Hansard

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to a debate that, like others, I wish we did not have to have. I thank the First Minister for providing an advance copy of her statement. I agree with the substance of it and I appreciate the tone in which it was made.

I thank my colleagues in the Scottish Green Party who went out and campaigned. Like all of our party activists and campaigners, they were tired because they had put their energy, time and money into our national election campaign just weeks previously, but they went out and campaigned and, along with colleagues across the political spectrum, they secured a strong democratic mandate from the people of Scotland. We are European and we are staying European.

I endorse the First Minister’s comments about immigration. She talked about respect for migrants who have come here from the EU and other parts of the world. They have chosen to be part of our society but they are feeling excluded and divided from our society, as Anni Pues, a German citizen who spoke in a rally outside Parliament just an hour ago, made clear. The feelings of isolation that many people have been forced to endure in recent weeks and months are unacceptable.

There is legitimate anger at the years of political and media pandering to racism and xenophobia in this country. Those in politics and the media who have taken part in that bear a heavy responsibility for the scenes that we have now seen. The far-right and racist tendencies that have been cultivated during the campaign and given disturbing expression since the result must be opposed.

Kez Dugdale made a sound point that the failure of the political mainstream to build an economy that works for the common good has left huge numbers of people feeling angry and alienated. Those feelings are justified, but the Brexit debate has channelled them into the politics of division and hatred at home, and it risks giving momentum to far-right and anti-European movements elsewhere across Europe. The leave campaigns—both of them—were of course guilty of far more explicitly cultivating that reaction, but in my view even the remain side failed significantly to give robust challenge to the notion that people’s right to free movement is somehow a burden. In truth, it is a principle of huge importance and one that the Greens will continue to defend.

We will certainly support the Government’s motion at decision time and we will continue to advocate for the clear mandate that has been given by the people of Scotland, as have many of our European colleagues in a number of political parties. I thank those in the European Greens who today have helped to soften the language around an immediate triggering of article 50, which would give no time for the serious consideration that is necessary or for the contribution to the negotiation process that the Scottish Government is expected to make on behalf of us all. That process must be allowed time and all options for achieving it must remain on the table. We are clearly facing a unique situation. Our path towards EU membership, if it happens, will be unique compared with any other path to EU membership that a country has taken. It may be that, after exploring all options, far more people than voted yes in 2014 will conclude that independence is the only way to achieve EU membership.

We must also contrast the clear assertion of Scotland’s mandate with the utter chaos that we see in the leave camp and the fundamental dishonesty in its campaign. How many times were we told that its campaign was about taking back control? Take back control of borders. Take back control of money, however spurious the figures. Now it is claiming that we can stay in the single market, but there is no such thing as a single market if we do not have free movement of labour; that is a fundamental aspect of the single market. It is also abundantly clear that access to that single market will include a financial contribution, if it can even be negotiated. We need to challenge the fundamental dishonesty of the claim that we can have the best of both worlds, take only what we want and give nothing back to the community of nations across Europe.

I am not surprised that we have heard shameless dishonesty, racism and self-interest from the likes of Boris Johnson, UKIP or the right-wing media. We cannot allow that kind of rhetoric and language to become part of the Scottish political landscape.

I remind the chamber of something that Ruth Davidson said when we were debating a different constitutional transition not so very long ago. She said that those who were proposing transition must have the trust of the people to “safeguard national security”, to

“safeguard the nation state’s economic security”

and to

“safeguard the nation state’s political security by establishing its place in the world through membership of international organisations such as the EU.”—[Official Report, 30 October 2012; c 12711.]

How is that going? The UK Government has demonstrated an historic failure on all three counts to the people of Scotland and the wider United Kingdom.

Ruth Davidson also argues that the 2014 result must be respected just as much as this year’s referendum result. The 2014 result has been fundamentally superseded. I remind members of a comment made by the better together campaign on 2 September 2014 just weeks before the referendum:

“What is process for removing our EU citizenship? Voting yes.”

People who voted in 2014 did so on a false prospectus and a false promise that their membership of the European Union would be protected in those circumstances and it has not been. I have spoken to strangers and friends from across the political spectrum—I have friends who vote Tory—who have told me that they are ready to re-evaluate the no vote that they cast in 2014. No one has the right to close down that position for people in Scotland.

The Greens will continue to respect the mandate of voters in Scotland that has been so clearly given. It requires that all options must remain on the table and, on that basis, we will certainly support the actions that the First Minister has set out in preparing the ground for a further independence referendum should it prove necessary and should it be the will of the people of Scotland. We will certainly support the right of the Scottish Government to enter into negotiations while respecting the need for it to return to secure a parliamentary majority at every step of the way.

We will certainly continue to express respect for the people who have moved to Scotland and who contribute to our society and we will continue to advocate that, whatever solution Scotland and the rest of the UK come to, the free movement of people remains a fundamental principle. We will advocate for the human rights, the social protections, the equality, the strong environmental protection and the other hard-won achievements of the European Union that are worth defending and are directly under threat from the decision that was taken so recklessly a week ago.