Theresa May not speaking for Scotland in ‘never felt at home in EU’ speech
Theresa May was not speaking for Scotland when she claimed in Florence that “we never felt at home in the EU”.
She forgets that every single council area in Scotland voted to remain part of Europe, 74 per cent support in Edinburgh, and displays a complete ignorance of Scottish history or our legal system which is mainly based on European law rather than the English legal system.
The Scottish Government produced a 670-page prospectus leading to three years of debate before the independence referendum vote, yet 15 months after the Brexit vote the UK government has no detailed proposals and that’s the real reason why Theresa May wants a two-year transitional period, thus giving the EU the upper hand in future negotiations.
Apart from the 111 powers the Tories want to remove from the Scottish Parliament, the Westminster “take back control” mantra is now a complete joke as at present they just don’t have a clue.
The UK’S credit rating has been downgraded yet again, the pound has plummeted and 10,000 EU health workers have quit the NHS, which together with threats to our hospitality industry is further evidence that Scotland is being dragged into an economic disaster not of our making.
The ongoing insular disconnect between the London political bubble and Europe is amply illustrated by the fact that neither the UK government nor Jeremy Corbyn has spoken out on Spain’s suppression of a democratic vote on Catalonia’s future.
MARY THOMAS Watson Crescent, Edinburgh The verbal overflow from Theresa May at Florence was largely looking back. It started with a reference to the Lancaster House speech. It implies no more needs to be added .
Amid all the generalist phrases in the speech about common this and that and values, all May was angling for was a two-year extension to head off the cliff fall.
But the “deil is in the detail” and that was lacking.
Underpinning the future was the wish from Theresa May for a “bespoke” agreement. In other words, we demand special treatment, not as a state wanting to join, but one which has left the EU after rancour, years of obstinacy and “thkweeming”.
The same tired delusions of entitlement and nothing specific to underpin a staged way forward. It looks like the EU will say “go back to start”.
The speech resembled a start that should have been made 16 months ago and then the intervening time used to flesh out the detail. After all, the cabinet meeting the day before (minus David Mundell), had input into the speech. What has been happening since the referendum?
Strategically and operationally, it looks like the present UK Cabinet could not, as they say in the West of Scotland, “run a menage”.
We wait to see what positive detail, if any, David Davis can build on it!
JOHN EDGAR Merrygreen Place, Stewarton Theresa May made her vacuous speech in the hall of an abandoned Florentine police barracks which had been cleaned up after its colony of pigeons had been shooed away.
Her audience was pretty much the UK’S media and scribes, plus some of her bickering, egotistical cabinet and local dignitaries grateful for the rent.
Her speech, meant to break deadlock over the Irish border, the costs of divorce and the fate of three million EU citizens in the UK and one million Brits in the EU, was a failure.
She seems unable to accept that the moment she sent off the Article 50 letter to “take back control” she “lost control” and put the UK’S future firmly in the hands of the EU27. (REV DR) JOHN CAMERON
Howard Place, St Andrews