Carolyn Leckie: The SNP deserve credit amid the Brexit shambles

But I voted Remain in 2016 because I never for a moment bought into the naive belief of many of the left that crashing out of the European Union would benefit the working classes. As Operation Yellowhammer – the Government’s classified contingency plan leaked to the Sunday Times – spells out, the people who will feel the most pain of a No-Deal Brexit are those on low incomes, as the cost of food, fuel and other essentials soars. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that low-income households will take a hit of almost £500 a year – the equivalent of working nearly two weeks without a penny in pay.

Among the seven key bullet points in the introduction to the UK Government’s report is one vague statement that is loaded with hidden meaning: “Private-sector companies’ behaviour will be governed by commercial considerations, unless they are influenced otherwise.”

Or, to put it more clearly, there will be no constraints on profiteering. It is now open season for the very rich and powerful, who are poised to milk in the profits from No-Deal Brexit disaster capitalism.

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Over this past year, as we’ve careered towards the edge, one party has played a blinder. I’m not a member of the SNP and I have plenty of differences with the party leadership. But in their Brexit tactics, they have stood head and shoulders above all the UK parties. On one side of the House of Commons, the governing party is divided between dithering, ineffectual, soft Brexiteers and fanatical hard-line British nationalists who are now well and truly in command. On the other side we have an opposition, most of whose MPs despise their own leadership and who are using Brexit as a cover under which to prosecute their internal power struggle.

And then there are the LibDems. The passionate Remain party, which would do anything to stop a No Deal … except work with the official opposition in the House of Commons. It’s no secret that Jeremy Corbyn is equivocal about Brexit. His lack of clarity reflects the great divide within his own support base, which straddles different generations and includes on one side radical young people who have a strong European identity and on the other older people in some of the poorest communities of the north of England who grew up in a different era.

But with the UK hurtling towards a No-Deal leap off the edge of the White Cliffs of Dover, Corbyn has at least tried to bring forward a credible plan to unite all those who want to avert the nightmare of No Deal. His effort was supported by the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens. But riding to the rescue of Boris Johnson and his henchmen rode the Liberal Democrats. And Chuka Umunna. And Anna Soubry. And Dominic Grieve and Oliver Letwin and others who names escape me. The self-appointed patron saints of the Remain movement who, just weeks away from D-Day, put their personal ambitions and petty jealousies above the interests of the people.

Jo Swinson flushed with her new-found fame, could barely conceal her disappointment. How dare Jeremy Corbyn, of all people, steal her glory? How dare he run away with her new crown? To justify her irresponsible sabotage of a credible plan,

Jo Swinson delivered a classic self-fulfilling prophecy. Corbyn couldn’t possibly win a majority, she insisted. Tory rebels and independents would never support it, she declared haughtily, hoping desperately that they would indulge her wishes.

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Had she immediately declared her support and appealed to her own party, plus Tory rebels and independents, to swallow their pride, and put to one side for a few weeks their political hostility to Corbyn to halt the greater by far of two evils, we might be in a different place this week. But Jo Swinson is no Nicola Sturgeon. She is, to be charitable about it, way out of her depth. Or to be less charitable, she would rather see people suffer the hardship of a hard Brexit rather than allow Labour to take the credit for stopping it.

And then there is the Blairite wing of the Labour Party, and its de-facto leader Tom Watson. Instead of joining with the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens to support the Labour plan, the man who is deputy leader of the party, no less, joined Jo Swinson on a platform to attack his own leader, Jeremy Corbyn. You really could not make this up. And lest we forget, this is the same Tom Watson who attacked a previous LibDem leader, Charles Kennedy as “unhelpful, ill-informed and anti-British” for condemning the illegal and catastrophic invasion of Iraq – since proven to be one of the most shameful episodes in Labour history.

Corbyn’s plan to force a vote of no confidence, scupper a No-Deal Brexit and trigger a General Election may not be possible now, because it has collided with the gigantic egos of the Plasticine generals of the Remain movement and the naked ambitions of some within his own inner circle. Perhaps a different way forward will be found, even at this 11th hour. But if it doesn’t, and we end up crashing out of the EU with a No-Deal Brexit on October 31, then make no mistake about it: Jo Swinson, Chuka Umunna, Tom Watson and the rest, will be complicit – and will deserve every particle of the infamy that will befall them.

In contrast, the SNP have shown themselves to be the most principled, flexible and sure-footed of the anti-Brexit forces. And to those who think the party’s leadership have been overly preoccupied with Europe in this time, at the expense of independence, I would gently suggest that we are now better placed than ever before to deliver a Yes vote.

And that’s at least partly because, in the midst of a colossal crisis with the potential to inflict damage on millions of people across the UK, Ireland and on the other side of the English Channel, the SNP have acted, as Aristotle sort of said, like a sober person among drunkards.

Scotland too incompetent to run its own affairs? Gie’s peace.