I have already noted this morning that at sometime in the future there will be a new post-Brexit order, in which order will be restored.
Two constituent countries of the UK indicated their desire to achieve that goal yesterday. As The National reported:
IN an unprecedented moment in the UK's political history, politicians in the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly joined forces to reject Theresa May's Brexit Bill.
The MSPs and AMs (Assembly Members), almost simultaneously, voted on the same motion calling for a no-deal Brexit to be ruled out, and to extend Article 50, so that "agreement can be reached on the best way forward to protect the interests of Scotland, Wales and the UK as a whole".
There is political sanity in parts of the UK.
But not in England it seems.
It makes it easy to predict where recovery will happen first.
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Anyone who would like to see what a more informed and intelligent debate on the current insane UK position is like will find the Holyrood TV record of yesterday’s debate a refreshing change. Find it at https://www.scottishparliament.tv/meeting/debate-eu-withdrawal-negotiations-march-5-2019
England and Wales voted by a narrow majority to separate themselves from their fellow Europeans. The Scots and Northern Irish voted to remain with Europe. I voted to continue to be European. I am quarter Italian, quarter French, quarter English, quarter Scots. My wife is by descent, pure Irish. I weas born in the middle of WW2, and lost a grandfather in WW1. Our family’s connections with the French and Italian relatives were severely straine by the second war and its aftermath. My father, returning from service in the RAF in 1945, vever regarded the peoples of the axis powers as enemies. From my parents, I have inherited a belief in the unity of peoples, the brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity, and a strong sense of European identity. I believe in the unity of Europe. When I see the image of Kohl and Mitterand, a socialist former meber of the Resistance, and a conservative former meber of the Wehrmacht, holding hands before the two coffins of French and German soldiers slain at Verdun, I come near to tears. I voted remain, not because of belief in the need for an integrated European economy, but because I feel peoples should come together, not separate. The European Union was to me the expression of the determination of Euroean peoples to live in unity, not the ancient divisions of the past. I look forward to the unity of Ireland, north and south, united within a united Europe. I abhorred the nationalist ambition to partition Britain, and to divide this island politically just as Ireland is unfortunately divided politically. That is why I (a quarter Scottish) regretted the SNP’s drive to separatism and partition, so called “independence”. People should be coming together, not dividing. It makes as much sense to have a border across the north of this island as it does to have a border across the north of Ireland, or the north of Cyprus for that matter.
I’m afraid, Mike, that your closing swipe at the SNP and the peoples of Scotland, who so massively and continuously support them, makes absolutely no sense in the light of your earlier comments, sentiments with which I wholly agree. The only “separatists” in the so-called ‘U’ K are the mass of voters in England – outside their own capital – who have a compulsion to separate themselves from their European neighbours and who fantasise along the lines of English (thinly disguised as ‘British’) exceptionalism about their uniquely privileged place in the world.
We in the SNP – very much in the tradition established by Winnie Ewing in the 1960s – and overwhelmingly throughout the YES movement, are supporters of our nation’s self-determination and independence for a long list of reasons – and prominent among them is a deep committment to our EU mebership and a desire to remain, where our culture has always belonged, in the heart of Europe. The scale of pro-EU sentiment in Scotland, a 24% majority at the time of the EU referendum, has now risen to a 40% majority. Our European citizenship is being threatened by the isolationists and separatists of Brexitanian South Britain and we wish to have nothing to do with their destructive, anti-internationalist outlook. In every speech I made during the 2014 Scottish referendum, my final major reason for voting YES was always that of Scotland’s identification with the peaceful internationalism of the European project. Scotland’s coming independence will be a boost for the values you and I share.
“It makes as much sense to have a border across the north of this island …” It really depends on which side of the border that you are on.
I made no “swipe” at the peoples of Scotland, Nigel. I merely deplore the present populist urge to strengthen, create, or control borders between peoples. I look with disgust at the current President of the USA assuring his followers that he will make America great again by building a wall to keep the Hispanics and Latinos out. I regret and reject the decision made by 52% of the electorate of this country to separate itself from Europe and to “control its borders”. I rejoiced in the removal of effective borders across the island of Ireland as a result of the Good Friday Agreement, and I deplore the policies of the group of narrow minded nationalists – Rees Mogg, Johnson, Farage,et al that would re-establish that border. I have seen the border of barbed wire and military posts on the island of Cyprus. The Berlin Wall has thankfully come down. I have seen the wall around Eretz Israel, sadly symbolic of the hatreds and divisions between the Jewish and Palestinian peoples other Arabic. Politicsal nationalism is the curse of humankind. Most wars in modern times have their ultimate origins in nationalism and the rivalries between peoples. So I cannot see that there is any virtue in having yet another dividing line separating peoples in this island. It is quite simply illogical, irrational, to believe in the unity of the island of Ireland, yet to urge the division of the island of Britain. It should be possible to take pride in one’s national identity, to be Scottish, Gaelic/Catholic Irish and Ulster Scots Irish, English, Italian, Jewish, Greek or Turkish Cypriot, without the aspiration to insist on the separate political and economic isolation. I am all for Scottish identity, being myself of part Scottish ancestry, and I fully and wholehaertedly support Scottish desire to remain in the Europe where England and Wales should remain; I recognise that the UK vote to leave the EU puts Scotland in the position of having to contemplate the establishment of a border across our island, replicating the border across Ireland. But I cannot but deplore any move to create such a border. Hadriabn’s wall (yes I know it is wholly in England ) is a ruin. Let it remain so and let there be no new such wall.
