Meeting of the Parliament 09 June 2015
The attempt to create a single market and force economies together with a single currency has flaws. However, we need to work together. If we keep Greece in the European Union, that will benefit us all. We need to get through the current difficult period but we should not simply claim that Greece exiting the European Union would resolve the problems. I hope that Neil Findlay would agree with that.
When we share such functions, it is not possible to demand that everything be conducted in the fashion that we would deliver if we had full and sole control, but the sacrifices and compromises that we make through pooled sovereignty bring great advances. We all have our own numbers. For example, one in 10 jobs in the UK is linked to the EU single market and nearly half of British trade, which is worth around £500 billion, is with other EU member states. Around 300,000 Scottish jobs are linked to EU exports. Scotland is between £1.9 billion and £3.8 billion better off as a result of being part of Europe.
We can all get swamped in the numbers and competing statistics, but I prefer simply to rely on the concepts of internationalism, co-operation and solidarity. That is a state of mind and we in the Parliament should adhere to it.
I thank Jamie McGrigor for his remarks about Charles Kennedy. The campaign on the European Union that we should be conducting is one that I think Charles Kennedy, too, would have adopted. I am sure that he would have been a leading member of that campaign; he would have been a proud member, and I would have been proud that he was taking part in that yes campaign. Charles also had the ability to see the big picture. This is where my plea to the SNP comes in. I have a slight request for the SNP to try to see that bigger picture and cause that we are all striving towards.
On Sunday morning, when the sun was shining through the curtains of my bedroom at 5 o’clock, I had a choice: I could either go back to sleep or go out for a morning run. I decided to put my fell shoes on, I drove up to Glen Devon and, with the early morning sun shining on my back, I had a splendid few hours run up in the Ochil hills, looking down over the Forth valley. I find no greater pleasure than doing such a thing on a Sunday morning. However, when I regale my friends and family with the tales of my times on the hills, I can see their eyes glazing over after a certain amount of time. I have to accept that the world does not revolve around my appreciation of the hills.
There are parallels for the SNP—