THE SNP have good reason to mourn the end of the Brexit process. The messy, protracted nature of the exercise has provided it with a safe haven these last four years or so: a place to take shelter when the heat of domestic politics threatens to engulf them.

The last few Holyrood and Westminster elections may have provided the SNP with an overwhelming mandate to seek a second referendum on independence but none come close to the sheer, moral reinforcement of the EU referendum in 2016.

Here, it seemed, was the word made flesh of how far Scotland had travelled from England and the rest of the UK in this political generation. As England voted to leave the EU Scotland, by a much greater margin, had voted to remain.

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Furthermore, the forces that the Brexit process set loose: extreme English nationalism bordering on racism and the whiff of empire restored, seemed to underpin the ethical purity of Scotland’s choice. As the BBC gave Nigel Farage permanent board and lodgings in their Question Time studio and Jacob Rees-Mogg paid homage to Agincourt and Trafalgar many on the left began to make a graven image of the European Union.

In this rosy reconstruction the EU became a land of unicorns and sunbeams where lions lay down with lambs. In Europe, workers and bosses co-existed happily, helping each other to the bounties that only a trading bloc of the world’s most affluent nations can confer. Only the rockets and bangers of scarecrow conservatism would seek to be removed from such a kindly place, right?

To provide a moral justification for its choice the English political establishment, aided by a cartoon, right-wing press portrayed EU bureaucrats as slightly sinister, banking types keen to humiliate Britain in the trade negotiations as a means of saying to its remaining 27 nations “you can check out any time you like but you’d better not leave” to paraphrase the great Californian beat poets, Frey, Helder and Henley.

While this was happening a curious mutation was occurring in Scotland’s boutique left. Et voila, suddenly we were all energetic and good little Europeans. Alyn Smith, the SNP Euro MP asked Brussels to keep a light on for Scotland. It seemed to define the misty-eyed bromance which Scotland’s political classes have deluded themselves is reciprocated in Brussels.

In the days that have followed the UK’s formal departure from the EU Nicola Sturgeon re-deployed Smith’s treacly locution. A Scottish Government video which borders on clumsy propaganda re-states our European credentials. Another one which looks like an advert for one of those executive singles dating sites features the breathy cadences of a young woman telling Europe “you’ll always find warmth on our shores”. A lighthouse stands proud and erect on the shoreline.

This wasn’t merely about seducing Europe into accepting our application for club membership once we gain our independence; this was a campaign launch for the Scottish Government’s political narrative for the next four years. It’s clever and bears all the hallmarks of the SNP’s astute political engineering of the last four years.

During this period the party has successfully fostered a sense of national resentment at belonging to the Union, to the extent that the last 16 opinion polls indicate a settled will on independence. Some of this is real: the one-sided programme of austerity imposed for the last eight years by the UK Tories; the hostile environment for UK citizens of Caribbean descent and those regarded as the wrong type of immigrants. Some of it is contrived, though and exists only for the purpose of saying: “Look, we might not be perfect, but we’re not Boris Johnson.”

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The chaos of Brexit, the annexation of the UK Government by the hard right and its state-sponsored gangsterism around PPE contracts has been a boon for the Scottish Government. Scrutiny that might otherwise have come to settle on a haphazard education policy and the persistent failure to improve the lives of people in Scotland’s poorest communities has been averted by the Brexit freak-show. In this the SNP simply body-swerve any criticisms of its failures in key, devolved areas by saying that it would be different if we had all the levers of proper independence at our disposal.

Now Brexit has handily delivered fresh camouflage: if only we hadn’t been taken out of the EU against our will we could do much more. It’s a seductive message. And in order to fly it will require the rest of us not to spend long looking under the bonnet.

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Just as the SNP leadership have carefully avoided anything resembling a Plan B for Scottish independence, don’t expect them to come up with any detail to justify their optimism about re-joining the EU. They haven’t even addressed the obvious one: do they really think Brussels will invite Scotland back into the fold when the Growth Commission, has committed us to a sterlingisation programme for 10 years?

Nor has there been any scrutiny of the essential nature of the EU: which is to preserve the advantages of rich nations (and the professional and managerial classes which thrive in these places) at any cost. A primer in this is provided in the economic bullying of Greece and Spain which permitted German banks to make billions in emergency bonds.

Meanwhile the EU procurement laws serve only to make it easier for global corporations to flit seamlessly across borders undercutting local industry. But that’s okay, because if you want to compete we’ll permit you to exploit immigrant labourers by only paying them at the rates of their countries of origin.

Suddenly, the designer left are all talking about Erasmus. The vast majority of the population either think this is the new Belgian midfielder who’s interesting Celtic or a new languages app for your smartphone. No one actually gives a monkey’s for the distress of affluent middle-class students now denied the opportunity for a year-long jollification in Europe which they’ll flog as a life-changing experience on their CVs for corporate law internships.

As we’re all Europeans now and not really Scottish we must be expected to mourn the passing of an elite education programme as though it were an instrument of oppression.

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