Why Brexit is the green Kryptonite to Scottish independence

The SNP’S Keith Brown and Tories’ David Mundell are both wrong on Brexit and indyref, writes Brian Monteith

SNP Deputy Leader Keith Brown and Conservative Secretary of State for Scotland David Mundell have both claimed Brexit could lead to Scottish independence. They are both wrong.

Irrespective of what type of Brexit the UK ends up with, be it a WTO Full Brexit with lashings of Houses of Parliament Sauce, a Canada-plus Free Trade Agreement, or a Chequers-minus deal that delivers Brexit in name only – they are all toxic to the cause of Scottish nationalism.

Brexit is green Kryptonite to Keith Brown and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon; they will be weakened by it, for whatever one thinks of Brexit there is no escaping it makes the case for independence less attractive. Worse still, and despite what Brown and Mundell say, the more calamitous it is the worse independence will look to ordinary voters. If there’s so much havoc leaving the EU what would they expect leaving the UK to be like?

Once we leave the EU on 29 March any benefits accrued to the UK are likely to be lost forever to an independent Scotland seeking to rejoin the EU, while any benefits that once considered worth the high price of EU membership will not necessarily be reintroduced.

Brexit benefits should include not facing an annual bill of £10 billion – which should deliver a Brexit bonus for Holyrood of around £1bn per annum. It should mean taking back control of our fisheries policy – which will be of greater importance to Scotland to the rest of the UK – as well as shaping agriculture policy to suit the needs of Scottish farmers within the UK’S single market.

Further Brexit benefits should include the ability to change our laws about how we trade and apply taxes; we should be able to open freeports in Grangemouth and Prestwick that will act as magnets to international duty-free assembly – while we can decide to change what items are subject to VAT, what else we tax and at what rate, or what our tariffs for imports might be (maintaining, lowering or abolishing some – or raising others such as steel).

Once the UK is outside the EU then the SNP faces the challenge of arguing why it will be easy and painless to extract Scotland from a union of 311 years compared with the calamity it expects from the UK leaving a union of only 45 years. Alex Salmond reckoned Scotland required only 18 months to exit the UK, yet with no deal yet agreed and a transition period if there is one, it could take five years for the UK to leave the EU fully in 2021.

Scottish exports to the rest of the UK are £46bn, which is more than its £13bn exports to the 27 other EU states and the £17bn to the rest of the world combined. The Fraser of Allander has put the number of Scottish jobs related to EU exports at 125,000 but for our trade with RUK it estimates 529,000. The threat to our prized financial services economy is existential, with most of their customers being English residents many, if not all, would have to move their HQS and associated operations to Leeds, Manchester or London. If Brexit is tough then independence is off the scale.

Then there is the question of how to get Scotland back into the EU. The first obstacle will be Spain and her allies within the EU.

A secessionist Scotland can expect no favours from Spain whatever its political colour and there are other EU members that think the same way. The SNP’S fawning over Catalan separatists will prove to have been a major blunder, even in