Paranoia and bullish standover tactics.
The Irish prime minister has warned it would be a “very serious situation” if the UK government enacted legislation to scrap the bulk of the Northern Ireland protocol.
Micheal Martin said the legislation would amount to “economic vandalism” on Northern Ireland.
Mr Martin also said that the European Union wants to avoid a trade war, and that the issues around the protocol can be resolved through negotiation.
Last week, the bloc launched fresh legal action against the UK in retaliation for the prime minister’s Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which will effectively rip up key parts of the deal agreed by Mr Johnson and the EU in 2019.
“If this Bill is enacted, I think we’re into a very serious situation. But of course, no one in Northern Ireland and no one in the island of Ireland wants Northern Ireland to lose access to the EU market,” Mr Martin told the BBC’s Sunday Morning programme.
“I think that’s one consistent thread. I think if we have a complete unilateral reneging on an international agreement that the United Kingdom government itself signed up to, then of course we’re in a very serious situation.
“But we want to avoid that; nobody wants a trade war in any shape or form.
“We want this resolved. We believe it can be resolved with goodwill. I’ve met all of the political parties in Northern Ireland. I’ve met with industry in Northern Ireland. We believe we know where there’s a landing zone to resolve issues around the operation of the protocol, to give Northern Ireland the best chance in terms of access to the European Union market and the UK market. That would position Northern Ireland well in terms of inward investment.”
In the deal, both sides agreed to implement checks on plant and animal products crossing from Great Britain to Northern Ireland in order to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
The UK has insisted that its unilateral approach is the only option left to resolve the issues within the protocol if the EU refuses to fundamentally rewrite the terms of the deal.
However, Mr Martin said the legislation to undermine almost all aspects of the protocol was not acceptable.
“It represents unilateralism of the worst kind, in terms of honouring and adhering to international agreements that governments adhere to, and sign up to, and ratify in their parliaments,” Mr Martin added.
“We accept fully there are legitimate issues around the operation of the protocol, and we believe, with serious, sustained negotiations between the European Union and the United Kingdom government, those issues could be resolved.”
He said the legislation was “deeply concerning” for industry and businesses in Northern Ireland.
“In effect it represents a form of economic vandalism on Northern Ireland, because if we look at any objective data, it is now showing that the Northern Ireland economy is doing very well. Manufacturing is doing very well,” Mr Martin added.
“The dairy industry, the meat industry, the food industry generally, and agriculture are doing very well.
“There are certain areas where we can improve the protocol, and we should continue to do that.”
He also said that the EU is waiting for the United Kingdom to get “engaged in substantive negotiations”.
The dispute could ultimately lead to a trade war, which in turn could mean tariffs being implemented, or even the suspension of the entire Brexit deal between the UK and the European Union. However, Mr Martin said that all sides want to avoid that.
He said the Irish government and businesses in Northern Ireland were worried about the damage the legislation could cause to the region. He also said that businesses in general were doing well under the protocol.
“I feel that that story, about the sectors that are currently doing well, is not being articulated enough within the United Kingdom,” he added. “I would urge people in the British government to talk in more detail with Northern Ireland business, with the Brexit Business Working Group, to people in manufacturing, and different sectors of the economy.”
The boss of Britain's biggest budget airline has contradicted a minister’s assertion that Brexit is not to blame for the airport and airline chaos.
Johann Lundgren, chief executive of easyJet, said 8,000 job applications from European Union citizens have been rejected by his firm because candidates did not have permission to work in the UK.
Last week the aviation minister, Robert Courts, told MPs on the business select committee it was “not likely” that leaving the EU played a part in the chronic staff shortages afflicting aviation.
Mr Lundgren told The Independent: “The pool of people is smaller, it’s just maths.
“We have had to turn down a huge number of EU nationals because of Brexit. Pre-pandemic we would have turned down 2-2.5 per cent because of nationality issues,” Mr Lundgren said. “Now it’s 35-40 per cent.”
His comments came as Heathrow airport asked airlines flying from Terminals 2 and 3 to cancel 10 per cent of their schedules on Monday due to mounting problems with baggage handling. The chaos begain when a major system failure led to a build-up of a “baggage mountain” outside the Terminal 2.
On Wednesday, Mr Courts was asked about the role of Brexit in the current turmoil – which is currently causing around 200 flight cancellations daily to, from and within the UK.
He said: “On the evidence we have, it looks as if Brexit has little if anything to do with it.”
