The National:

TORIES are having a mighty hard time of arguing for “taking back control” through Brexit while simultaneously saying that Scotland and its parliament shouldn’t have any more control than it currently has.

The Conservatives have been furiously arguing that the Internal Market Bill, which gives UK ministers the powers to act unilaterally in devolved areas without consulting devolved parliaments, is actually a “power surge for Scotland”.

When the EU has even a whiff of influence over UK policy however, they decry the foreign interference.

The Scottish-born former international trade secretary Liam Fox, like just about every other Tory MP, hasn’t quite managed to grasp the irony.

Today, Fox proudly told the Commons of the time he explained the need for Brexit to some Americans.

He asked this (presumably not fictional) US audience how they would like Ottawa or Mexico City making decisions for them, with their own legislators unable to have any input whatsoever.

“We would never ever accept it,” they apparently told him.

How Scots might feel about a parliament in London making decisions for them is a question he conveniently ignored ...