Brexiteers are finally being forced to face up to the facts

This was confirmed again this week because the Survation poll for Channel 4 news conducted their online survey of 20,000 voters in the UK, which in real terms, resulted in 1622 respondents in Scotland. No SNP MP was included in the news programme’s televised debate to accompany the results, so there was no opportunity to highlight the democratic deficit for Scotland on the whole Brexit question. Same old, same old.

READ MORE: Channel 4 poll finds Brexit chaos is shifting Scots towards independence

Despite this unevenness, the poll’s results were clear. Across the UK, 54% now want to remain in the EU, and 46% want to leave. Support for remaining in the EU in Scotland has increased, even further, as it has in Northern Ireland. Even Wales has changed its mind. Now England is thinking again.

Whatever you assume about polls, the results are significant and show that the UK Government can no longer take public opinion for granted on Brexit. In the two and a half years since the vote, everything has changed, changed utterly. From misleading information, lies, half-truths, imagined numbers, conjured benefits, illegal data harvesting, dodgy micro-targeting, fraudulent advertising, irregular campaign funding, police investigations, reduced status on the world stage, suspect attitudes to migration based on subjective thoughts rather than objective research, it’s not been pretty. Now it looks like the people have had enough.

READ MORE: Channel 4 suffers huge backlash after shutting out SNP from TV debate

Here we are, heading towards the cliff edge post-March 29 next year, with predictions of a never-ending state of austerity, misery, poverty and war-time-like hardship, and the party that delivered this angst to us, the Tories, with May captaining the sinking ship, setting up new ministerial posts for food shortages and warning drugs companies to stockpile medicines in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Now the truth is out there in the public domain, there’s nowhere for the horror to hide. People in the UK don’t want Brexit anymore but nobody in government or in the main opposition are listening. You couldn’t make it up in your worst nightmare.

Even the ones who have brought us to this Brexit vortex don’t seem so sure about themselves anymore. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove are much quieter these days – Johnson seems to have decided to temporarily tone down his rhetoric, preferring to bang the same drum about “taking back control”. But here is a man who peaked too early in his Machiavellian plan to unseat the PM and ride the British bulldog into Brexit oblivion. His star has faded and I’m not so sure anyone is listening anymore. As for Gove, his silence on Brexit is ominous.

Also conspicuous by his attention-seeking absence, is the Pinstripe Pretender, Jacob Rees-Mogg, keeping a very low profile. Maybe these three anti-EU amigos think it’s better to stay schtum rather than get mixed up in the media whirlwind around the downfall of Mr Arron Banks, or Mr Arron the Brexit Bank-Roller as he may be called from now on. Their thinking will be, let Banks be the fall guy, let him take all the heat while they retreat to their ivory towers. But as the truth is revealed, there may be no escape for any of the leading characters in the Brexit movie, no matter how much they back-pedal. Perhaps the sorriest aspect of the Banks charade of an interview on the Marr Show on Sunday was that he seems to be reconsidering his opinion on leaving the EU, admitting he would have supported Remain if he knew then what he has experienced now. Is Banks one of the 54%? It certainly would have saved him some cash if the latest fine on one of his insurance businesses is anything to go by.

While some other leavers may be privately reconsidering their enthusiasm for Rule Britannia and Splendid Isolation, others are doubling down. Brexit secretary Dominic Raab’s demand for a three-month exit plan for the controversial backstop debacle has been met with rightful derision and scorn by the Irish, who know the true and painful reality of returning to a hard border between North and South. Ireland and the EU want the UK and Theresa May to honour their commitment as agreed in December last year, and under no account will they approve of any unilateral ending of the backstop by Britain. And rightly so. Raab can crow all he likes, but there’s no escaping this fact.

However, facts and Brexit don’t really go together. The high heidyuns in Labour have got their heads in the sand about the reality of support for Remain among their voters. John McDonnell is in denial about the implications of the investigations into malpractice in the Leave campaign on the election result. They just aren’t listening to their voters or to the growing body of evidence on Brexit as a total diaster.

And where is Jeremy Corbyn in all this? He is as quiet as a mouse. He’ll be brooding no doubt over his low support in Scotland – the Survation poll showed that 46% of Scots think that Corbyn would do worse than Theresa May in securing a Brexit deal. Less of an endorsement, more of a condemnation.

But there is change in the air. Support for a People’s Vote is building, bolstered by the SNP, the Greens, the LibDems and certain high-profile members in Labour and the Tory party. Results from this poll show building momentum for a second referendum. And here’s the best bit about the Survation figures – they show that in every constituency in Scotland, support for remaining in the EU has gone up. Not quite sure how the Ross Thomson’s of the Scottish Tories will be able to compute that. He may have to put personal Brexit ambition behind his constituents growing remainer resolution but ‘a hae ma doots’. Ultimately, the voters will decide whether to give him short shrift, and I know which side I’m betting on.

Scotland knows what she wants, and we won’t be silenced.