MAY MUST SAY NO
NO. What Scotland said to the SNP when it demanded that we leave the United Kingdom in 2014. No. What Theresa May should say when Nicola Sturgeon demands to pose the question again.
It is time this non-stick, Velcro Scottish Government was taken on.
Non-stick in the sense that it denies any culpability for its failings in key public services that define Scottishness, such as education. Criticism of its incompetence can no longer be dismissed as ‘talking Scotland down’.
Velcro in the sense that it sticks to any perceived, manufactured, grievance to hide how it is letting Scotland down. The Saltire is our flag – not our blindfold.
The Prime Minister should instead pose her own question to the First Minister: why now?
Scotland has not yet been dragged ‘kicking and screaming’ out of the European Union. Indeed no one knows what Brexit will look like if it happens at all. It might just end up in a deal Scots would like.
The chances of it taking only two years have been all but ruled out; even hardline Brexiteers concede there will probably have to be a transitional period lasting years after initial negotiations conclude.
And that is before you consider the views of the likes of Sir Ivan Rogers, formerly our man in Brussels, who has warned Brexit may take a decade. So why now, Miss Sturgeon? Her 60 page wish list for Scotland remaining in the EU single market is a booby-trapped fraud. It is peppered with the impossible to season grievance.
Its denial is not a sign of a ‘brick wall of Tory intransigence’ but a recognition of the frontier of European law.
Scotland is not a member of the EU – the UK is. A separate deal is not possible, denied by Brussels not Westminster.
The idea that her hand is being forced towards a referendum by the Prime Minister’s ‘intransigence’ is insulting. Miss Sturgeon has psychological intransigence on independence that would make Jesuits flinch and the handlers of the Manchurian candidate recoil.
And what if the First Minister’s deepest wishes were granted?
If the Brexit process has told us anything it is that breaking up unions takes time. And it’s likely to be very messy.
On June 24 last year, Nigel Farage may have triumphantly said ‘we’ve got our country back’, but in truth nothing has changed. It won’t for years, and getting an agreement is going to take years of painful, turgid uncertainty.
In the midst of that, a newly independent Scotland would then start the process of leaving the United Kingdom – an even more complex process than the UK leaving the EU.
Indeed with Brexit talks ongoing, Scotland would not know what sort of UK it was leaving or have much of a clue what would happen next.
Scotland would be halfway out of a UK that would be halfway out of the EU.
There would be no chance of Nicola Sturgeon being able to start negotiations to rejoin the EU. Scotland would not be a separate nation state so it would not be eligible. It would not be for years.
So what would the point be of an independence referendum now? Certainly not to fulfil its pretext of joining the EU.
With Brexit talks in full swing how could there be any clarity at all about either option – leaving the UK or remaining? That, of course, is not the question Miss Sturgeon wishes to pose. The proposition she really wants to put to Scots is: ‘Are you a man or a mouse?’
We voted one way, England and Wales voted another and they got their way. Are we prepared to put up with that? Is it not time to say, ‘it’s my ball’ and stomp off home?
Hers is not ‘Scotland the Brave’ but ‘Scotland the offended’.
Since 2014, the lingeriedeprived economic case for separation has lost even its synthetic fur coat. The secret oil fields have been misplaced. Miss Sturgeon is still unable even to talk about the deficit. There is no answer to what currency the country would have, although she has asked a former Royal Bank of Scotland banker to come up with a solution. Promising.
As the logical case for independence sinks, the grievance index rises in inverse proportion. This isn’t about crying freedom, it’s about greetin’ ‘it’s no fair’.
No Declaration of Arbroath this time, just declare a state of national tantrum.
Despite her patriotic words, Miss Sturgeon’s arguments suggest that at heart she has a pretty dismal view of her fellow Scots. We are thrawn – nursing our wrath to keep it warm. We can be easily slighted and quick to anger. We have noses that we are happy to part company with to spite our faces.
The SNP seems to see Scots through the kind of stereotypical goggles that could have been designed by a 1960s sitcom writer who had never seen the outside of Billericay.
Scotland is tiring of being the bear asked to dance at the poke of a Nationalist stick.
The arrogance is not of Prime Ministers who come here to put a case, but in Nationalists such as Alex Salmond who order Scots to put their fingers in their ears when they do.
And we won’t swallow everything the Nats tell us to feed the prejudice they rely on.
Remember 2014 when Miss Sturgeon told us that a No vote would result in the NHS being privatised? Or even this week’s ludicrous claim that Westminster was trying to undermine devolution by taking powers away from Holyrood.
That whopper told us more than just how gullible she