Coded messages by megaphone sound Tory Brexit alarm bells

LETTERS

PHILIP Hammond, the Chancellor, has surfaced again and stated to a House of Lords committee that the UK wants a transitional customs deal similar to the present one, while admitting that we will leave the EU in March 2019.

He has added that no trade deals with third countries would be made during that period. He also admitted that no deal, interim or otherwise, would cause chaos at Dover unless it mirrored the present benefits from membership.

That is all fine and well. Apart from the committee he was responding to, one wonders who the “other” intended audiences were. He was “giving assurances” to business with his outline. But he cannot assure anything; the EU, certainly not. Its position was and is clear: out means out. Anyhow, the EU is the final arbiter in any proposals put forward, not the UK Government or Mr Hammond.

He must then have been sending a coded message by megaphone to Theresa May, David Davis, Liam Fox and the Foreign Secretary: indications of a split Cabinet at No 10 or chaos?

It proves, at this juncture, that the fantasy proposals or demands from No 10 so far are inadequate. The EU has already confirmed this and reminded the UK Government that it does not understand the wider implications of the four freedoms and the single market.

That must be why Mrs May is to make a “great” public speech before the next round of talks get under way. This had been trail blazed by the media. We await the big event; probably we will have to stifle a yawn as it will probably be another mutant litany of rehashed wants, demands and entitlements focussing on a deal before the exit proper has been signed off. The Chancellor ‘s comments and statements issued as veiled threats by Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon on future cooperation, show a government at in a conundrum.

The reason is simple. The Government is not getting its own way. It must feel frightening to be in this incipient third country status vis-a-vis the EU. Before Article 50, the UK Government had a veto, opt outs and rebates and could participate in EU councils. Now it is on the outside and is learning fast and hard that Brexit is Brexit.

John Edgar,

4 Merrygreen Place, Stewarton.

IAIN Macwhirter has performed a public service with his column on the relationship between Brexit and devolution (“Grasp the Brexit bill chance to bolster powers at Holyrood”, The Herald, September 12). It is a valuable corrective to many of the politically-inspired claims around the issue.

Whatever anyone’s views about the House of Lords, the consistent quality of its committee reports has never been in doubt. The Lords EU Committee’s report on Brexit and devolution, to which Iain Macwhirter refers, points out that the UK Government has yet to address “the fundamental constitutional challenges now facing the whole United Kingdom. The new Government must now do so, working in a spirit of partnership and cooperation with the devolved legislatures”.

A range of papers from the UK Brexit department has been produced on relations with the EU but nothing equivalent has been published on the implications for devolved powers. The Scottish Government is therefore right to be wary of the EU withdrawal bill because it proposes that a range of devolved powers, over agriculture and the environment and many other areas, would revert to Westminster in contravention of Schedule 5 of the Scotland Act 1998. There the act lists only powers reserved to Westminster that do not include those areas of legislative competence. How the UK Government intends to deal with that matter remains unclear.

Also, there is a fundamental constitutional difficulty with Iain Macwhirter’s proposal for the

Sewel convention (that the UK Parliament will not normally legislate in devolved areas) to be put on a statutory footing. This comes down to the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, which says that the UK Parliament can change any law it likes and that, therefore, laws made in any parliamentary term cannot bind any future parliament.

Only the abandonment of that doctrine and the adoption of a written constitution creating entrenched legislative powers outside the UK Parliament can make the Sewel convention anything more than that. Until that happens, power devolved will still, ultimately, be power retained.

Cllr Alasdair Rankin (SNP),

City of Edinburgh Council,

City Chambers, 253 High Street, Edinburgh.

ALAS, I fear the goodwill and solidarity Iain Macwhirter remembers that existed between Donald Dewar, Alex Salmond and Jim Wallace as they campaigned for a Scottish Parliament has evaporated into the thin Brexit air. Your columnist is right: now is the time for the opposition parties to stop dragging their feet, put aside their differences, grievances, and frustrations at not being in power at Holyrood and work with Nicola Sturgeon to protect and preserve the powers of the Scottish Parliament.

However, I suspect that Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson’s thoughts are on how soon she can hope to be promoted to the top of the UK Cabinet table and she will thus be chary of jeopardising her prospects by siding with the First Minister, while Scottish Labour is looking inwards as it prepares to pick its umpteenth branch manager and the Liberal Democrats are busily trying to square their circle of demanding a second UK referendum on the EU while opposing a second referendum on independence.

Iain Macwhirter points out the achievements of 20 years of devolution; it would indeed be a tragedy if everything that has been gained is put at risk because three of our opposition parties are found wanting when their support is most needed. Now is the time for them to show solidarity with their counterparts in Wales, who are also at risk from a power-grabbing Tory government at Westminster.

Ruth Marr,

99 Grampian Road, Stirling.

THERESA May is using PMQs to criticise the conduct of the Scottish Government in devolved areas of competence. No doubt Nicola Sturgeon will use FMQs to do the same. There will be areas of government where Scotland does less well than England, but there will also be areas where it does better.

With context we can use the information, not in Mrs Mays politically supercilious manner, but to cross-pollinate and improve our public services across the UK.

GR Weir,

17 Mill Street, Ochiltree.