SNP DON’T WANT COMPROMISE. THEY JUST WANT MORE GRIEVANCE
FROM the very start, Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP has only ever had one priority when it comes to Brexit – how it can be used to best promote the case for yet another referendum on independence.
Infamously, the votes hadn’t even been counted on June 24, 2016, the morning after the Brexit vote, before the First Minister was declaring her plans to hold a second vote on breaking up Britain.
Her calculation was that, with the majority of people in Scotland having voted to Remain, they would then swing behind independence.
It was a massive miscalculation. And when the general election was held the following year, the SNP was punished for that attempt, losing a third of its seats.
Miss Sturgeon then declared she would ‘reset’ her plans. In reality, the only change has been to go about the SNP’s relentless push for its sole priority in a slightly more subtle manner.
The aim – to use Brexit to try to add to the division within the UK, and tease Scotland away – has been the same.
Take the past few weeks. It has been clear that the SNP’s only real goal is to try to nurture grievance.
Every day, the party’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, gets up in the House of Commons to declare that ‘Scotland has been ignored’ during the Brexit process.
But the priority for the Nationalists has not been to be part of the solution – quite the reverse. Their priority is to ensure the SNP is explicitly not part of the solution; all the better to claim that Scotland has been cast adrift.
This explains the way the SNP has slalomed its way around the various solutions that have been proposed to sort out Britain’s Brexit conundrum over the past couple of weeks.
Remember that, over the past two years, the SNP has spent much of the time backing a soft Brexit. Yet last week, when such options were put forward in the Commons, Nationalist MPs did not support them – they abstained.
THEY did so again on Monday, with regard to Ken Clarke’s plan for a customs union. Then, yesterday, the Nationalists declared they wouldn’t back any of the soft Brexit options being discussed without it first being put to a second EU vote.
Suddenly, when push came to shove, the SNP ran a mile from proposals it had spent months supporting.
It is hard to escape the conclusion that the SNP was happy to back a soft Brexit when it helped its political case, but then disowned a soft Brexit the moment it appeared likely to actually happen.
For the SNP, it would be a disaster to end up with a UK-wide solution the party
could live with. It would be mortifying to help make it happen. How can you nurture grudge and grievance out of that? Consequently, a different position must be found – and the SNP has adopted it.
This political game-playing is entirely self-serving and explains why the Prime Minister was right yesterday to point out that there is little point in talking to the SNP about a potential compromise deal.
Unlike many people in the Labour party, the SNP does not want to deliver Brexit in an orderly manner – it wants to stop Brexit happening altogether.
The Nationalists simply do not accept the decision of the British people to leave the EU. They hope the chaos and confusion caused by Brexit can be leveraged into boosting support for independence. How can you deal with such a party?
ON the SNP’s own measure, its Brexit plan is utterly failing. Polls in recent days have shown that, if anything, opposition to independence is hardening in Scotland. Quite understandably, it may be that people look at the confusion over Brexit and are thinking twice about the far greater dislocation that independence would trigger.
Miss Sturgeon has quite simply misread the national mood. People don’t want to be dragged back to yet more constitutional turmoil. They don’t want yet more political game-playing with Brexit.
Most of us – Leave or Remain – just want pragmatic politicians to find a way through this current impasse, so that we can leave the European Union in good order and so that the country can get back to the real issues that matter to us – decent hospitals, high-quality schools and a growing economy.
In the coming weeks, the First Minister has said she will update the country on whether she still wants to press ahead with plans for a second referendum on independence.
In all likelihood, the games will continue. Miss Sturgeon will demand the powers to hold a vote on separation. The UK Government will say no. And the tedious game of grudge and grievance will go on.
The First Minister could do us all – and herself – a favour by finally showing that she has learnt from the past three years.
Scotland doesn’t want yet more constitutional division. Scotland doesn’t want yet another referendum on independence. It’s time Miss Sturgeon stopped the games and allowed us all to move on.