The easyJet chief executive was speaking after announcing easyJet’s summer schedule will shrink by 7 per cent in a bid to eliminate short-notice cancellations.
In a call with journalists, Mr Lundgren said that the airline had as many standby crew as in the summer of 2019.
He said there were “three severe events last week” involving air-traffic control restrictions.
“If you have a flight booked on the day and it gets cancelled, of course you will be disappointed and upset,” he said.
“We have to deal with it and do the best we can.”
In a statement earlier, easyJet said 86 per cent of capacity in the three months to the end of June 2022 had been sold, at fares 2 per cent higher than in 2019.
For the key months of July, August and September, 48 per cent of capacity has been booked so far – at fares 14 per cent up on pre-pandemic levels.
The British government has taken the first steps to unravelling its agreement with the EU on Northern Ireland – the so-called Northern Ireland protocol. Many Europeans are baffled by this. How can the government – which not only signed this legal agreement but negotiated it “word by word, comma by comma”, to quote the EU’s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier – just tear up a binding international treaty that only came into force last year?
But surprised, they are not. Not really. Because in its relationship with the EU, the UK is increasingly starting to behave like Russia – by unilaterally creating facts on the ground.
Of course, there are many obvious differences between what Russia is doing in Ukraine and what the UK is doing in Northern Ireland. Russia has launched a war to flush European influence out of Ukraine, while the UK is “only” deploying non-military obstruction. But there are striking similarities: Moscow and London deliberately violate international treaties they themselves signed and both antagonise the EU in order to further their geopolitical ambitions. Russia and the UK may be fierce adversaries in Ukraine. But their behaviour is driven by a similar deep and growing frustration with their own inability to exert geopolitical influence.
Russia and the UK both sit on the fringes of Europe. Both have always had one foot in Europe and one outside, geographically, politically and culturally. At times these ambiguities are politically useful. Both are former imperial powers that played an important role in Europe’s security architecture for centuries, and at the same time had most of their territory, subjects and interests outside Europe. Most of Russia’s landmass was in Asia, as difficult to keep in the fold as tropical outposts were for the British empire. Europe was just one of many chessboards on which Moscow and London made their geopolitical moves.
Decolonisation and the collapse of the Soviet Union changed this. London and Moscow felt weaker and this brought them closer to Europe. Partly to compensate for its colonial loss, the UK even became a member of the then European Communities in 1973. Russia never became a member of the EU. But after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 there were discussions about Russian Nato membership and Russian rapprochement with the EU internal market. Russia did become a member of the Council of Europe (the leading human rights organisation, encompassing 46 European member states) and even Eureka, the European innovation network. It also organised a structured, supposedly close partnership with Nato.
Both for Moscow and London, however, joining some European structures was a frustrating experience. At the Congress of Vienna, in 1814-15, Russia and Britain had together decided on the future of the continent with just three other large powers: the Habsburg empire, France and Prussia. But in postwar Europe, things didn’t work that way any more. In the EU and other European rules-based clubs, the big powers often had only as much influence as smaller member states. They were just one among many. Since 1945, Europe has been all about keeping large countries in check to protect smaller nations. All must play by the same rules.
This idea never went down well in London and Moscow, more comfortable as they are with power politics. They felt belittled, constrained and, sometimes, ridiculed. Thus began, almost at once, a slow process of alienation – away from Europe, and back to ghosts and fantasies.
Brexit did not fall from the sky. Nor did the war in Ukraine. Russia and the UK are now ready to bring about a world in which respect for power is the law, and where size of armed forces or landmass matters. Last year, in a profile of Boris Johnson in the Atlantic magazine, an aide to Johnson confirmed as much, saying that the UK could not keep supporting a multilateral, international system that was broken. Britain has been “living out a foreign policy of a world that has gone”, he said. With Beijing and Moscow showing everyone the limits of the rules-based order, “Britain can no longer afford to be a ‘status quo power’ naively trying to resurrect a defunct system.”
Russia and the UK are now the only large European countries outside the EU. But they are as dissatisfied outside European structures as they were inside them. Their resentment is undiminished. As an economic superpower, the EU projects its rules – embedding its values and principles – far beyond its borders. Its prosperity acts as a magnet for countries without imperial complex. When Ukraine concluded an association agreement with the EU, at its own request, Russia only saw one way to react: disruption. In 2014 it occupied parts of eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea, even though in 1994 Russia had explicitly guaranteed Ukrainian sovereignty (in exchange, Ukraine dismantled its nuclear arsenal). The same had happened to Georgia.
