The SNP has a Europe problem that will come back to haunt Sturgeon

Now Britain’s exit from the EU has become the party’s prime justification for holding Indyref 2. And if the SNP Government has its way, Scotland’s voters will have to choose which of two unions they wish to be members.

Is Europe, however, the trump card nationalists believe it to be? The seemingly endless rammy over the operation of the Northern Ireland protocol certainly increases the salience of the question.

You don’t have to be a die-hard Brexiteer to wonder at the absurdities of the EU’s often bureaucratic and overly legalistic mindset. A characteristically ponderous approach to coronavirus vaccine procurement. Now squadrons of vets employed to protect EU citizens from the humble M&S prawn sandwich, with 20 per cent of all EU checks apparently used to police GB/NI trade flows, which are a relatively modest percentage of the single market total. Hardly examples of sensible and pragmatic proportionality.

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During the recent Holyrood election campaign, Nicola Sturgeon talked approvingly of the protocol as providing a ‘template’ for mitigating the effects of a hard border between an independent Scotland and the rest of the UK. She’s been noticeably silent in recent months as the business nightmare of coping with the protocol’s everyday realities materialises.

People can fairly argue that Boris Johnson has only himself to blame for signing up for something, which many forewarned would have the damaging results now being felt. Yet isn’t that the nature of international negotiations – fudging the most difficult issues for later resolution in the interests of making progress on the rest?

The difficulties over the protocol tell us a lot about the character of the EU. Nicola Sturgeon lays plenty of charges at the UK Government’s door, whilst finding faultless the EU. Yet her UK critique applies more appropriately to the EU.

She inveighs against a UK Government Scotland didn’t elect. She’s also fond of castigating UK ministers for not respecting democracy. For short-changing Scotland despite all evidence to the contrary. Wait till she discovers the probability Scotland – like Ireland – would be required to pay more into the EU’s budget than we would get back. And she likes to contrast Ireland’s influence as a small EU member with what’s wrongly alleged to be Scotland’s lack of influence within the UK.

Can anyone seriously imagine an unelected EU Commission addressing its own democratic deficit by willingly relinquishing power to a new Scottish Parliament, as successive UK governments have done over the last 20 years? Within the EU the trend is all in the opposite direction – ‘ever closer union’.

Ireland knows this to its cost. Taken to court by the Commission for daring to set tax rates to attract to Ireland inward investment. And when the Commission lost that case, not conceding with good grace, but now seeking to have the judgement overturned on appeal.

UK ministers not only facilitated a referendum on Scottish independence, they also agreed to respect whatever result it delivered. Whereas the Commission didn’t respect Ireland’s referendum rejection of the 2008 Lisbon Treaty and new EU constitution. The Irish were simply told to vote again a year later to deliver a different result.

Which brings us to the Belfast Agreement. Central to the Belfast Agreement is the principle of cross-community support. Major decisions affecting Northern Ireland require agreement from both unionist and nationalist communities.

Sensitivity to different traditions is at the heart of the Belfast Agreement’s three stranded approach, covering devolved matters within Northern Ireland, north/south relations between Northern Ireland and the Republic and east-west relations between GB and Ireland. The UK and Irish Governments are co-signatories of the agreement.

One suspects that, left to their own devices, they would have found practical solutions to the border difficulties by now.

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Under the protocol, the EU has also signed up to ‘protect the 1998 Agreement in all its dimensions’. The EU however appears to interpret selectively its responsibilities. A north/south border is recognised as raising a red flag for the nationalist community and therefore risks destabilising the Northern Ireland peace process. An intrusive east/west border in the Irish Sea and the dangers of inflaming unionist feelings don’t seem to carry for the EU the same weight.

To date EU single market theology appears to trump protecting Northern Ireland’s fragile devolved institutions and the peace they’ve made possible. This does nothing to dispel the suspicion Ireland has been used as a bargaining chip to increase further EU leverage in what was already a mismatched negotiation.

The UK Government’s experience should serve as a warning to Nicola Sturgeon and her hopes of securing favourable EU treatment for Scotland.

A hard border between an independent Scotland within the EU and the rest of the UK would be inevitable.

An independent Scotland would also be carrying a large budget deficit, borrowing another country’s currency and leaving monetary policy, including interest rates, to be set by its central bank. It’s difficult to imagine, in those circumstances, the Commission – or Germany – taking a relaxed view of Scotland’s macroeconomic stability when applying the EU’s economic accession criteria.

The SNP tries hard to endow the EU with a heart. As the UK formally left the EU on 31st January 2020, the symbol ‘Europe Loves Scotland’ was beamed onto the Commission’s Berlaymont Building HQ. SNP leaders – including Nicola Sturgeon – implied this was the EU ‘leaving a light on for Scotland’. A cynical fiction exposed by the revelation – never denied – that the message was paid for by the SNP.

The EU isn’t sentimental. It’s as ruthlessly hard-nosed as they come. Just ask the Greeks. No amount of embarrassingly needy SNP attention-seeking will change that. A quick and easy ride to re-join the club? Dream on.

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