Andrew Wilson: Gordon Brown is back – and stuck in 1997

A clunking fist still sounding in its own echo chamber, preaching the Calvinism of Knox to a people that just aren’t listening anymore.

The pulpit from which it hollers has not moved, its church locked in aspic playing out a ritual that will never alter as the world around it is transformed. Hearing it is a visit to the National Museum. It is of value as a punctuation of our story as a country, of a chapter now closed. It is history and not the present or the future.

Just when you thought things could descend no further into farce, the rumble was from the man who gave you “voting for independence will force Scotland out of Europe”, former PM Gordon Brown.

READ MORE: Amy Macdonald in furious Twitter rant at ridiculous Unionist claim

This time, however, he was right. “The Union has never been more at risk” – correct, a red-letter day. Take the rest of the week off, sir. But correct for all the wrong reasons.

Of course, for Brown, bad things are still everyone else’s fault. This time it was the Tories – fair play. But also, the “extreme” version of independence proposed by the SNP. The same extremism practised by Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Netherlands and Ireland. Scary, scary stuff.

Of course, Brown cannot imagine a progressive social democratic country like one of these could ever be the aspirational goal of Scotland. Far too ambitious.

So, a tangled web he must continue to weave, and it is tying the electoral fortunes of his own party to the floor.

Brown claims that the SNP want to exit the single market and customs union of the UK and cease all relations. This is, of course, not true. The lack of truth on matters of this nature is a trait Brown shares with Johnson.

READ MORE: Gordon Brown is ‘out of touch’ after his latest attack on the SNP

The SNP wish to remain in a customs union and single market with the rest of the EU and the UK. The SNP propose deeper and more enduring relations with the rest of the UK after independence than between any countries anywhere. It is the rest of the UK that is seeking to impose new borders, although both Tory leadership candidates now insist that no one really wants them. Time will tell.

For Brown and his ilk, who haven’t updated their thinking on Scotland since 1997 and certainly not since Brexit, their only recourse is “fear, uncertainty and doubt”, failing to realise that the greater fear, uncertainty and doubt is standing still in the storm and the chaos of the UK now.

Brown also claims that SNP plans to create a Scottish currency in due course are “extreme”, despite the fact it works for pretty much every other country that has become independent. Once again, though, he fails to recognise that to achieve this there is an extensive transition plan that ensures that Sterling is retained after independence, with the transition to a new currency only happening when it was in Scotland’s interests to do so and we were ready. Why would Brown wish anything different? It makes no sense. Brown makes no sense.

Maybe Brown would be better served trying to find out what his own party’s position is on membership of the single market and customs union and indeed the European Union itself. I can’t figure it out, because they seem to change their position as often as Boris Johnson cuts his hair.

But as this column argued last week, for proponents of independence it would be a mistake to ignore altogether the argument that Brexit is so chaotic it proves that disentangling a 300-year Union will be harder than a 40-year one. The intuition of that appeals to many and deserves a direct and candid response.

The difference, of course, is that when the question is put once again there will be a more detailed transition plan and prospectus than for any of the 193 members of the United Nations when they took their step.

When Scotland makes this choice, it will, and must, be the antidote to the politics and policies of Brexit. It will be the polar opposite in strategic approach.

Scotland will seek to recognise our responsibilities to the people of the rest of the UK, not threaten to walk away from them as the Tories do now with Europe.

We will seek enduring ties and shared endeavour and a free and open border as we enjoy now with the UK, Ireland and Europe.

That is the truth and it bears articulation and repetition. The status quo is done for, it is now about which future we seek to choose.

Will it be one carved by our own hands, or handed down by the truly extremist Brexiteers that increasingly dominate the UK now?

Jeremy Hunt’s monumental misstep

IT has been a bizarrely retro week. First Gordon Brown and then a 1970s rendition of “Scotland can’t” on the Jeremy Vine show.

“What does Scotland have? Oil? A monster in a lake.”

But that intervention was so bizarre and laughable it was of no material import.

Meanwhile, another Jeremy – Hunt – delivered a brace of interventions on Scotland that suggested Boris Johnson may not be the only leadership candidate with the potential to make monumental missteps north of the Border.

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon reacts to Jeremy Hunt cutting off support for trips abroad

Twenty years on from devolution and 12 years on from the first election of an SNP first minister, Hunt decided that now was a good moment to declare that the First Minister would no longer receive Foreign and Commonwealth Office support on any official international trips.

In a move designed to appeal to the less than 0.2% of the Scottish population that are members of the Conservative Party, he destroyed two decades of effort by UK officials to demonstrate that devolution could be made to work. That this is not apparent to him or those advising him makes its own point.

He then popped up to say that he had Welsh and Northern Irish blood in his veins, and spent a couple of years in Scotland as a kid, so “would not allow” the Union to end.

Can anyone imagine referencing blood inheritance as important in any other context and not being condemned? It was truly bizarre. Does he imply that anyone who doesn’t have that blood or has not been resident cannot care or have a view one way or another? It was just odd, outdated and, again, completely incongruent.

The idea that any prime minister can “not allow” the democratically expressed will of the people to be followed is a step that even Mrs Thatcher refused to take.

This Tory leadership campaign started extreme and is getting steadily worse. It is painting the picture of a country that is a million miles from the shared values so many people of different views across Scotland, and indeed the UK, hold dear.

That, for some, like Gordon Brown, this is always as good as it can ever get? Risible.