Unlike Russia, the UK has a long democratic tradition. But seeing the Northern Ireland protocol working well for the majority of citizens in Northern Ireland and that the Northern Irish economy is, post-Brexit, turning towards Ireland and the EU, the UK government has a similar kind of response as Russia when it sees Ukraine drifting towards Europe: disruption. It turns to its “former great power” toolbox to undermine the protocol, such as facilitating smugglers targeting the EU’s single market.
At a conference in Berlin on Sunday, Wolfgang Schmidt, the head of the chancellery in Germany – and the closest adviser to the chancellor, Olaf Scholz – identified what he believed was at stake for the EU since the invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s attempt to “turn back the clock”. It was, he said, “whether power is allowed to prevail over the law”.
Finally, both Russia and Britain were always keen to see European powers weaken each other. That reflex is still there. The European Union, with all its imperfections, is the polar opposite of these medieval power games, and is therefore a fundamental threat to their outdated vision of the world. This is why they are now, each in their own way, out to undermine the EU.
Caroline de Gruyter is a Dutch author and Europe correspondent for NRC Handelsblad
Exclusive: officials’ comments put paid to idea displeasure with UK is limited to Irish caucus on Capitol Hill
The US government has warned that Boris Johnson’s move to unilaterally axe some of the Northern Ireland Brexit arrangements protocol was a matter of continuing concern and “not conducive” to a trade deal.
Senior officials have hit back at suggestions that the lack of public commentary by the Biden administration meant it was not troubled by the move to bring in new laws to ditch part of the Brexit deal signed in 2020.
They said the administration recognised there were “challenges” with the protocol, but added that unilateral action was not in anyone’s best interests.
“It’s fair to say that the administration has concerns about the legislation. The administration does not believe that unilateral steps are going to be the most effective way to address the challenges facing the implementation of the protocol, and that our strong desire remains to see the UK and the EU return to talks and find a negotiated agreement,” a senior administration official said.
The remarks came after Johnson’s government defied a chorus of criticism and the threat of a trade war with the EU to push ahead with legislation to enable unilateral action and scrap checks on goods going into Northern Ireland from Great Britain as mandated under the NI protocol.
They also put paid to inferences that the criticism by a recent bipartisan congressional delegation was limited to the Irish caucus on Capitol Hill and heavily influenced by Sinn Féin.
The Biden administration has also clarified remarks by the White House spokesperson last week that there would be no link between the UK’s unilateral action and trade talks between Washington and London. “It is true that there is no formal linkage between the protocol and a free trade agreement, but the current situation does not create a conducive environment,” the insider said.
Asked about the legality of the move, the senior source countered: “I think as a broad matter, it’s a desire to avoid unilateral approaches and see a return to negotiations, to be able to reach a negotiated agreement with the EU that’s adopted in UK law.”
The Biden administration conveyed its concerns to the Northern Ireland minister, Conor Burns, when he was dispatched to Washington to convince the White House that the move was necessary because the protocol risked a return to violence.
“We view a negotiated resolution to differences over the protocol as a net win for Northern Ireland’s economy and political stability in the long term for all communities and believe that economic prosperity is in everyone’s interest,” the source said.
The UK introduced draft legislation last week that it said would enable it to scrap checks on goods destined to remain in Northern Ireland. Johnson claimed the move would lead to “relatively trivial” measures. But it has enraged Brussels, which is now threatening legal action, and threatens to split the Conservative party.
Rees-Mogg's retained EU law dashboard announcement - snap verdict
During the 2016 referendum campaign Brexiters were often asked to identify EU regulations that they wanted to abolish if Britain left the EU. Often campaigners found it hard to give a credible answer, and on at least one occasion Boris Johnson himself - who ought to have been better briefed on these matters than most other people - came unstuck when he blamed Brussels for smoked kipper regulations that originated in the UK.
While the Brexiters were successful in persuading many people that free movement was a problem, on EU “red tape” and regulation, by and large they failed to make a convincing case.
But they have not given up trying. When Jacob Rees-Mogg was appointed to his current job in February, he was given the title “minister for Brexit opportunities” so that he could devote himself to identifying the offending EU red tape left clogging up the statute book.
One of his first moves was to launch a public consultation on what regulations could be abolished. The initiative was mocked, because it suggested that Rees-Mogg did not have much of a clue himself as to what needed to go.