I don’t think Mike made a ‘swipe’ at all – he is just recounting what the EU means to him and underlying a valid point: that peoples seem to be divided at the moment and pushing away from each other.
Even if that pushing away is because of the revulsion or rejection of something they do not like, it is not an ideal situation when the hard lessons we have learnt point to co-operation and co-habitation.
It also reinforces what has gone wrong as well with our politics – because it is bad politics that leads to things like BREXIT and conflict of any kind.
Agreed
@Mike Ghirelli
A heartfelt plea for European cooperation and …unity…?? Well, unity comes in gradations. I agree entirely with what you say, you express the sort of sentiments I think Ted Heath would endorse and was very much in his thinking when he took the UK into the Common Market all those years ago.
Then you stretch you case to say Scotland should not have self-determination.
European unity works as a loose ‘federation’ of separate sovereign nation states. Looser in some aspects than others, but so it goes, some effective sovereignty is shared. (Brexit fanatics say given-away; I say shared)
You will apparently happily see Scotland and England wedded in an abusive relationship, but no suggestion of merging say France and Germany? Spain and Portugal, Italy and Germany ?? Or indeed why not take down all the national borders altogether. You aren’t suggesting that are you ? ………and with good reason. In the case of Spain for heaven’s sakes, the Catalans want more autonomy, not to be part of a superstate. But they are not seeking to take themselves out of the EU.
But Scotland should, in your estimation, remain an English colony? Why ? I don’t think it follows at all. The current relationship between Scotland and England is so unbalanced that the sooner there is separation the sooner festering ill-will can be buried.
I don’t want to clog up Richard’s admirable site, so I will not keep a dialogue going, Mike. However, as a final comment, I cannot let your claim that the movement for Scotland’s independence means that we “insist on… separate political and economic isolation.” Our purpose is the exact opposite. There are, of course, a whole raft of political and economic reasons why our being governed from Westminster has proved an ongoing and unjust disaster – but that is a conversation to be held elsewhere.
Is there really any comparison between the 20th century division of Cyprus and Ireland (which involved the creation of ethnic/sectarian enclaves) and the re-emergence of the nation of Scotland?
If you believe that Scots should be able to express their own cultural identity, doesn’t that encompass their expressing their political and economic identity too?
You may say it is not desirable to create new borders, but consider the alternative. Isn’t the alternative that Scotland must submit to English priorities? As it apparently must do with Brexit?
It may be that there could in theory be a United Kingdom constitution in which this was not necessary. But would that not be a United Kingdom in which all parties recognised that a major change in constitution and policy could not happen without the consent of all constituent parts?
It does seem a shame that in so many instances the word “border” is made to be synonymous with “barrier”.
Look carefully at the statements of Scots and their institutions seeking the dissolution of the present union of parliaments and you will find that they don’t fall into this error.
Yes, this unity between the First Ministers was good to see. There is sanity in both the Senedd and the Scottish Parliament when it comes to Brexit, up to a point.
Both Heads of Nations understand the economic and social harm Brexit will cause, but they have different motivations and allegiances.
Sturgeon’s aim is independence, her allegiance is to Scotland, whereas Drakeford is flying the flag of international socialism in a united Britain. Drakeford is a convinced Remainer, yet a Corbyn supporter, and has no appetite for independence, he will faithfully follow whatever the party line is and will not rock the boat. So it all depends on what English Labour instructions are. Don’t look to Welsh Labour for any kind of dissent re. Brexit or anything else.
Well said
Drakeford has to be careful and take note of what happened to Labour in Scotland, where the poor performance of Scottish Labour when in it was in office was a major factor in SNP’s rise. A succession of inept leaders coupled with a lack of will to make much-needed radical changes resulted in a rapid and ongoing drift away from Labour. A classic example was that one of the first things SNP did was to udpate and implement (on-time and inside budget) motorway upgrades which had been planned in the late 1950s/early 60s, thereby eliminating massive daily traffic jams. Labour in Wales needs to demonstrate that it governs competently and put Welsh interests first or it could go the same way.