To give Scotland a different EU status to any other
part of the UK would in effect be to give it independence. It might be the case that the UK would
continue to exist in some odd way still technically united, but for how long
could such an arrangement last? There may be examples of tiny parts of EU
member states having a separate status. You can find an anomaly to cover every
situation. But this is all beside the point. The SNP’s argument remains give us
a status that amounts to independence or we will ask for another independence
referendum. But what is in it for anyone who wants the UK to stay united?
Nothing whatsoever.
No matter what you give the SNP, they will still
want independence. So what has your concession bought? Nothing of substance,
only a little time perhaps. Meanwhile by making the bonds of the UK ever looser
you have simply made it easier for the SNP to achieve independence in the end.
A Scotland that remained part of the Single Market would in time become a
rather different place to those parts of the UK that were outside. Different
rules would apply in Edinburgh from those in Newcastle. Would it even be workable
without monitoring the flow of goods and people at the border? It isn’t even
worth looking at the complexities involved as the whole thing is obviously
unworkable and designed to be impossible. The SNP just like Austria-Hungary in
1914 have given an ultimatum that they know will be rejected.
We don’t know what sort of trade arrangement the UK
will have with the EU after Brexit. Whatever we want will depend on the
agreement of the EU. Donald Tusk has suggested that being part of the Single
Market requires being a part of the EU. This may be contradicted by the example
of Norway, but who is to say that the Norway option is even open to the UK. The
EU may not wish as large an economy as the UK to have such an arrangement. We
just don’t know.
It should be possible to trade freely with other
countries without being ruled by them. Free trade is in everyone’s interest. We
are asking for no more than we are willing to give, but the EU is determined to
punish us because we reject their rule. But the whole flaw of the EU, that is
becoming ever more apparent, is that it went beyond trade and attempted to join
hugely different European countries politically.
It should be possible for similar numbers of
Europeans and Brits to live and work in each other’s countries. Again we are
asking no more than we are willing to give. But the EU wants to punish us because
we think it is unreasonable to give every one of five hundred million EU
citizens the automatic right to live in the UK. Moreover, given that the EU has
no effective border control with the rest of the world, they want us in effect to give
unrestricted rights of migration to practically everyone who can get into
Europe. With regard to both trade and immigration the EU wants much more from
us than we want in return.
Owing to the fact that Britain wants relatively
little from the EU, it should be possible to come up with a deal that is in the
interests of everyone. But the EU is determined to make an example of Britain, otherwise everyone would want to leave. It is for this reason that it is folly
to tell the EU that we want this or that sort of deal, because they would
immediately attempt to exact a high price. The only way to get what is best for
the UK is to be willing to walk away entirely. If the EU knows that we are
perfectly happy not to buy German cars and Italian prosecco and that the City
of London would be perfectly happy not to provide the finance necessary for the
Euro to keep stumbling along, then it is just possible that we may be able to
find a compromise. In this way we might be able to keep trade more or less free
and allow relatively unrestricted movement of people between the UK and the EU.
The attempt to make Theresa May tell us in great detail how she will negotiate
simply undermines her ability to do so. It is as if Labour, the Lib Dems and
the SNP are determined that a general reveals his plans to the enemy. Hardly a
single battle in history would be won under those circumstances. But then these
parties have become so unpatriotic that they would prefer the UK to lose.
Gaining the best deal for Britain depends on
secrecy, but it also depends on the whole of the UK leaving. We cannot take
back control over UK immigration policy if a part of the UK allows unrestricted
immigration from the EU. We cannot bring back power to the UK Parliament if a
part of the UK still remains subject to EU control. For the UK to be able to
make trade deals with countries all around the world, it is necessary for the
whole of the UK to leave the Single Market.
How could the UK make a trade deal with the United States if it didn’t
apply to the whole of the UK? If goods were freely shipped from New York to
London, how would you apply tariffs if someone wanted to put them in a lorry
and drive them to Edinburgh? This is not an arrangement that is compatible with
Scotland being a part of the UK. It is an arrangement that amounts to
independence in all but name.