Four months on, he still does not seem to have much of an agenda. Today’s announcement essentially just repeats his Sun article, with the addition of a website.
Earlier this month my colleague Aubrey Allegretti reported that Rees-Mogg wanted to be able to announce what would effectively be a four-year sunset clause, after which all retained EU law would lapse. Other cabinet ministers considered this “impossible”, and the proposal was noticeably absent from today’s statement.
Rees-Mogg also had almost nothing to say about what leftover EU regulations might be surplus to requirements. About the only specific one he referred to was one relating to “the power of vacuum cleaners”, which he suggested was not a matter that should “trouble Her Majesty’s government”.
It is six years after the 2016 EU referendum, and Brexit has been delivered. But all is not necessary well.
Polling conducted by Savanta ComRes in October found that just 36 per cent think the project has been a success, with 52 per cent considering it a failure.
Here are six of the biggest enduring problems Brexit has caused to mark six years since the big vote.
1) Food rotting in Britain's fields
The end of free movement has made it harder and more bureaucratic for seasonal agricultural labourers to visit the UK, so many have cut it out of their annual schedule.
British residents have shown little interest in doing the piecework at UK farms, so thousands of tonnes of crops rotted in fields during the UK's picking season this year.
Tory MP Roger Gale, who represents the community of Thanet, is among Conservatives to sound the alarm. He told the prime minister in parliament that one grower in his constituency had had to trash hundreds of thousands of pounds of produce.
Ministers say the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Work and Pensions are launching a campaign "to raise awareness of career opportunities" in crop picking among British workers.
But there appears to have been little success so far, with growers cutting output for the coming season for fear they will not be able to harvest what they plant.
Food industry leaders have warned that the situation is almost certain to worsen unless the government urgently extends a pilot scheme which allowed in 30,000 temporary workers this year.
The National Farmers’ Union has called on ministers to allow in at least another 50,000 foreign workers to pick crops, and tens of thousands more to process them.
2) Surging inflation
Britain is regarded as an "outlier" in the financial world for its particular high inflation, with analysts blaming Brexit.
While the cost of living crisis has many causes, only in Britain are price increases so severe. The ONS on Wednesday confirmed annual inflation is now at a record 9.1 per cent.
Citigroup, Bank of America and Standard Bank are among US financial institutions to warn this week that UK inflation will be higher for years to come due to immigration controls and supply chain shortages.
“Inflation in the UK will be stickier over the medium to long-term because of Brexit,” said Vasileios Gkionakis, head of European FX strategy at Citigroup.
A report from the London School of Economics released in April found that new trade barriers have driven a 6 per cent increase in UK food prices – one of the contributing factors of surging inflation.
3) British fisherman facing ruin
New bureaucracy introduced by Brexiteers has hurt the UK's fishing industry, with some long-running firms forced to close due to the extra costs leaving the EU has imposed.
The situation is particularly difficult for exporters of shellfish who face not only new paperwork and catch certificates, but delays at the border that can spoil and entire time-sensitive consignment.
Boris Johnson has blamed exporters for not filling in forms correctly. Some shellfish exports to the EU are also now banned completely.
Fishing chiefs described the Brexit deal as a “betrayal” which failed to secure many promised benefits.
4) Meltdowns at UK airports
As Covid travel restrictions lift and international travel returns, another Brexit problem is emerging: airport chaos.
Largely disguised during the pandemic, airlines now say they do not have enough staff to cover surging demand and say EU exit is to blame.
Airline bosses such as Ryanair chief Michael O'Leary said the chaos was “completely to do with Brexit”.
Like in so many other sectors, the disruption appears to have has been caused by a shortage of workers. Jobs were cut back during Covid due to lower demand for two years: but now the aviation industry cannot recruit.
Steve Heapy, the CEO of airline Jet2, said EU withdrawal had taken “hundreds of thousands, if not millions” of people out of the jobs market.
The government blames mismanagement by airlines, but Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said ministers had to ensure that "those who were in those jobs before, who’ve gone back to their country of origin in the EU, are encouraged to come back".
5) A shortage of lorry drivers
The government was forced to launch an emergency visa scheme for lorry drivers last year after the country was faced with a 100,000 person HGV driver shortage.
While the shortfall has many causes, changes to rules following Brexit made it harder for drivers to work in the UK and customs procedures are said to have made their job more complicated – causing many to simply work elsewhere.
