In our corner

First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon on Andrew Marr’s Sunday politics show yesterday once again demonstrated how lucky the people of Scotland (even those who believe British nationalist hype) are to have her in their corner.

It is refreshing to hear a leader of a political party being clear, straightforward and unambiguous in her comments on the subject of Brexit.

We are in a period where the Prime Minister of the UK, with the time clock running dangerously down, still talks in repetitive robotic banalities about the coming divorce from Europe, scripted nonsense which suggest she’s not so much playing her cards close to her chest but hoping that the one single card stuck to her forehead facing outwards towards France, the details of which she has no clue, will somehow see her, her party of millionaires and squiliionaires and ‘The Country’ through to a marvellously successful inverted future full of polo, street parties, bunting, ruddy-cheeked humble plucky common folk knowing their place, rickets and even larger consignments of tax-avoiding cash being hidden away by our betters in the Bahamas.

Her opposite number, the enigmatic Mr Corbyn, a man so ineffectual that he is unable to take advantage of the worst government in power since Nero broke a string on his lute, seems determined to run full speed ahead, you might even say in a ‘turbo-charged’ manner, off Beachy Head hand-in- hand with her. I have friends who reckon Jeremy has an aura about him, that he’s a leader of a movement, a bowel movement perhaps, for he has no spirit for a fight in him. The vast number of those who vote for his party support remaining in the EU single market and the Customs Union yet he refuses to countenance putting up an argument against Brexit, spurning all pleas to join in an alliance with others, like the SNP, to help bring this madness to an end.

I was glad to hear during Marr’s interview, (whose usual interruptions to those he asks questions were handled very well by the First Minister, his gas being firmly put at a peep) that at least one government in the UK has taken research into the consequences of leaving the world’s largest free trading bloc seriously, the Scottish Government publishing today a document called ‘Scotland’s Place in Europe: People, Jobs and Investment’ which analyses the impact of the various Brexit possibilities on Scotland’s economy.

Following the Carry On movie style machinations of the Westminster government department tasked with leading the UK out of the EU, with David Davis playing a kind of Kenneth Williams role, but with more sweat, finally admitting that the comprehensive sector-by -sector analysis and impact reports his department has been preparing aren’t very comprehensive at all, because they don’t exist, it will be interesting to see what the economists working for the Holyrood government come up with. Early headlines indicate that a ‘Hard’ Brexit, no deal, reverting to WTO trading rules, could hit Scotlands economy by £12.7 billion per year, £2300 for every person living in Scotland.

Mind you if this document is treated the same way as the last Scottish Government report on Brexit, a report about Scottish specific factors, and, in terms of the whole of the UK, outlining ways to ameliorate the negative outcomes of xenophobia, which was published last year when copies were used to rebalance some wobbly desk legs in Whitehall and as a cost saver in the various ablutionary closets of the Palace of Westminster (probably as close to Theresa May reading it as it was likely to get) we’d better not hold our breath about anything changing.

Marr pushed the First Minister on her views and timing on a second referendum to determine if Scotland should return to being an independent state.

Again on this she is clear. Once the cloak and dagger jiggery-pokery of London’s attempts to try and con or threaten the EU into somehow giving them a preferential exit and future trading deal is over, once the stark, grim future that is coming starts to emerge from the bureaucratic fog that has been placed in the way of clarity, then she will consider what is best to protect the interests of the people of Scotland. Then, I suspect, we will see the question of sovereignty for Scotland’s people dealt with and answered unequivocally.

Always bear in mind readers that all of this noise you hear about “getting the best deal for Britain” is bluff and nonsense, typical British state arrogance. The EU as an organisation are unable to give the UK, as a departing member, any sort of preferential deal or treatment. How could they? Any deal for the UK undermines the very purpose of 27 other nations gaining benefits from being members of the trading bloc. It is simply not going to happen.

I repeat, whether you agree or not, the people of Scotland are lucky to have Nicola Sturgeon fighting for them. She is eminently capable. The right leader for the right time.

Scotland will once again be an independent country, and she will have contributed greatly to that outcome.