It’s taken one Nat to expose SNP cant on Brexit

IWONDER what Alex Neil’s punishment will be for revealing he failed to toe the SNP party line on Brexit. Will he be banned from the Christmas party? Forced to walk the streets of Edinburgh wearing a sandwich board declaring I VOTED LEAVE? Appointed minister for dancing on the head of a pin?

This week, the former social justice secretary admitted he voted to leave the EU back in June. He also said he has since been approached by a number of Nationalist MSPs who did the same ‘but don’t want to broadcast it’. Heaven forfend.

The SNP is well known for its ability to corral its politicians into formation – as endless dull little identical tweets from MPs and MSPs attest – which is one of the reasons Neil’s admission is so interesting. They do actually think for themselves! Just very quietly.

What a shame that these secret SNP Brexiteers didn’t feel they could discuss their vote in public. Say what you like about the other parties (and the SNP frequently do), but Labour and the Tories had plenty of voices on both sides and a healthy chunk of robust debate as a result.

But there is something else revealing about Neil’s admission and that is how far it strays from the narrative that Nicola Sturgeon has been trying to peddle us since June 24. If she were to be believed, every SNP supporter and their dog voted Remain. Now it turns out not even every member of her last cabinet voted for it. Oops.

The SNP has worked hard to paint Scotland as a devotedly Europhile nation and itself as a profoundly Europe-loving party. It’s simply not true. A healthy rump of SNP supporters, around 400,000, voted Leave, many of them as sceptical about Brussels as they are about Westminster. It’s an inconvenient fact Miss Sturgeon has tried to airbrush from the story.

Neil says he voted Leave partly because he was concerned by the rise of Right-wing parties in Europe, and the poor treatment of countries like Portugal and Greece. But he also points out many SNP supporters who voted Leave are now in danger of being severely alienated by a party that abhors the idea of being ruled from London but seems happy to be run by the EU.

All this is set against the backdrop of a Britain that has got itself into such a fankle over Brexit (already!) it feels like the country has turned into one giant Escher painting, running up a flight of stairs only to be confronted with another flight heading back down again.

In the wake of this week’s High Court ruling, Miss Sturgeon has signalled that she will demand the Scottish parliament be given a vote on whether or not Article 50 should be triggered. It’s a perilous move.

She is in danger of finding herself between a rock, a hard place and a significant number of party supporters who are deeply uncomfortable with her rigid stance on Brexit. I wonder how that’ll go down at the Christmas party.