Meeting of the Parliament 29 January 2020
I completely understand that the thought of five more years of a Boris Johnson Government is driving some people to despair and others to anger, and that discontent is widespread, but it must be understood that the people of Scotland do not want another independence referendum anytime soon. The people know—they have applied common sense to this—that we need to do some hard thinking and work through the Brexit situation. They know that until we do that, given the profound uncertainty about the nature and terms of the future economic, trading, social and cultural relationships between the people of the UK and the people of the EU, a referendum in 2020 makes no sense whatsoever. Yet that is the proposition that we are being asked to vote on this afternoon. The First Minister herself said that a second independence referendum should not happen until after Brexit is done. Brexit is not done and it will not be done in 2020.
The Government motion talks of a “material change in circumstances”, but we do not yet know what those changes will be. However lofty the First Minister’s rhetoric is, she and everybody knows that she is playing a game. Nobody in the chamber really believes that there will be a referendum this year—I am not sure that many people in this chamber believe that there should be one this year. Members are being asked to vote for what they know to be a falsehood and many of them are prepared to do it willingly.
This debate is not an example of a good use of power. The First Minister claims to be speaking for Scotland, but she is not even speaking to Scotland. Nicola Sturgeon is using the Parliament to speak to her own party and she is not even telling it the truth. The way in which the Government is using the Parliament shows a rather contemptuous use of power.
The Government’s motion is a synthetic political manufacture dressed up as high principle. It is our duty as members of this Parliament to expose that and to offer real leadership on this question. It is our duty to represent all of the people, not just placate an overagitated political base of activists.
We know the numbers in the Parliament, and we know that the Greens will support the motion. I say in all sincerity to the Greens that a turn to nationalism at a time when we face a global economic and climate crisis is a move in precisely the wrong direction. We should not be putting up national boundaries; we should be pulling them down.
Our objective as members of this Parliament is to promote the welfare of the people—not just their material welfare, but their welfare in the broader sense—so, in our amendment, we call on the Government to focus its energies on minimising the impact of the Tories’ disastrous Brexit deal; to double down on ensuring that, in the coming months, powers are repatriated to Scotland during the Brexit process; and to focus on establishing a new home rule principle that is fit for the 21st century whereby, in the wake of Brexit, all that can be devolved is devolved, not just to the Scottish Parliament but to local government and local communities right across Scotland. Our vision is of a modern 2020 home rule that recognises that we need to radically redistribute wealth and power by tackling inequalities rather than simply reproducing them in a separate Scottish state.