Express & Star

Braveheart or simply blinded by the cause?

Toby Neal casts his eye on the world of politics.

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Eyes ablaze with indignation and suppressed anger, the Queen of Scots delivered her rallying call to her people.

"You ask my policy? It is independence at all costs and in spite of all terrors. Independence, however long and hard the road may be, for without independence there is no survival under our English oppressors."

Through some research of Scottish National Party thinking I can flesh out a bit of detail of how it would work on a couple of complicated and vexed issues.

Currency? We'll let you know.

England-Scotland border operation? We'll let you know.

So in a renewed independence referendum – the SNP likes referendums and especially likes second referendums when it loses the first – the Scottish people really would not know what they were voting for as they headed for the cliff edge in a great act of self harm.

But those are mere trifles to be sorted out later as this is not a policy but a creed and a religion in which independence is the promised land throwing off the England/Westminster yoke and replacing it with the yoke of Brussels.

In other words, leaving the centuries-old Union and replacing it with the decades-old European Union.

It's because the Scottish Myopics say they don't have a proper voice in Westminster.

Reality check time. The House of Commons has 650 MPs, of whom 59 represent Scottish seats – that's nine per cent. Before Brexit, the European Parliament had 751 members, of whom six represented Scottish seats – that's 0.8 per cent.

So joining the EU would represent a substantial democracy deficit resulting in a drastic reduction of Scottish influence among those making laws, rules, and regulations, affecting Scotland.

Anyway, far from the Scottish cause not having a voice in the Commons, it is always given a voice, where the SNP is represented by Ian Blackford, an inflated balloon of Scottish indignation so pumped up that you fear for his safety should he manoeuvre near any sharp corners.

An underlying question to be considered is this: Who has the interests of Scotland and the Scottish people more to heart – Westminster, or Brussels?

It might be academic anyway, because on the face of it Scotland does not meet the convergence criteria for admission to the EU club. For 2020-21 the Scottish deficit was £36.3 billion – that's the Scottish government's own figures. That's billion, not million. For a nation with North Sea oil. And whisky (although the main export from the SNP is whine).

On the border issue, given the complexities of the Northern Ireland protocol, the worst international agreement signed by a UK government since Munich 1938, the EU would surely be looking for a Scotland protocol.

This would govern the England-Scotland border to ensure that single market goods going into Scottish ports weren't leaking past Hadrian's Wall to benefit the despised EU-rejecting English, who must be punished at all opportunities.

Customs checks and perhaps passport controls at Berwick and Carlisle then. Also searches of Scottish lorries to ensure that they're not loaded with freedom of movement folk trying to reach the UK through the Scottish back door.

In raising the spectre of another independence vote at this time Nicola Sturgeon is seeking to cash in on the unpopularity of Boris Johnson north of the border, and south of the border, come to that. She says he, in particular, is a Prime Minister with no moral authority.

You can't blame her for her opportunism, but the reality is that the person who holds the Prime Minister's office is irrelevant. If Boris was thrown under the bus tomorrow the resulting change of UK Prime Minister would not alter the SNP's position one jot, so to pretend it matters is silly.

You have to say there is something about Queen Nic. For some reason, and I think it might be English guilt, she is one of those left-leaning women leaders who commands a sort of fawning awe and reverence from the media, like Jacinda in New Zealand.

So I feel I risk being rude when I point out something about the independent European nations of a similar size to Scotland, such as Denmark, Finland, and Norway, which Queen Nic has highlighted amid a claim that they are all wealthier, fairer and more productive than the UK.

All these wealthier, happier, nations she has cited have something in common.

None of them has an SNP government.