Democracy is great until you let the voters get involved...
STRUGGLING to cope with the strain of Brexit? Losing sleep over the Irish backstop? Find yourself weeping uncontrollably every time you pass the Continental foods aisle in Sainsbury’s?
Help is at hand, at least if you’re an MSP. There is now a therapy session every Thursday at noon. Held in the time slot nominally reserved for First Minister’s Questions, the Brexit Sufferers Support Group allows MSPs to vent their existential anguish.
This week, Willie Rennie was clucking like Chicken Little that Brexit would cause all manner of disruptions, including to transport. Has he ever travelled ScotRail? The Glasgow to Edinburgh line has been rehearsing for a No Deal Brexit for years.
With more than a hint of desperation, Jenny Gilruth was hawking a petition on the UK Parliament website to stop Brexit, which she said had hit one million signatures. ‘Support is growing so fast that the website crashed harder than the Prime Minister’s credibility,’ Gilruth quipped. The SNP press office knows how to write a backbench question but they really need to work on their jokes.
The petition won’t actually stop Brexit but people are still signing it to make themselves feel virtuous, which is the only reason anyone signs petitions nowadays. (Oh, for simpler times when the public used the petitions website to demand the release of falsely imprisoned soap opera characters and the death penalty for cyclists who fail to indicate.)
Patrick Harvie, a man who seems sincerely affronted by the existence of other points of view, was whirring away like an angry little windmill.
He harrumphed: ‘The Prime Minister has again refused to listen to reason and instead effectively told the public that Parliament is their enemy. Scotland needs the freedom to take a different direction, leave behind this chaos and find our own way out of the crisis. That is why we need our independence.’
Harvie prodded the First Minister for a timetable on a second referendum on separation (from Westminster, not Brussels). The last time he asked, she promised to address the matter in a few weeks. That, he added, was two months ago.
Sturgeon ventured: ‘It is reasonable for me to wait to see what clarity emerges in the next few days, even if I suspect that it will just be clarity that there will be no clarity. I will then set out my views on the path forward.’
There are verses of Jabberwocky easier to decipher than that. Weeks mean months, so days must mean weeks. No wonder she doesn’t know how long a generation lasts.
‘Even the most ardent Unionist must see that the way we are now governed by Westminster is broken,’ Sturgeon continued gamely, concluding: ‘There is no doubt in my mind that letting people in Scotland choose an independent future is the best way to do that’.
PULLING out of a 40-yearold union has turned into a national humiliation, she seemed to be saying. Now, let’s see what happens when you pull out of a 300-year-old one. Even a child learns not to keep sticking their fingers in a plug socket eventually.
Etched across the chamber were glum and sullen faces. Brexit has taken its toll on all of us but it has been especially grievous for politicians. They are used to running the country with minimal interference from the public. Democracy is a great system until you let the voters get involved.
Praise be for no-nonsense Tory matron Liz Smith, who expresses her displeasure by pursing her lips and tutting with her eyes. She clearly had no time for all these Brexit melodramatics.