New Year, new beginnings?
So, Brexit was all about ‘taking back control’ was it?
Bollocks! It was an object lesson in how lies, sophistry and populism can be used to create a sense of grievance in the populace and to accentuate and make respectable the ‘little Englander’ xenophobia of the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Telegraph, the Times and many of their readers.
Personally, I think a lot of chickens will come home to roost as a result. Indeed, given the emphasis placed by Brexiteers on ‘sovereignty’, I find it difficult to see how the UK government can rationally object to the current Scottish government’s desire also ‘to take back control’ and to assert its own sovereignty (and, ultimately, to rejoin the European project in whatever guise suits, either through membership of the EEA or the EU itself).
I say that as an internationalist, not a nationalist, and as someone who values ‘coming together’ rather than ‘breaking apart’.
As an internationalist, I don’t see that there is any contradiction between maintaining a country’s sovereignty and its ‘independence’ as a part of the European project. That ‘contradiction’ only exists in the minds of sophistrists and xenophobes that confuse sovereignty with interdependence.
So, my prediction for 2021 is that the Scottish government elections will herald a stronger mandate for the SNP (despite its factional in-fighting, and its own facility to create grievances to suit its political ends) and that the UK government will face substantially increased pressure to legislate for a 2nd independence referendum.
It certainly looks as if the country is on a trajectory for independence whether it be in 2 years, 10 years or 20. For my own part I’d have preferred to remain a part of the UK within the EU, but if the only option to becoming a European citizen again is through an independent Scotland, then perhaps ‘needs must’.
Here’s the limerick…
I think there will now come a day
(And it might not be that far away)
When all due to Brexit
The Scots finally exit
The Union and it’s ‘Goodbye UK’!
