CASSANDRA, according to Greek mythology, was a Trojan princess and votary of the God Apollo who gave her the gift of prophecy when he wooed her. However when she refused him he added the curse that she would never be believed.
Those of us who have been involved with Brexit almost since that fateful day, five years ago next month, when England and Wales voted to leave the EU, sometimes feel as Cassandra must have. Constantly asserting what we are sure will happen, but being scoffed at by most of the media and, now, all the UK political parties which have, without exception, decided to pretend that becoming a distant fractious third party on the edge of the largest free trade bloc in the world can bring some good.
Yet two events at Westminster this week should remind us that Brexit is far from done and the damage from it is only just beginning. To claim otherwise is to perpetuate the most audacious con trick on a population in generations.
Liz Truss, who not so much negotiated an Australian trade deal as had one imposed upon her, has now apparently persuaded the Tory cabinet that such complete capitulation is a vindication of Brexit itself. The fact that it will – and we do not yet know the full details so worse is probably to come – make almost all lamb production in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland uneconomic at a stroke of a pen by permitting unlimited access for Australian lamb producers is seen in Downing Street as being merely a minor inconvenience. The important thing is the spin that a great new dawn for Global Britain has finally arrived.
When such mendacity costs jobs and drives depopulation in our most rural areas – plus bringing heartache and suffering to those who have lived and worked in the highest, most isolated and least productive land of Scotland for generations – then it is not only cruel but also culpable .
My Welsh counterpart and I repeatedly warned about this matter at meetings of the Joint Ministerial Committee, just as we warned about the potential danger to food standards posed by other likely trade deals yet we were airily dismissed with public pledges that no UK Government was going to betray farmers, nor put public health at risk.
Those pledges were lies just as the many promises to Scottish fishermen were lies, the assurances to Northern Irish business about paperwork were lies and the claims of vast post Brexit opportunities were lies too.
READ MORE: Boris Johnson 'betrays' Scots farmers by going ahead with Australia Brexit deal
Indeed last Monday Lord Frost, appearing in front of the Commons European Scrutiny Committee finally admitted that he, the key Brexit diplomat, hadn’t yet got any more detail to add to the “borders money and laws” mantra trotted out again and again for years.
However he did reveal that he was now intending to employ somebody who would go out into the world to search for that holy grail.
“We are” he said gnomically to MPs “fully behind making things happen”, which it has to be admitted is better than being fully behind stopping things happening, a Frost speciality up until now.
It took more than two years (from the EU referendum to the Chequers ministerial showdown) for the Tories to work out what Brexit they actually wanted, and they got that spectacularly wrong, ending up with the worst and hardest outcome possible. It has, incredibly, taken another three to even start looking for possible mitigations for such an enormous, irretrievable misstep.
The Trojan wars which were Cassandra’s downfall lasted a decade. The UK will be fortunate if all the Brexit damage is known even 10 years from now. It will certainly not have fully worked its way through our economy by then though it is clear already that the UK’s prospects will be significantly worse even than they are now.
Brexit wont be “done” for a long time yet but the good news is that if Scotland moves steadily towards another referendum and then independence we will be able to avert some at least of the inevitable consequences and get EU help in reversing others.
Defeating the pandemic is rightly the first priority but whilst we are doing that we must keep the closest of eyes on what is still being unveiled in the cabinet of self imposed Brexit calamities and tell the people of Scotland the unvarnished truth about how wrong headed and dishonest it all is.
Cassandra, after all, was in the end proved right.
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