THERESA May: a Prime Minister who finds herself stuck between the devil and the deep, deep blue.

The UK’s current incumbent overlord is reaching for straws, like a drowning woman, failing to comprehend that through her own desires and intransigence there are none, that there were none when she grabbed the poisoned chalice of Westminster power, and there will be none that are palatable to her, not now, not ever.

This is because Mrs May, in reality, wants nothing more than to be rid of the European Union, an entity whose demands and diktats, as she sees them, have done little but chastise her personally and foil her plans since she was at the Home Office.

This European Union, to London’s incumbent, represents the very devil himself. May is therefore determined, personally, to “deliver Brexit”. In spite of her words of years ago – “Brexit means Brexit” – still no-one knows what she was actually on about.

The other side of the May coin is that typified by a daughter of the church, who has so very clearly embraced an antiquated view of “Rule Britannia” and holds fast to the idea of the internal union, with that newly coined idea of the UK internal market, and all that means to the various denizens of the Conservative and Unionist Party.

While fracturing one union, Theresa has to negotiate the slings, arrows and pitfalls of maintaining the other. The internal union, the one which is virtually in her blood, this is where she discovers herself backed up against the deep, deep blue of Scotland. One where she knows her cry of “now is not the time” is about to be laughed into history.

Mrs May’s big issue is that in 2014, the Union had two functional sticks. The first was “Leave us and lose your place in the EU, become a pariah among nations”, and the second was the currency threat – “Leave us and lose the pound, be forced into an alternative, watch your investments and pensions shrivel”.

Those and The Vow were successful enough to rig a No vote, and “rig” is the correct word, for those promises were worthless.

Forget “no deal”. The UK was never going to “crash out” of the EU, the damage would simply be incalculable. At best, it was going to end up in some form of customs union, a bit player with no voice, a simple rule-taker. At worst, it would become a global laughing stock as it revokes that Article 50 notice which Mrs May was so proud to send.

If it’s a customs union, where this leaves Scots is with a simple choice: take independence, join the EU, have a voice, and maintain exactly the same trading relationship with England as they now have, except distance themselves from what has literally become a laughing stock on the diplomatic stage, all while using sterling as a freely traded currency for as long as desired.

A landslide for independence of somewhere close to the EU referendum result in Scotland should be expected.

If Article 50 is revoked, it’s going to be very much closer, until one considers this option isn’t actually on the table, as it would destroy the British political system we know.

The first domino to fall would be the Tory party itself, and those folk are too  tribally loyal to allow that to happen, no matter how close to the edge it might appear that body politic is wandering.

It is relatively safe to say, under present indicators, that in five years we’ll either have a UK destroyed by Brexit, or an rUK in a customs union with Europe coupled to an independent Scotland.

Ashley MacGregor
East Kilbride