For sake of the Union we must leave the EU on Friday

The Scottish Secretary’s proposal is playing into the SNP’S hands – but he’s too blind to see it, warns Brian Monteith

Has Brexit been the threat to Scotland’s place in the Union that was claimed by so many of those arguing against leaving the EU? And does Brexit now pose a threat as we approach yet another deadline for exit or see the deadline extended into the far distance?

I ask these questions because rather like we understand appealing to patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel in political debate, so it always seems to be that, when our politicians are faced with a crucial decision, the threat of Brexit to the Union is rolled out in expectation of some Pavlovian response that will ensure no dissent is possible. Fortunately there are enough MPS who have minds of their own, who challenge baseless assertions and can conclude if they have any merit.

The Scottish Secretary, David Mundell, has yet again warned that leaving the EU on Friday without a deal will strengthen the hand of Nationalists. Well, he would, wouldn’t he? Along with David Cameron, Ruth Davidson and John Major, Mundell claimed during the 2016 referendum that the UK leaving the EU could be a threat to Scotland remaining in the UK, on the grounds that, were Scotland to vote differently from the rest of the UK, the clamour for Scottish independence could become much strengthened, even irresistible.

There is no doubt the SNP has tried to make Mundell’s prophecy come true by turning the difference between attitudes of voters in Scotland and those in England (and Wales) to its advantage. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has incessantly stamped her feet with indignation, jetted around European capitals and never stopped grievance-mongering on TV sofas or at marches and rallies that provided a platform.

Yet for all the First Minister’s mind-numbing histrionics (or maybe because of this approach), the polling over the last two years has moved gradually – and indisputably – against the Nationalists.

This was illustrated only the other week when a poll commissioned by a Nationalist think-tank found that support for independence had slipped below the totemic 40 per cent for the first time in five years to 38 per cent – while support for remaining in the UK had risen to more than 62 per cent. These figures of confidence in the UK are all the more encouraging because they have come after the British government has made such a disastrous job of negotiating an orderly departure from the EU – for which Mundell takes his own share of the blame.

The reality is that, rather than Brexit threaten the Union, as Mundell was encouraging us to believe, voters are able to make rational decisions and vote for different parties or propositions in different elections and referendums after weighing up what is in their interest. There are Europhile and Eurosceptic Nationalists just as there are Europhile and Eurosceptic Unionists and such voters have repudiated those politicians such as Sturgeon and Mundell who play on their Nationalist or Unionist sympathies and have taken their votes for granted.

Sturgeon does not have the right to now claim the support of Scots Unionists who voted to remain in the EU for Scottish independence. Indeed, some voters get very annoyed when she uses their vote to “remain” in the EU to justify her cause – not least because, had her Yes campaign won in 2014, Scotland would already be out of the EU and more than 140,000 EU citizens