The SNP think that the Scottish electorate has the
right to undermine the choice of the UK electorate as a whole. It is vital that
we put a stop to this once and for all for it is becoming ever more clear that people throughout Britain are getting thoroughly sick of the SNP and with
it Scotland. If we are not careful, the ties of sentiment and family feeling in
the UK will be undermined by the SNP’s deliberate attempt to act in a way that
is intolerable to the majority.
As always the Scottish electorate must be treated
with care. We are delicate and we don’t like people saying “No”. This strikes
me as rather infantile, but fair enough we must do what we can not to inflame
Scottish public opinion. It wouldn’t do to give us another grievance we haven’t
got over the poll tax yet and the closing of Ravenscraig some of us haven’t got
over the execution of William Wallace and the rough wooing of Mary Queen of
Scots.
But it is vital for all our sanity over the next few
years that somehow SNP threats whether empty or not should be nullified.
The best thing to do with the SNP’s demand for a
special EU status is to look at it carefully, put it before committees, show it
around the crowned heads of Europe and promise to do our best to reconcile
Scottish wishes with EU and UK needs. Meanwhile, when we actually get down to
negotiations with the EU we may find that we have rather more important issues
to deal with than Scotland’s wish to be turned into Greenland.
The deal with the EU is going to be a UK deal. Let’s
hope that it is one that satisfies both the EU and the UK as much as possible.
But it will be the only deal available. Scotland can frankly take it or leave
it. Future trade with the EU will depend
on the deal that the UK makes with the EU. If Nicola Sturgeon doesn’t like it, she can try to do better by herself. But she would have to wait until and
unless Scotland actually became independent.
We have nothing to gain from making concessions to
Scottish nationalism and everything to lose. But let us do so quietly and
without fuss. Promise to look carefully at what they suggest and then quietly
find that no-one in the negotiations was much interested in the status of the
regions of the UK.
What are we to do about SNP threats? I think Theresa
May is doing very well here. The issue was settled in 2014. But in the end she
has to be willing to say “No”. It isn’t necessary to actually say “No”, but she
must tell the SNP they have to wait. There need be no definition of how long
they must wait.
No country can long endure with a continual threat
to its existence from within. Make no mistake, the United Kingdom would cease
to exist if Scotland became independent in just the same way that the United
States would have ceased to exist if the Confederacy had won the Civil War. You
could hardly have called it united. The UK would be supported
by the vast majority of members of the international community if Nicola
Sturgeon was quietly informed, unofficially of course, that there is no point
her making any more threats because they will never be listened to. She has
made enough mischief in the past few months. It is undermining the UK’s unity,
which is vital to our long term national interest. In the present circumstances at an important historical junction this is quite simply unacceptable. Nicola Sturgeon struggles to understand long words so a short one must be repeated until it is understood. We told her it in 2014, but it hasn't yet penetrated. I'll spell it out for you Nicola. It begins with an "N" and it ends with an "O".
The SNP cannot complain about our being undemocratic,
for that would be to suppose that the foundation of Western democracy “the GettysburgAddress” is undemocratic and that there is hardly a democracy in the Western
world. There is scarcely a nation state in the world that would allow itself to
be dismembered from within. It is precisely the fight against secession that means “government
of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
The task for the UK Government must always be to do
what the SNP least wants. We must hinder them and do that which makes their
goal of achieving independence as hard as possible. The SNP wants the UK to
stay in the Single Market because that makes Scottish independence possible
without damaging trade between Scotland and England. It also guarantees an open border and a lack
of customs controls. Leaving the EU’s Single Market means the SNP would have to
take Scotland out of the United Kingdom’s Single Market, while at the same time
at least initially being outside of the EU’s Single Market.
The UK Government should explain carefully to Nicola
Sturgeon, that she will never gain independence with the permission of the UK
Government and that the UK Government would do all in its power to hinder such
a goal diplomatically. All of our allies would then be against the SNP and most
of the rest of the world too. Of course
this message can be conveyed with nuance and with subtlety and without quite
saying it. But it amounts to saying the issue has already been decided and your
threats are as nothing. We will not allow another referendum. You agreed that
the last one was decisive and when something is decisive it decides the issue. That's what the word "decisive" means. We do not have to play the SNP’s game. It is
time to tell them that the game is over.