READERS of The National will be aware that the “consultation” exercise on the post-Brexit internal market concluded last week after a disgracefully short period of 28 days. I urge people in Scotland to keep a careful eye on the UK Government’s intentions and actions in relation to this subject.
I do not mean only advocates for independence but also all Scots who support the devolution settlement because, if you read this government White Paper, it is absolutely clear that Mike Russell and others are quite correct when they say that this settlement and its operation are under threat.
For example, on page 24 it states that “the UK Government will ensure that where towns and cities have previously been left behind, they will be able to benefit from UK-wide government initiatives,” and, on the following page: “The government will consider which spending powers it needs to enhance the UK internal market to help people and businesses in each nation to take advantage of it and help further its ambition to level up every part of the UK.”
READ MORE: Scotland's businesses warn of threat posed by Westminster internal market
These phrases repeat the government’s empty electioneering slogan of “levelling up” but also presage the intention to intervene as much as possible into the jurisdictions of the devolved governments (referred to as “administrations” throughout the document). Yet we continually hear from the Conservatives that the Scottish Government has all the economic powers that it needs to tackle any issues in Scotland.
The White Paper states that “it will seek to ensure there is widespread public understanding of the benefits of the UK Internal Market as an integral part of our union” before, bizarrely in such a document, inviting “thoughts on the best way to ensure that this message is effectively communicated.” Seeing as elsewhere the White Paper states that “customers will, in general, pay a premium for British-based goods above English, Scottish or Welsh”, you wonder why they are so concerned.
There is a wonderful irony in a lengthy passage on pages 23-24 where the White Paper lists all the wonderful laws the UK Government enacted independently of the European Union. The authors of the document seemed to have forgotten the reasons for Brexit, that the UK apparently had to “take back control” because of the loss of parliamentary sovereignty and the overbearing weight of EU legislation!
READ MORE: Brexit power grab: Tory plan could 'invalidate' Scottish legislation
Finally, there is the outrageous distortion of history throughout the White Paper in an attempt to justify the proposals. For example, it refers to the Treaty of Union between Scotland and England and Wales, although there is no mention of Wales in the Treaty. The fact that Wales became part of the “Union” by the passage in 1536 of an Act of the English Parliament with no Welsh members is obviously too uncomfortable a truth.
When talking of the “Union” with Northern Ireland it completely ignores the fact that this came about because of the secession from the Union of the rest of Ireland. But then the document talks of Northern Ireland as being the first country to receive devolution, as part of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement – thus overlooking the 50-year existence of the Stormont Government.
The real giveaway in the “history lesson”, however, is the page where the economic benefits of the Union are set out in a paragraph each for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. There is no parallel description of the economic benefits of the Union for England. Underpinning it, yet again, is the Anglo-centric assumption that the Union is an English enterprise that other nations are allowed to become part of. For all the windy rhetoric, it is, by no means, a Union of equals. We all need to watch this space carefully.
Gavin Brown
Linlithgow
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