving here every year to fill available vacancies.
Until 2019, Scots will remain citizens of the EU, under the protection of its laws. If they want to retain this citizenship, they will have to decide in a referendum ideally before the UK leaves in 2019. After that date, Scotland will be locked out of the EU and locked into the new UK single market. Rejoining the EU from outside is possible but more difficult, not least because Scotland will have to disentangle itself from the new UK legal structure.
At present the UK is ruling out another referendum on Europe but, perhaps significantly, it is not ruling out another referendum on Scottish independence. Mr Mundell conceded yesterday that “there is a process” for holding such a referendum, though he said he didn’t think there should be one. UK ministers seem pretty confident that Scots will not vote No and so it is safe to call Nicola Sturgeon’s bluff. The longer she continues to threaten a second referendum without actually delivering it, the more her credibility wilts. Yet the case for a repeat referendum is strong. If we’d known two-and-a-half years ago that remaining in the UK meant leaving the single market, the result of the Scottish independence referendum might have been different. Even opponents of a referendum in Westminster have to concede that material circumstances have changed since 2014.
The First Minister thinks the time is not right for another referendum and has ruled it out this year. That decision might have emboldened Ms May to make her declaration of independence so forcefully this week. It appeared to confirm the view in Westminster that Scots had lost their enthusiasm for independence and that the threat to what she called “the precious Union” had passed.
After Brexit, as Britain stands alone, the UK is unlikely to be so openminded on a Scottish referendum, especially if trouble reappears in Ireland. The collapse of the powersharing executive in the North, in the week of Mrs May’s speech, is ominous. After Brexit, all efforts will be made to ensure that the UK remains united, if only to strengthen Britain’s hand in negotiations with the rest of the world.
Scotland faces a difficult choice, perhaps even an impossible one: the UK single market or the European single market. If we abandon the former, trade and migration may be more difficult with England; if we abandon the latter trade and migration will definitely be more difficult with Europe. Either way, it’s clear the status quo is no longer an option. Scots cannot avoid this choice and they don’t have long to make it.
‘‘ Westminster’s powers of decision making over Holyrood will inexorably increase as Europe’s fades