As of May 2022 Logistics UK says the number of HGV drivers in employment is still falling, but "not falling as significantly as in recent quarters". The industry group hopes this means the problem can be resolved soon.
6) Mobile roaming charges make a comeback
Anyone who got used to using their phone abroad in recent years will be in for a shock.
Roaming charges were abolished by the EU in June 2017, but they have made a comeback in a big way since Britain left the bloc.
Three, EE and Vodafone have all announced they will bring back roaming charges.
The true economic impact of Brexit may never be known, Lord Frost has said.
Speaking on the sixth anniversary of the Brexit vote, the former minister said it may never become clear whether leaving the EU had brought any economic dividend as there was “so much else going on”.
Lord Frost, who negotiated the Brexit deal before resigning over the Government’s broader direction, said: “I’m not sure it is ever going to be clear in that sense whether it’s succeeded or failed because so much else is going on and extracting the causality about this is always going to be extremely difficult.”
Appearing at the UK in a Changing Europe think tank’s annual conference on Wednesday, Lord Frost insisted Brexit was working, although it was still unfinished.
He said: “We have no cause for regrets about the decision the country has taken and the solutions to the remaining problems are not to be found in going backwards, but in completing the process and following through on its logic.”
On the economic impact, Lord Frost said there was “a huge amount of noise in the figures” from the pandemic, supply chain disruption and the war in Ukraine, making it “hard to be confident what if any changes in UK trade are due to Brexit”.
While he noted that there had been “some transitional impact on trade”, he said comparisons with other major economies suggested there was “no obvious Brexit-related lag”.
But he urged Brexit supporters to be “honest” about the “trade-offs” involved in leaving the EU instead of “pretending nothing is going on”.
He said: “I don’t think it’s reasonable to say, as some pro-Brexit people do, ‘nothing to see here in the figures, don’t bother looking at them, it really is not important’.
“I don’t think that’s fair, you have to look at the figures, they’re telling you something, I just don’t believe they bear the constructions that are put on them at the moment.”
Lord Frost added the “crucial test” was about democracy, arguing that Brexit had delivered democracy because “we can now change everything by elections”.
He said: “Democracy counts. Brexit automatically delivers democracy. So it is working.”
The peer went on to say that Brexit was “not fully complete yet”, with more work needing to be done to address the Northern Ireland Protocol and remove the UK from the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Following the announcement by Brexit opportunities minister Jacob Rees-Mogg of plans to scrap EU regulations on Wednesday, Lord Frost added that Brexit was “not a thing in itself” but “the beginning of a broader project of national renewal”.
He welcomed Mr Rees-Mogg’s proposals, saying he hoped they would “kick off a different approach” to bringing “meaningful” reform.
Boris Johnson has confirmed he is considering new steel tariffs despite concerns the move could break international rules, putting him on course for another major row with the EU.
The prime minister is reportedly drawing up plans to slap “safeguard” limits of steel imports from several developing countries, and extend existing tariffs already imposed on China and others.
But critics have warned the move to widen tariffs will “violate” World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, with the EU ambassador to Britain warning against any “protectionism”.
Lord Geidt, the PM’s ex-ethics adviser, cited steel tariff plans in his resignation letter earlier this month – saying he had been put in the “odious position” of being asked to license a breach of the rules.
Mr Johnson said on Sunday he wanted UK steel to enjoy the “same protections” other EU steel economies have – arguing that the industry was going through a hard time due to energy prices.
“I think it is reasonable for UK steel to have the same protections that other European, absolutely every other European steel economy does,” he told reporters at the G7 summit in Germany.
The PM added: “The difficulty is, is that possible to do while staying within our WTO, our World Trade Organisation obligations? That’s the problem. But these are tough choices that you have to make.”
Mr Johnson’s government proposed on Thursday to extend for a further two years an existing package of tariffs, and quotas on five steel products to protect domestic steelmakers.
However, the Sunday Telegraph said wider measures were being finalised for announcement in the coming week. No 10 is preparing to hit several developing countries with new “safeguard” import limits, according to the newspaper.
A government figure opposed to the widening of tariffs said it would “screw the economy” and was “anti-Conservative”, adding: “It is a total violation of the WTO rules.”
But Mr Johnson insisted that Britain should not have to remove tariffs without other European countries doing it too. “I don’t think that’s the right way forward. I want another solution.”
Asked about the plans, the UK ambassador to the EU Joao Vale de Almeida warned that Brussels would be “very tough” on any breach of trade rules.
