Brexit is Brexit... on both sides of Border

NOBODY should be in the slightest surprised by Theresa May’s insistence that Scotland cannot expect to cut a special deal over its status with the European Union when the UK leaves.

The Prime Minister’s spokesman yesterday simply restated the obvious: the UK has voted for Brexit and that decision applies equally north and south of the Border.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has made much of her desire to secure unique status for Scotland, perhaps by retaining our membership of the single market or by having powers over immigration devolved to Holyrood. However, it’s increasingly apparent the First Minister is driven not by the belief she can somehow achieve these measures but by the desire to further her ambition of breaking up the UK.

Speaking at the SNP conference last week, Miss Sturgeon said she was preparing the ground for a second referendum on independence. Her message to the Prime Minister was clear: if Scotland is to be taken out of the EU, then she is ready to have another crack at winning independence. Mrs May would appear to have looked upon this threat with disdain.

Of course, Miss Sturgeon would like it to be the case that Scottish voters – a majority of whom wished to remain in the EU – are so exercised by the result that they will now line up behind the Nationalists to deliver the Yes victory that failed to materialise in 2014. But the truth is that polls show no such change of heart among those who voted No to independence last time around.

In fact, support for independence was recently recorded at only 39 per cent, some way short of the 45 per cent achieved by the Yes campaign two years ago.

The First Minister dearly wishes to turn the result of the EU referendum to the advantage of the pro-independence movement – but she has, so far, failed to do so.

Nicola Sturgeon may spin her demands as being in the interest of all Scots but, at a time requiring diplomacy and cooperation, she’s playing a reckless, grievance-fuelled game on behalf of the independence-supporting minority. MEANWHILE, Project Fear marches on. Yesterday, the preposterous Nick Clegg claimed that leaving the single market would see catastrophic tariffs imposed on British exports to the EU – 59 per cent on beef, 38 per cent on chocolate, 40 per cent on cheese, 14 per cent on wine. Jobs would go, he said, and billions would be lost in trade.

All blatant scaremongering, of course. Britain buys £20billion more in food from Europe each year than it sells in exports and any new tariffs would work both ways. Why on earth would the EU risk choking off a trading arrangement that is so lucrative to its members?

The problem with the increasingly irrelevant Lib Dems is that they refuse to accept that Britain has voted to leave the EU. To use Mr Clegg’s own ridiculous phrase, they are ‘in Brenial’.