Meeting of the Parliament 05 March 2024
This debate follows yesterday’s publication of the latest paper in the Scottish Government’s “Building a New Scotland” series, “An independent Scotland’s place in the world”, which sets out the values, principles and practical action that the Government believes should guide our international relations as an independent country.
Tomorrow, members in the House of Commons debating chamber will hear why independence for Scotland is essential and urgent. The Chancellor of the Exchequer will set out tax and spending plans within the context of a failing United Kingdom economy that is characterised by low growth, low productivity, low investment, poor living standards and high inequality.
Crucially, the chancellor is likely to ignore the economic calamity of a Brexit that has already wiped billions of pounds from the Scottish economy, compared with what we would have had with European Union membership. Brexit has worsened the cost of living crisis and left the United Kingdom looking increasingly isolated on the world stage.
Tragically and disastrously, the Labour Party is now fully signed up to Brexit, which means that it is fully signed up to the economic damage of leaving the EU, no matter the cost to Scotland. Although the Labour Party likes to talk about economic growth as its top priority, that is simply incompatible with its embracing of a hard Brexit that will see Scotland excluded not just from the EU, but from the huge European single market. That is the context for the paper that was published yesterday and for today’s motion.
When the Conservatives and Labour turned their backs on our fellow Europeans, they instead proposed a vision of what they call “global Britain”, which is apparently a buccaneering free-trading nation that has been released from what they saw as the shackles of the European Union. That vision has been a total economic and a diplomatic failure. One foreign affairs commentator described the so-called global Britain strategy as
“So sad. This politically illiterate, unilateralist international posturing is unreal. It’s un-realist. It’s humiliating for Britain, and it’s bound to fail.”
The Scottish Government, by contrast, is internationalist to its core. It is committed to multilateral organisations and to the principle of co-operation as we seek to tackle the great global challenges that affect us all.