Hansard

I have lost elections. I took my loss in Dunfermline in 2010 very hard and very personally. However, no election defeat has made me feel like I felt in the early hours of last Friday. There was a deep sense of loss—loss of part of my soul and of what I had believed to be the soul of this country. Outward looking, compassionate, tolerant, open and generous: those are the attributes that I associate with my country. It is a country that does not walk on the other side of the road—but that is exactly what our country did last Thursday.

Practical benefits have also gone. Tackling crime with the European arrest warrant? Gone. Co-operation on climate change? Gone. A single market? Gone. Improved social conditions? Gone. All those, and so many other things, are gone.

We are already seeing the effect on the value of the pound, on company shares and on credit ratings. I am angry that we have been recklessly led down that path. I am angry that prices in shops will rise because of the higher cost of imports, that people’s savings are falling in value, and that job losses are on the cards, but Boris Johnson will not suffer, Michael Gove may lose some money but has stacks more to get by on, and Nigel Farage simply does not care. Ordinary people on low and modest incomes will lose: they are the victims of the crisis.

I hope that David Cameron is feeling guilty—he should feel guilty for imposing the divisions of his party on the country. That responsibility also applies to every Conservative in this Parliament, including Ruth Davidson. The economic chaos means that the Tories can never again claim to be the defenders of the economy, and nor can they claim, after the surge in support for independence at the weekend, to be the defenders of the union. They sparked the economic and constitutional crisis. Ruth Davidson is not defending the union; she is undermining it, and no Tory amendment today can hide that truth.

With every election loss, I lived to fight another day, and I am here today because I got off my knees to fight and win again. The United Kingdom’s place in Europe will live to fight another day, and I am determined to fight for that. My party will contest the next general election on a clear platform of supporting the United Kingdom’s place in Europe and 7,000 new members have joined our party to campaign with us to win that case. I want Scotland in the United Kingdom and the United Kingdom in Europe. That is the best possible option. I will not settle for anything less.

We need to understand, however, why 1 million people in Scotland voted to leave the European Union. It is of little surprise that someone with a minimum-waged job, a zero-hours contract, a damp house and a car that has failed its MOT might think that he or she has nothing to lose. Such people probably would not believe a well-heeled Conservative Prime Minister who was telling them that the status quo is best for them. The European Union is not responsible for all those problems, but the leavers provided that easy target and David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn were incapable of making a compelling case for the European Union.

The First Minister knows that I oppose another independence referendum; I made that commitment during the election only last month. Today’s motion does not endorse independence—the First Minister has made that clear, and in words that she has added to her statement, she said that that is emphatically the case. That was a welcome remark.

I welcome also the First Minister reaching out to other parties to engage in the negotiation process. I immediately agreed on Friday to participate, as long as it was not a cunning plan to deliver independence.

I want to explore options, including the bizarrely named “reverse Greenland”, working with London, Northern Ireland and Gibraltar, or some other arrangement. However, we need to understand fully before we move ahead. Rushing headlong to independence will undermine those efforts. There is so much that we simply do not know, so one of the lessons from last week should be that we should not make decisions when we do not know.

In my constituency of North East Fife, there are many thriving businesses. They are thriving, in part, as a result of the hard graft of workers from across the continent as well as from closer to home, who work together in harmony. There is Fishers Services laundry, Kettle Produce, many farms, and the hotels and restaurants in St Andrews and beyond. Those workers from across the continent work hard and make those businesses successful. They have married here, settled here and pay their taxes here. Each of them is one of us; they will never stop being one of us. I know many who will be offended by the decision last week, but I want them to know that we are standing with them. We are determined to recapture the soul of this country so that it is, once again, outward looking, compassionate, tolerant, open and generous.