European Union

If Scotland has to toe the little Englander line on Europe, the Union is doomed

Europe is a rare shared space in Scottish politics – don't let's lose that Hush! If you ever want to hear the sound of silence it’s to listen to the major London parties as they duck, dive, avoid, procrastinate, obfuscate and blindly ignore the giant elephant in the room which is Europe and our relationship with it. At a UK-wide perspective, while not entirely surprising given the level of debate, it is still disappointing – eight years after a razor-thin win in a referendum based on a giant lie about the NHS, with sluggish growth, half-baked relations with our nearest neighbours amid a war on the edge of Europe, and a new hurdle to life everyday blithely explained away as regaining our sovereignty, you would think this would be the ideal cudgel for the opposition parties to finish off the present government. Not so apparently.