Meeting of the Parliament 30 January 2024
Tomorrow marks the fourth anniversary of Scotland being taken out of the European Union. Scotland was not only removed from the EU but forced out of the single market and the customs union. The United Kingdom Government imposed an end to freedom of movement, and it removed opportunities for our young people by abandoning the Erasmus scheme. Moreover, as we all knew would happen, the UK Government once again broke its promises to Scotland’s fishing communities. In short, not only did the UK impose Brexit on Scotland, but it imposed the hardest and most damaging of Brexits.
All of that was despite the fact that people in Scotland voted overwhelmingly to stay in the European Union. The Scottish Parliament expressed its support for remaining in the EU and the single market on many occasions, yet the people of Scotland and their elected Parliament were ignored time and again. The Brexit referendum and its aftermath did not just relate to the relationship between the UK and the EU; it revealed something fundamental about the very nature of the UK, which is that the UK can no longer be described as an equal partnership of nations. It is a Westminster-knows-best state that routinely ignores the views of the people in Scotland, and that is democratically unsustainable.
From a practical point of view, Brexit is an on-going economic disaster. The leader of the UK Labour Party, Keir Starmer, says that his priority is “growth, growth, growth”, but unfortunately the obvious problem with that is his commitment to Brexit, Brexit, Brexit. Brexit has already increased inflation, harmed trade and reduced investment—the list goes on. Scottish workers have lost income and consumers have to pay higher prices for food, which makes the cost of living crisis worse.
A recent study from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research estimates that the UK economy is now 2.5 per cent smaller as a result of Brexit. That impact equates to a cut of around £2.3 billion in public revenues for Scotland. Estimates from other bodies, such as the Centre for European Reform, suggest that the damage has been even worse. That is not the end of it; analysis by Cambridge Econometrics estimates that the economic damage will continue, reaching 10 per cent of gross value added by 2035.
The impact of Brexit is not only economic; it has severely reduced the opportunities for Scotland to collaborate with European partners on cross-border challenges. It has removed our ability to live and work freely across the EU, and we have lost out on access to EU exchanges and funds. Despite the huge benefits of European Union membership, the overwhelming evidence of the harm of Brexit and the predictions that the damage will only get worse, neither the Conservatives nor the Labour Party—nor even the Liberal Democrats—say that they are fully in favour of rejoining the European Union.
The Scottish Government takes a different position. Scotland’s interests need not continue to be wrecked by the UK Government’s approach to Brexit. The views of people in Scotland, as expressed through democratic elections to Westminster and Holyrood, need not be able to be ignored or overridden. The powers of our devolved institutions need not be able to be altered unilaterally by Westminster, without the agreement of the Scottish Government, this Parliament or, indeed, the people of this country.
The seventh paper in the “Building a New Scotland” series sets out the Scottish Government’s alternative. Our vision is for an independent Scotland to join the European Union. Doing so would offer Scotland the chance to regain what has been lost because of Brexit. It would provide Scotland with what devolution cannot deliver—notably, a framework to collaborate as equals, with relationships governed by values, co-operation and law. It would mean that, for the first time, Scotland would be at the table, advancing its interests directly in the European Union. It would allow Scotland to contribute to the EU, bringing our expertise and resources to work towards shared goals.