Meeting of the Parliament 08 January 2020
Since I was elected as the first ever SNP member of the Scottish Parliament for Renfrewshire South in May 2016, there has not been a single day when I have not felt honoured by the opportunity to serve my constituents and humbled by the responsibility that that entails.
I sit in this place, as we all do, as a representative. We are each expected by our fellow citizens to listen, consult and engage, but ultimately to exercise our own judgment on each issue that comes before us and in setting the course for our nation’s future.
That this place, our national Parliament, is the centre of Scottish civic and political life is beyond dispute. It is undoubtedly the case that both this Parliament and the Scottish Government as an institution command greater trust, respect and a sense of relevance from the people of Scotland than Whitehall and Westminster do.
Opinion polling suggests both that there is majority support across Scotland for this Parliament to take on additional responsibilities and that support for independence has increased since 2014.
That is the context in which we meet here this afternoon, to decide whether to express our consent to legislation made in another place that would end Scotland’s membership of the European Union. How each member votes at decision time will be a statement on the esteem in which they hold this Parliament. It will be a declaration of the regard in which they hold the devolution process. It will also be each member’s answer to the democratically expressed views of the people of Scotland.
Let us consider what those views are. In May 2016, the people of Scotland returned a Parliament that was overwhelmingly opposed to the principle of leaving the EU. At that time, although it would be easy to forget it, that principle was shared by the vast majority of Conservative MSPs. Indeed, ahead of the EU referendum, nearly all MSPs voted in this chamber to support the principle of remaining a member of the European Union.
That view was confirmed on 23 June 2016, when the people of Scotland voted 62 to 38 per cent in favour of remaining a member of the European Union, with each of Scotland’s 32 local authorities backing staying in the EU. At the general election of June 2017 and the European elections of May 2019, the SNP took the largest share of the vote on a platform that was opposed to the UK Government’s Brexit. At last month’s general election, the SNP won by a landslide on a pledge to do all that we can to stop Brexit. We even put those words on the side of a bus.
The only major party to stand on a commitment to “get Brexit done” was the Scottish Conservative Party. It lost tens of thousands of votes and more than half of its Westminster seats, including East Renfrewshire, part of which falls within my Renfrewshire South Scottish Parliament constituency. The remainder falls within the Scottish Parliament constituency of Eastwood, whose current MSP is Scottish Tory interim leader and former remainer—now Brexiteer—Jackson Carlaw. Elsewhere in my constituency, both Mhairi Black and Gavin Newlands were re-elected in 2017. They were returned again last month, with five-figure majorities for the first time.
I do not highlight those specific results to indulge in vain talk of my party’s electoral success—far from it. In recent years, we have all witnessed seemingly impregnable majorities crumble to dust and political upset follow political upset. Any party that takes voters for granted will quickly find itself out of office and relegated to irrelevance. The reason why I point to those results is that the ballot box remains the most direct, forceful and consequential way in which people can express their political views at a given time, and at each opportunity over the past four years, my constituents in Renfrewshire South have rejected Brexit and supported the SNP in opposing Brexit.
In Barrhead, where I was brought up; in Johnstone, where I live; and from Linwood to Lochwinnoch and in every other village that I am privileged to represent, my constituents have made it clear to me, and by majority at the ballot box, that they do not want to leave the European Union. Faced with that clear set of instructions from people in Renfrewshire South, there is no way that I can possibly support or give any form of consent to Scotland being forcibly removed from the European Union.
It seems likely that, at decision time, this Parliament will vote overwhelmingly to reject giving consent to the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill. It seems almost certain that the Tory UK Government will again ignore the will of this Parliament, just as it has ignored the democratically expressed will of the people of Scotland. In doing so, the UK Government will be making a statement of how it views Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom. Gone is the talk of an equal partnership and of leading the UK. In its place is blunt power and disregard for devolution.
That poses a question to each of us in this place and to the people of Scotland. It is a question that cannot be avoided, that will not be denied and that needs to be answered.
This will be a bitter time for those of us who value our place as a European nation, but I hope that it will be a time when, as a Parliament and across parties, we can come together and chart a course for our country that puts Scotland’s future in Scotland’s hands.
16:05