English elites will use Scotland to kill Brexit

By Pete North - July 5, 2020

I’ve said it plenty of times before but if we wanted to maintain the Union we should never have given Scotland a parliament. Scotland does have what it takes to make it as an independent country in or out of the EU, and the moment it established its own polity and corresponding demos, Scottish independence was only a matter of time.

Some think that time is now approaching. It might be. Support for Scottish independence is running high at a time when the Tories show virtually no interest in Scotland and largely holds it in contempt in respect of its view on Brexit. The Tories want a no deal Brexit more than they want to keep Scotland in the Union.

As this heats up we are likely to see a pastiche of the Brexit referendum with all the same arguments trotted out where this time the Tories become the remain campaign – and will deploy all the classic fearmongering.

The thing about that, however, is whether or not it’s true, it doesn’t work. Scottish independence is as much a ploy to rejoin the EU, so if we take that as a consequence then there almost certainly will be a border between what’s left of the UK and Scotland. This doesn’t dissuade the hardcore SNP who are already calling for border restrictions in light of Covid.

How that would work is unclear but since the UK will essentially be forced to recognise most European regulations in the UK territory Scotland’s exports with the UK won’t face much in the way of friction. The issue is getting goods into what will be EU territory. Scotland will have to uphold the EU frontier. Again, there is no real reason why a Scottish nationalist would have a problem with this.

Thinking this through to its logical conclusion, the rump UK then becomes a de facto regulatory colony of the EU as it inevitably signs up to a quasi-single market agreement for normalisation of trade with Scotland. I don’t think the Tories have really thought it through. Taking the EEA Efta option when they could might well have taken the wind out of the Scottish sails since that was Sturgeon’s preferred option, but now she has a pretext for independence that could see the Scottish tail wagging the English dog.

English remainers who have never forgiven the Tories for Brexit will of course join in the Scottish independence campaign, hoping that is so weakens the UK that rejoining is all but an inevitability, or at the very least scorch the earth so that Brexit is little more than a pyrrhic victory for the eurosceptics.

The mistake on the part of the Brexiteers was to assume the progressive left would accept defeat at any point. They may have lost the referendum but they still control the institutions and dominate the television and radio narratives. They have the power and they intend to use it. They would like nothing more than to humble the English and their wet dream is to see the UK broken up and subsumed into the EU permanently. If they can’t have that then they’ll just work toward the break up of the UK and do it piecemeal.

The sad part of it is that Boris Johnson may well have made than an inevitability by effectively handing Northern Ireland to the EU. There is now to be a customs border down the Irish sea so he’s given the remainers a head start. Not for nothing are they desperate not to have a conversation about a Scottish referendum.

With the Tories having made a complete pig’s ear of Covid and with job cuts set to accelerate, and with no deal being the most likely outcome, there is fertile ground there for the SNP to exploit and if they do pull a stunt like taking their MPs out of Westminster, they could set certain wheels in motion.

I happen to think that they’ll overplay their hand and it will backfire on them, not least since the hardcore SNP have a nasty habit of reminding everyone just how ghastly they are. The SNP can pretend to be an outwardly progressive internationalist party but the anglophobia and tribalism tells its own story. If there were a referendum, I think Scotland would vote against independence but only by a tiny margin. Certainly not a big enough margin to put the issue to bed.

But then I can’t say that I have an accurate read on the politics. A party as ghastly, corrupt and incompetent as the SNP should be facing widespread opposition, but then this game is all about alternatives and the SNP is in power roughly for the same reason the Tories are in power in England. The alternatives are worse. They could swing it.

It could be that Brexit is only a temporary disruption to the plans of progressive globalists. They’re not going to let a little thing like a democratic vote get in the way and if Scottish nationalism proves to be a useful vessel for their vendetta then they won’t hesitate to climb into bed with it no matter how vile it gets. After all, the only people who hate the English more than Scottish nationalists are liberal middle class English people. The Scots would be doing them a big favour. Not for the first time have English elites looked to the north to suppress an English insurgency.

One thing’s for sure, the Tories can’t wait this out. It won’t go away by simply ignoring it. With British democracy being as dysfunctional as it is and with a population politically at war with itself, the Scottish Nationalists can keep chipping away at the foundations. For as long as the UK is effectively a one party Tory state with no viable opposition, the case for Scottish disengagement grows stronger.

It’s true we certainly opened a Pandora’s box when we voted to leave the EU and losing Scotland was always a risk, but we’re now reaching a point where the English simply don’t care. Why should the English be held hostage by the chippy upstarts in the north?

But sadly, without anything approaching a whole Union Brexit strategy the English will simply be squashed by their own elites rendering the whole exercise a dead loss. again the English will have their noses rubbed in it that their voice doesn’t matter. Something which seems to be the prevalent message from the cultural establishment.

The progressives will make their move eventually, and they’ll probably win. The right is losing the culture war. We’re not outnumbered but we are overpowered and the party notionally on our side is next to useless. It’s the old adage at work. If voting could change anything they wouldn’t let us do it.