Forget Europe and talk to the people who really care for us: The English
IT was an old joke told with a bitter, smarting twist. You know the one. Name ten famous Belgians. We will give you Hercule Poirot for a start and if you name two more, that is genius level. Worth a chuckle at another nation’s expense.
But on a trip to Paris for the Six Nations, my compatriots and I found the Parisians told the same gag about us. Yes, us. Scotland. Name ten famous Scots, Robert Burns was the given name... and you will get the rest. The memory still makes my hackles rise. So much for the Auld Alliance.
Of course that particular arrangement was not about the French admiring us for our ways of living. Whatever alliance there was between our two nations then was built on having a common enemy. Catholic France joined with Protestant Scotland because they both despised England. Hate was the glue, not love.
Now Nicola Sturgeon is going on a sporadic tour of the ministries of European nations to display to her home audience that they love us. Why should they?
When the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union there was despair in the capitals of Europe. But in the chancelleries, ministries and presidential palaces of the continent I will bet you no one paused to say: ‘How did Scotland vote?’
Irrelevance
This week, instead of campaigning for her father, the SNP candidate in the Irvine West council by-election, Miss Sturgeon took herself off to Berlin to meet a minor German minister no one had really ever heard of outside his mother’s house.
It was the powerless meeting the anonymous. A council of irrelevance designed to make Scotland believe Europe is waiting for what we do next. It is not.
Miss Sturgeon and her disciplined minions have spent decades taunting Scotland into nationalism by saying that if you didn’t agree with them, you believed Scotland was ‘too wee, too stupid and too poor’. No one said that about this nation other than them.
But now they are coming unstuck. Having told Scotland that the eyes of the world are upon us, they have to stop Europe’s eyelids drooping.
The UK leaving the European Union is a big deal for everyone. While vengeance for the decision may be tempting for some of our soon-to-be ex-partners, most of Europe wants the best possible deal for everyone as we prepare to leave.
In this, a separate Scotland is irrelevant. Miss Sturgeon’s ego led to her giving an interview to German TV on her success in meeting a politician in Berlin most of Germany hadn’t heard of.
She was asked if she felt welcome, bearing in mind she had not met Angela Merkel, her deputy or her foreign secretary. This most derivative of politicians delved shallow to find her well-practised Pavlovian Salmond smirk.
Then there was the dark flash of Eck’s angry eyes as she was told that the Spanish – among others – would block an independent Scotland joining the EU. Look at the heels, not at the facts, she seemed to plead.
How eccentric Scotland must appear to the rest of Europe as Miss Sturgeon makes her way among its junior ministers.
Most European countries are unions of different nations, just as the United Kingdom is. Bavaria feels every bit as distinctive in its own right as Scotland does. They are just not planning to leave Germany any time soon.
Post-Brexit, most European nations want to make sure that the EU keeps together, not that nation states fall apart.
What a strange proposition she puts. She cannot share sovereignty with one country we have been in partnership with for more than 300 years. But the future is to share sovereignty with 27 other countries with whom we would have less influence and shallower relationships.
If Scotland’s rights are denied by Westminster, where we have almost 10 per cent of MPs, how can Europe do better by us where we have fewer than 1 per cent of MEPs?
It is difficult to make the argument to a continent, which bears the scars of nationalism in its cemeteries and its daily lives, that modern-day Scotland wants to be an independent country within it despite the fact we cannot live with our neighbours.
Every disappointing meeting with unknown European ministers is hailed as a triumph – when did she last admit disappointment? Every statement from Westminster is condemned as a betrayal – when did she last welcome one?
The SNP’s foreign policy black spot is a sign of its political adolescence. Alex Salmond, its foreign affairs spokesman, had a dalliance with Donald Trump. He is still on record as being an admirer of Vladimir Putin, despite his invasion of Ukraine and rigged referendum in the Crimea.
The SNP’s Westminster leader, Angus Robertson, once told me that the reason he had such a good handle on foreign affairs was because he had cable TV and could watch foreign news channels.
If he ever discovers the music channels he will probably claim to be the next Simon Cowell but without his shyness.
Brexit was supposed to be the chance for the Nationalists to show that being part of the UK meant Scotland was forced to do things against its will. It is turning out to show that the only country which listens to Scotland, that indulges us, is the UK, or more precisely England. The rest of Europe doesn’t seem much to care.
For 300 years the Union has been a platform that has allowed Scotland to punch above its weight. We have prospered.
Subsidy
Now, as Miss Sturgeon skulks around Europe, at best our continental neighbours are measuring us up.
A country running out of oil and gas and which needs a subsidy of more than £10billion a year to deliver the public services it thinks it deserves.
What do we have to offer? Foreign policy is, at best, a matter of enlightened selfinterest. How is an independent Scotland joining the EU in the interests of Spain, fighting its own separatist movements?
How will it help Germany or Italy, or France, who care about their relationship with the UK, which is leaving their community? What is in it for them?
Asked about another referendum on independence on German TV this week, Miss Sturgeon talked about ‘Scotland’ having many options.
She meant herself. She might have been elected First Minister but I don’t think she was elected as ‘Scotland’. She was talking of herself as Scotland and in the third person. It was as though she was a latterday Louis XIV – ‘l’etat c’est moi.’
Among her jaunts to the 26 European capitals she hasn’t yet visited on her EU crusade, she might want to spend some time in Edinburgh.
Instead of trying to tell Europe we are something which we are not, she might want to address the problems she was elected to address in our failing education system, the NHS and our economy.
That might make the Belgians sit up and take notice. Even if she doesn’t reach ‘genius’ level.