Scotland and us, Boris and Jeremy

A couple of days ago, I was asked by a TV station (no, Virginia, not the BBC – do try to keep up with censorship events)  – I was asked to give my take on the consequences of Brexit for Scotland and this neurotic corner of Ireland.

Interviews, particularly TV interviews, are highly artificial. They require you to give your views on a complex problem in 40-second bites as well as, under no circumstances, ever changing your mind mid-interview. That’s the downside. The upside is that it forces you to think to the core of what you want to say and to prioritise what’s worth saying.

So here are the points I tried to make:

1. The question of Irish reunification and Scottish independence were around before any of us knew what the word ‘Brexit’ meant. In 2014 the Scots had their (unsuccessful) referendum on independence; the state of Northern Ireland has been under threat from the day it came into being in 1921.
2. However, Brexit gave a massive jolt of energy to both movements. Scotland voted 62% /38% to remain  in the EU; the north of  Ireland voted 56%/44% to remain. The clear will of the people in both  cases was to stay in the EU; against their wishes they are being dragged out of the EU by a bumbling English Tory government.
3. Lies were told to the electorate during the referendum campaign, notably that there would be £350million a week available for the NHS after Brexit, and that Britain would move onto the sunny uplands of economic independence. It’s now accepted by all that Brexit will involve terrible hardship.
4. The two candidates for the leadership of the Conservative party live on  a  planet far, far away from the experience of the average Irish or Scottish citizen.  Their CV read like a P G Wodehouse novel: Johnson’s full name is Alexander Boris de Pteffel Johnson, Hunt’s surname (often mispronounced) is Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt.  Johnson was born in New York to upper-middle class English parents, was educated at Eton and Cambridge, where he was a member of the infamous Bullingdon Club, famed for smashing up restaurants. He has been accused (with  considerable credibility) of elitism, cronyism, dishonesty, laziness and using racist and homophobic language. Hunt is the son of a British Admiral and is a distant relative of Queen Elizabeth II and Sir Oswald Mosley. He was educated at Charterhouse and Oxford and  was president of the Conservative association there. Only the other day on radio he told an outright lie     about the Switzerland-France border.
5. Johnson’s grasp on the border in Ireland problem shows in his comparison of trade between north and south with that between Camden and Westminster.
6. Scotland has already declared its intention to hold a second referendum on independence after Brexit happens; the demographics in 2021, not to mention the economic strain on the north of Ireland’s economy, almost certainly will lead to a border poll in our sad little corner inside the next five years. The UK will pay for Brexit by setting in train events which will bludgeon its  economic stability and destabilise the UK  as a political entity.
7. Reluctantly and late in the day, the unionist farming and business community have made it clear that the DUP’s enthusiasm for Brexit is the polar opposite of theirs.

Even listing those seven points is enough send the sun behind the clouds, a mood of depression like a large croaking raven to settle on one’s head and a desire to do to Boris and Jeremy’s millions-worth residences what those Hong Kong students did to their parliament the other day.  Have the English really stopped painting their arses purple? Has the DUP, intellectually speaking, learnt to walk upright yet?