Scottish independence: Boris Johnson's Brexit obsession has turbo-charged support for leaving the UK – Angus Robertson

In all of the drama about the Brexit talks, it’s worth remembering there is no such thing as a good Brexit deal.

Boris Johnson's 'oven-ready' Brexit deal was as fictional as the infamous Brexit bus pledge about extra funding for the NHS, says Angus Robertson (Picture: Tolga Akmen/WPA pool/Getty Images)

Negotiators in Brussels have been discussing an agreement that will be detrimental to the UK and EU while peering over the cliff edge at the alternative, which is also deleterious.

Eleven months on from the UK leaving the EU, the transition period to reach a deal is running out. Regardless of the clock ticking down, it’s heads we lose, tails we lose. Scotland didn’t vote for this.

Nightmare scenarios

According to the worst-case scenario, Scotland’s economy could contract by between 2.5 to seven per cent, with 100,000 job losses. This is on top of the damage being wreaked by the coronavirus pandemic.

Edinburgh’s financial services industry faces the potential of calamitous disruption and barriers to its dealings, with the loss of regulatory permission for cross-border contracts as a third-country service provider.

Meanwhile, the food-and-drink sector faces the prospect of damaging tariffs with no-deal and other complications with a thin trade deal.

The UK government’s special XO committee has been meeting daily in the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms (COBR) to discuss nightmare scenarios, especially at UK ports, with exports backed up for miles on approach roads.

When asked by the media at the weekend how the UK would get the Covid vaccine from Belgium if there is a no-deal a government minister said that “he didn’t have them to hand”.

Even if the military could rescue vaccine supplies, they couldn’t solve the catastrophe for small, medium and large businesses across the country.

Johnson’s fictional ‘oven-ready deal’

So what happened to the “oven-ready deal”? Don’t forget that Boris Johnson infamously promised: “We’ve got a deal, oven-ready. It’s a great deal for the country. It delivers everything that I wanted when I campaigned for Brexit."

No, it doesn’t. There was no oven-ready deal. It was as fictional as the NHS pledge on the side of the Leave bus. What is true however is that the UK Prime Minister is prepared to break international law, undermine peace in Northern Ireland and turbo-charge the growing majority support for Scottish independence.

Unbelievably both the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats have surrendered to the inevitability of hard Brexit that Britain faces. Only the SNP remains resolute in opposition to the damaging self-harm that Scotland voted against but is being foisted on us.

We should never tire of reminding Westminster (and our friends across the European Union), that Scotland voted 62 per cent to remain, in Edinburgh by 74 per cent.

Reality of Brexit

If anything, views on Brexit in Scotland have hardened. In a recent super-sized Survation poll for Progress Scotland, only 28 per cent were confident a good trade deal will be negotiated between the UK and the EU by the end of 2020, while 72 per cent disagree.

A whopping 73 per cent believe Brexit makes Scottish independence more likely, and 63 per cent agree that if the UK leaves the EU without a deal, they would be more likely to vote for independence in a future referendum.

Scotland’s European future is clearly a priority with 67 per cent believing an independent Scotland should be a full EU member.

Brexit has been the biggest single issue that has propelled independence into majority opinion. The realities of Brexit are only now becoming clear.

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