Scottish Independence Referendum

Chris Clarkson Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Nokes. I am getting a sense of déjà vu. We basically had the same debate on Thursday, but having the same debate twice in a row is an apt metaphor for the nationalists’ approach to referendums.

I was going to launch into a polemic about the sanctity of the settled will of the Scottish people and the importance of consent in our democracy, but it would be entirely wasted on the SNP. The party is so out of touch and arrogant that it claims to speak for an entire nation, and is venal enough to claim that any criticism of its knavish regime—I am mindful of your call for parliamentary language, Ms Nokes—in Holyrood is talking Scotland down. It is certainly not going to respect the outcome of a once-in-a-generation referendum.

Ad nauseam, we hear from nationalist Members that the panacea for all the world’s ills is separation. If only we can ignore the myriad details they forgot to work out, Scotland will be off and up into the sunlit uplands. Then of course we get the other logical fallacy: that an independent Scotland handing over control of its laws and economy to an unelected Commission in Brussels will somehow make Scotland more prosperous and free.

SNP Members have set themselves up as pound-shop Bravehearts—I say “pound shop”, but we do not actually know what currency they would be using in an independent Scotland—peddling the fantasy that a major constitutional issue can simply be passed. Meanwhile, support for the SNP is on the slide, as the murky goings-on at Holyrood become more public, and support for independence slides with it. No doubt the goalposts will be shifted again after May’s poll to suit the realpolitik of whatever the outcome is.

The same self-important, peevish nationalism that underpins the SNP’s vision for Scotland, creating an inward-looking, less tolerant country, is still writ large. After three years of hard graft to get Brexit done, we are moving back out into the world, which has always been the United Kingdom’s true place. We are a trading nation, and nowhere is that clearer than here at home, where trade between Scotland and the home nations is three times greater than with the EU27. Public spending in Scotland is more than £1,600 per person higher than the UK average, which means that every person in Scotland benefits from levels of public spending substantially above those of the rest of the UK. The SNP wants to take that away. The SNP’s perspective on separation would make Scotland poorer, less democratic and less outward-looking.

I fully accept that some people wanted a different future for the UK in 2016, but we have a responsibility to one another to take the opportunities of our new reality and to make it work for everyone, not constantly stoke division and acrimony in pursuit of an ill-conceived separatism. The only way to ensure that Scotland can move forward as a full partner in our national recovery from covid and in our shared prosperity post Brexit is for those who have a vote in May’s Holyrood elections to cast both votes for the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party, the only party that has a clear and consistent position in our support for the Union and our desire to get on with the day job of looking after the interests of the people of Scotland.