IT was only a few years ago that the people of Scotland were told that we needed to vote to remain a part of the UK because that was the only way to ensure the continuing stability and safety of the Scottish economy and democracy. Stay with us Scotland, they exhorted, or possibly extorted, and remain a part of one of the most respected and influential states on the planet. So how’s that all working out for everyone?
What passes for stability and safety in the UK is the UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock being on the telly just this week pleading with people with chronic medical conditions not to stockpile medicines because the Tory cabinet is getting more fridges to cope with a no-deal Brexit. And there was us thinking that the Conservatives already had all the deep freeze equipment that they could possibly need, because that’s where they keep their hearts.
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There are warnings of food shortages, and far from being influential the UK is ridiculed and marginalised. Those who campaigned for Brexit assured us that leaving the EU would allow the UK to take its rightful place in the world. And so it has come to pass. It’s just a shame that the UK’s rightful place is as the world’s laughing stock.
Meanwhile, as if that wasn’t enough to destroy any residual confidence you might have retained in the capacity of the British Government to negotiate Brexit, Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab has just realised that Britain is an island. Someone had shown him how to log into Google Maps and had pointed out that that vast expanse of blue surrounding Britain isn’t the extent of Tory support, it is in fact water.
Tory stubbornness on Irish border ensures Brexit deal remains elusive
During an interview this week, Dominic Raab, pictured above, the man in charge of Brexit, admitted that he hadn’t quite understood that the most important port on an island would be the one closest to the mainland.
Speaking at a tech industry event, Raab C Brexit, the Secretary of State for Cluelessness said, “I hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this, but if you look at the UK and look at how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing.”
You can actually see France from Dover, but possibly Dominic thought it was really South Africa or one of those other former Commonwealth Countries allegedly so eager to sign up to the Brexiteers’ Empire 2.0. Dominic thought that British goods and services didn’t go on a ferry boat, but were wheeched across one of Boris Johnson’s fantasy bridges.
When Dominic discovers the complexities of the Irish border issue, he’s going to have a melt down. Or he would, if he gave a toss. But he cares about Northern Ireland, or Scotland for that matter, about as much as he cares about Jeremy Corbyn’s discussions with a Bolivian alpaca wool weaving collective.
Dominic once authored a pro-Brexit tome called Britannia Unchained, in which he averred that British workers were idle. Clearly Dominic was idle during geography lessons. Next week there will be an official communique from the Brexit department acknowledging that the Brexit secretary hadn’t quite understood the religious persuasion of the Pope or the woodland toilet habits of bears.
Mind you, here in Scotland we should be used to this sort of geographical illiteracy from the Tories, as we have a Secretary of State for Scotland who thinks that his job is to represent the UK cabinet in Scotland and not to represent Scotland in the UK cabinet. Not possessing the most basic understanding of what your job is supposed to be is very much a Conservative trait.
The Dover-Calais crossing deals with 2.5 million commercial vehicles annually, carrying goods worth almost £120 million, or about 17% of the UK’s exports. If you’re the government minister responsible for upending the UK’s existing trade relations and arrangements and replacing them with a shiny new Brexit, you’d imagine you ought to know that.
The really scary thing here isn’t so much that the Brexit Secretary, who was a leading proponent of Brexit during the pauchled referendum, is so clueless about the importance of ferry ports to an island and the fundamental facts about UK trade, it’s that he didn’t think there was anything wrong with admitting his ignorance in public.
He’s too ignorant to realise just how ignorant he is.
There hasn’t been such a gob-smacking admission of Tory political ignorance since the Conservative Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Karen Bradley admitted in September that she hadn’t realised that people in the province vote along sectarian lines. So not that long ago really. Clearly this is not an instance of one ignorant apple in the barrel, it’s the entire rotten Tory orchard. If you hadn’t quite understood the full extent of Conservative ineptitude and rank incompetence, you do now. These are people who not only don’t know the fundamentals about the jobs they do which affect your life, they’re proud of their ignorance.
The tragedy for Scotland within the UK is that there’s nothing we can do about these ignoramuses. We’re stuck with them. Independence might not prevent political idiots from getting into office, but at least we’d be able to get rid of them at the next election.
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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