IT should give nobody any satisfaction to say of the current deeply troubling disorder in Northern Ireland that it was, alas, not only utterly predictable, but constantly predicted.

That is not to justify such wanton destruction from which no good can come. But given that Brexit is, so far, the dog that has not barked in the Scottish election it is important to remind people on this side of the Irish Sea how damaging the Brexit settlement continues to be even if the way in which it is playing out in Northern Ireland is even worse.

Brexit should actually be at the very top of the election agenda here because it illustrates that nothing good can come of continuing to live in the state we are in.

The National:

Whilst the fact that Boris Johnson is already reneging on what he agreed has further severely damaged his and the UK’s profile in Europe, there is little doubt that the treaty will finally be ratified by the European Parliament later this month. But that will not ease the problems that have seen, according to the Food and Drink Federation, using HMRC data, a drop in UK sales to the EU of 75% in January.

Much of that particularly affects Scottish produce – salmon exports for example were down 98% – yet the full and final disastrous effect will not be known until sometime in 2022, given the phased implementation of border checks.

We do know however that some UK citizens are now having to return from their homes in Spain and France, caught by residence restrictions; that there is a growing shortage of labour in health and social care, hospitality and agriculture just as the Covid lockdowns begin to ease; that 10 EU countries have already ceased to extradite their nationals to face justice in Scotland; that our students are shut out from the new Erasmus scheme launched last week; that it is likely that our universities will be excluded from research co-operation in key areas such as quantum tech and that there is rioting on the streets of Northern Ireland as the Unionist community chafes at the inevitable, if largely invisible, border that now exists in the Irish Sea whilst the nationalist community expresses its fear that the hard won benefits of the Good Friday Agreement will be eroded.

All this could have been avoided if the type of Brexit that Johnson, Michael Gove and all the rest were talking about in 2016 had actually come to pass – a Brexit which included membership of the single market and the customs union. There would have been problems but nothing as severe as they are now, which is the result of the hardest of hard exits and the complete refusal of the UK to cooperate and compromise.

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Some of it could even have been mitigated by accepting last June that the implementation extension being offered by the EU was essential, if only to put in place and test out the systems that were needed.

None of that happened and those failures were made worse for Northern Ireland by Johnson insisting – and these are his actual words – that there would be “no forms, no checks, no barriers of any kind” for trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, though he knew that could not be the case.

The implication of course – and he knew this too – was that there would be a similar laissez faire approach to trade between the UK and the EU and that lie was given further currency by those who negotiated the departure. He and they flatly denied all evidence to the contrary, wriggled out of any inconvenient truth which intervened and went on asserting that it would be business as usual, even though they were being told by anyone who knew anything that could not, and would not, be the case.

Yet it is a sad truth that all the UK political parties are culpable in this massive failure of governance. The Tories are arrogantly and ideologically fixated, Labour is terrified that it will never again be able to call on working class support in England (which may be proved by the coming Hartlepool by-election if the early polls are accurate) and the Lib Dems have utterly deserted the cause, refusing to allow the word Europe to cross their lips as the current Scottish campaign shows.

READ MORE: Brexiteers bear sole responsibility for the chaos in Northern Ireland

There is only one solution to this problem which is crippling many Scottish businesses, reducing national economic opportunity, driving many of our valued fellow citizens out of the country and blighting the life chances of our young people.

That is to re-enter the EU as a full member – not to accept a half-way house that doesn’t solve the key problems, but to start on the road back to normality by voting for independence.

That will kick off the necessary negotiations which we would enter, and complete, with much good will from our EU partners, with the advantage of already observing almost all of the acquis and with a prospect of prosperity that is now absent from a post EU Britain and will be for the foreseeable future.