Sillars: SNP’s in a ‘parallel universe’ on European vote
FORMER SNP deputy leader Jim Sillars yesterday accused his party of living in a ‘parallel universe’ by supporting a Remain vote in next month’s EU referendum.
The veteran Nationalist said it was a contradiction to back ‘freedom’ from the UK in 2014 and ‘restriction’ under the EU in 2016.
His outburst came as the infighting between Scotland’s pro-EU parties intensified, with Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie accusing the SNP of taking victory ‘for granted’. But the SNP last night hit back and urged Mr Rennie to ‘join our efforts to keep Scotland in Europe’.
Mr Sillars, widower of late MSP Margo MacDonald and a long-standing Eurosceptic, said in Orkney yesterday: ‘There is a glaring contradiction at the heart of official SNP policy on Europe.
‘In 2014, 45 per cent of Scots voters decided the British Union could not serve Scotland’s needs. With only 9 per cent of the seats in the Westminster Parliament and permanent minority status for Scotland assured, it was a reasonable conclusion to reach.
‘In 2016, we must decide if the European Union serves Scotland’s needs. With only 1 per cent of the seats in the European Parliament and permanent minority status for Scotland assured, isn’t it reasonable to conclude that this union too is not in our interests? If it was sensible then to argue for independence, why isn’t it now?
‘How could Scotland in a 28member union, among the smallest members, subject to rules and laws that we could not oppose even if they were against our national interests, ever be heard?
‘If being in a United Kingdom of 60million people where we have direct representation does not give Scotland the sovereignty it needs, in what parallel universe does the SNP leadership see Scotland’s interests being advanced in a 28-member state union of 500million people?”
Meanwhile, Mr Rennie will say in a speech in Fife today: ‘The SNP has refused to join any other campaign yet have daily opinions about how the official In campaign is operating.
‘And when the SNP are not criticising the official campaign they are postulating about the consequences of a Brexit for Scottish independence.
‘The SNP should ditch the criticism and the self-interested commentary. Instead, they should work with other pro-Europeans to win the case for Remain.
‘The SNP seem to take for granted that Scotland will vote radically differently from England and that a big Scottish Remain vote is guaranteed. That sloppy assumption misunderstands the complex range of views that exists in Scotland about Europe.’
But an SNP spokesman said: ‘Independence and interdependence go hand in hand in the 21st century, as proven by the fact that many of the EU’s member states are smaller than Scotland and many have only become independent in recent decades.
‘As for Willie Rennie, he needs to make up his mind quickly what his top priority is – attacking the SNP over everything and anything or joining our efforts to keep Scotland in Europe.’
In the 1980s, Mr Sillars devised the SNP’s independence-in-Europe policy. He now believes that, after the organi-
‘Small countries can be crushed’
sation’s expansion and the loss of the national veto, it does not protect smaller countries.
He said: ‘Small countries are now easily crushed, their views swept aside, as was the case when Greece voted 61 per cent against austerity but had it imposed anyway. In reality, Ireland, Portugal and Greece have had massive wage deflation and brutal austerity imposed upon them by larger states like Germany and France.
‘If independence from the British Union was to our advantage in 2014, then independence from the European Union is certainly to our advantage in 2016.’