Sturgeon’s silence on EU border gaffe speaks volumes

FM has turned the office of First Minister into that of Ambassador for the EU, writes Brian Monteith

Imagine for a minute what it takes to unite not just Sinn Fein and the DUP, but also the prime ministers of the United Kingdom and Ireland with them? Not under duress you understand, not after negotiating a peace treaty after decades of brutal guerrilla warfare that killed thousands.

No, I’m asking how could these polar opposites come together spontaneously and instantaneously – without a second’s thought or arms being twisted – to join in condemning an announcement about border arrangements which some are now trying to excuse as a mere data gathering exercise?

And how come, with these four people united in their condemnation, was there a complete shutdown of the normally vocal SNP High Command, not least the First Minister herself?

In case you missed it, I write about that moment of political reality last Friday evening when the European Union announced it was invoking Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol. A hard border was to be erected between the six British counties of Ulster and the rest of Ireland when the EU had promised the Irish people, under open questioning in their own parliament, that no such thing would ever happen.

This momentous about turn, this betrayal of the EU insisting any border infrastructure would threaten the Belfast peace agreement, was not because of an outbreak of foot and mouth disease that might require border checks, but because of a contractual dispute between the EU and Astra Zeneca about the supply of vaccines.

The EU Commission feared that vaccines that Astra Zeneca was contractually obliged to supply to Britain (and therefore Scotland) might be routed to the UK via Ireland to avoid any EU export ban that would deny Britain the vaccines it had paid for.

The DUP, Sinn Fein, the Irish Teasoich and the British Prime Minister were understandably outraged that after all the dire warnings around having physical borders, all the unsaid allusions to violence breaking out, the EU would not consult anyone, not even the Teasoich, nor apparently the Irish member of the EU Commission Mairead Mcguinness, and create a border over a contract dispute. A dispute that exposes the EU’S failure to manage the vaccine procurement quickly and efficiently.

That Britain had invested heavily and considerably more in vaccine research and delivery early on when the pandemic was confirmed, that it had declined to become involved in the EU’S vaccine programme for fear of it being overly bureaucratic and ponderous, that it had entered into contracts with vaccine developers ahead of the EU and was willing to pay more to extract a deal, and that Britain chose to use its newfound Brexit-instilled self-belief to use its own excellent medicines agency to adjudge vaccine approvals is all down to the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.

Had Nicola Sturgeon had anything to do with those decisions we would now be more than a month behind in vaccine delivery and families would be losing loved ones as a direct consequence. In politics, especially when in power, making the wrong decisions can cost lives. Putting the EU before Britain, and as a consequence putting Brussels before Edinburgh, is in my estimation a gross dereliction of the First Minister’s duty to the Scottish people.

The First Minister should have joined in the universal condem