WHILE Theresa May was hiding in the Bridge of Weir, people in Glasgow were doing their shopping under the rain of Storm Diana. We asked some of those on Sauchiehall St for their thoughts on how the Prime Minister is handling Brexit – and on how their thoughts have changed since she proposed her Brexit deal.
Isabelle Stewart, a retired woman from Glasgow, didn’t mince her words. May’s Brexit deal has “sold Scotland down the river”, she said, echoing the sentiments of many.
Paul Whelan (above), a singer from New Zealand working with Scottish Opera, gave a sense of what the world outside of Scotland thinks. The deal “seems unfortunate for Scotland, particularly after being so close to independence” in 2014.
The Kiwi added that Scotland “doesn’t seem to be getting the special treatment that Northern Ireland and Gibraltar are getting”, echoing the words of the Scottish Brexit Secretary, Michael Russell, from Monday.
The way that Scotland has come out of the deal seems to have strengthened support for independence. Helen Darbyshire (above), a 30-year-old actor, told us that a lot of people she knew were now “really supportive” of a new referendum, after the way that this deal has turned out.
And Bill Moodie (above), a retired schoolteacher who voted for Brexit in 2016, seemed to agree. “I voted against independence in 2014, but I may well change my mind depending on how Brexit goes”.
Something about which he was sure though was that he “would never vote Corbyn”. He also told us he used to vote Tory, but his “voice counted for nothing”.
Gavin Low, a civil servant, urged more restraint about a second independence referendum. While he voted for independence in 2014, he says people wouldn’t want another referendum right now. He said that “people are too unsure at the moment, they’re too worried about Brexit”.
His kids were more enthusiastic about indyref2, but he thought that we should wait “two or three more years”.
A firm supporter of Remain, Low is more focused on a People’s Vote. “After a little while of thinking ‘okay, let’s get on with Brexit’ after the vote, I wish we’d stayed in,” he said. “We need a second referendum, as we’ve got all this information now that we didn’t have before.”
But the view of May was pretty damning, even among those who voted to leave the EU back in 2016.
“Poorly” was the response of Moodie to our question of how May has handled Brexit. “She hasn’t done what anyone wanted”.
While Moodie voted to leave, he says he’s now realised that Britain “can’t stand alone”.
“We’re a Mickey Mouse Island”, he said “and we’ve just walked away from an EU that’s now so huge. We were wrong to think that we could stand alone”.
Frank Doherty (above), another retired leave voter, simply said that May has been doing it “wrong”. He added: “We should have gone straight away.”
Perhaps surprisingly, the Remain voters we spoke to, while equally underwhelmed by her, were more sympathetic to May’s position.
Ashleigh McKinnon (above), a 31-year-old business development manager, was clear that she had “no faith in [May] as a leader”, but she warned: “You can’t underestimate her determination.”
Darbyshire agreed, saying that May “is handling Brexit the only way she can – it’s a horrible job at the moment”. Low, meanwhile, blamed David Cameron – she’s done “all right with a job that was just landed on her”.
But, in something of a flop for May’s ‘publicity’ tour, people either didn’t know or didn’t much care that the Prime Minister was in Scotland. Isabelle Stewart put it straightforwardly: “there’s not much in it for us”.
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