“I don’t think protectionism is the solution to any of our problems,” he told Sky News on Sunday. “Our course we need to be attentive to the rules of the game. When we find this kind of non-compliance, we are very tough, as needs be.”
The plan to override parts of the protocol, agreed by Mr Johnson as part of the Brexit withdrawal deal, sparked outrage in Brussels and raised fears of a trade war if the EU decides to take retaliatory action on tariffs and other controls.
Police have seized amplifiers and speakers used by a long-running anti-Brexit protest outside the House of Parliament, under a new anti-protest law pushed through by Priti Patel.
Steve Bray and his campaign group have been a long-running fixture on the pavement on Parliament Square – blasting protest songs and confronting Tory MPs.
But on Tuesday police confiscated Mr Bray's equipment using new powers in the government's controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act – which took effect from midnight.
Around 15 officers this morning descended on the long-running demonstration, warning the protesters that if they resisted they would be arrested.
Home Secretary Priti Patel's new law extended a "controlled area" around parliament to include Parliament Square and other side streets, where the protest has based itself.
Police wasted no time to crack down on the dissenters, confiscating the equipment just 10 hours after they gained the powers to do so.
Speaking after the incident, Mr Bray told The Independent: “They are just about to arrest me if I put the amp on again.”
The demonstrator said the clampdown was “absolutely illegal".
"Human rights have been superseded by crass Tory laws. A lot of this law was aimed at people like me, XR (Extinction Rebellion). It's shocking in a democracy when it comes to this but it needs to be tested," he said.
And he added: “We'll be going back on again. We have had two warnings already. They have said a third time they're going to arrest me … (they have warned of) seizure of equipment and arrest… If I put the amplifier back on. So I'm gonna go with an anti fascist song called Bella Ciao.”
Asked if he was prepared to be arrested, he said: “Yes.” He added: “It's not just sleepwalking into a fascist state. It's here. It's here now.”
He said his message for the home secretary was: “Up yours, Priti Patel. You’re a fascist. Go to hell Priti.”
It is understood officers warned Mr Bray that if he continued to use the equipment it would be seized, and that if he resisted, he would be arrested.
A minister has suggested the SNP may have “some kind of idea of a future deal with Vladimir Putin” for energy in the event of independence, as the Government resisted calls for a referendum.
Business minister Greg Hands made the remark as the House of Commons reacted to Nicola Sturgeon’s intention to hold a second referendum on Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom on October 19 2023.
Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions, SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford told MPs that the Conservatives “don’t have the right to block Scottish democracy”.
At a session of questions to ministers for Scotland, business minister Greg Hands took aim at the SNP’s energy policy.
He said: “They’re anti-nuclear, they’re anti-oil and gas – it’s hard to see where they think they are going to get their energy from in the event of independence.
“Perhaps they have some kind of idea of a future deal with Vladimir Putin.”
He was reacting to a question about carbon capture and storage from Labour MP Fleur Anderson (Putney), who said issues such as the environment and addressing the rising cost of living have “taken a back seat to greater constitutional division”.
Labour shadow Scotland secretary Ian Murray warned Boris Johnson is a “gift to the SNP” and puts the union “at risk”.
Stepping in for Boris Johnson, who was away at a Nato summit, Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab said: “It’s not the right time.”
He also took aim at the SNP, saying: “Yesterday was nothing more than an attempt by the First Minister to deflect from her horrendous record in Government and to hinder the prospect of a future Labour government that replaces his (Mr Johnson’s). That’s what she fears the most.”
Elsewhere in the debate, Scotland minister Iain Stewart said the SNP’s plan for a second vote on Scottish independence is “unnecessary and unwanted”.
At PMQs, Mr Blackford said the Scottish First Minister has “set the date and started the campaign” for Scottish independence.
He added: “Scotland has already paid the price for not being independent.
“Westminster governments we did not vote for imposing policies we don’t support, breaking international law, dragging Scotland through a damaging Brexit we didn’t vote for and delivering deep austerity cuts.”
Mr Blackford said European countries were enjoying greater success by comparison, adding: “Why not Scotland? In the weeks and months ahead, we will make the positive case for independence. Will the opposition, if they can, make the case for continued Westminster rule?”
Mr Raab replied: “It’s not the right time for another referendum given the challenges that we face as one United Kingdom, and I think – he referred to some of the challenges in Scotland – the people of Scotland want their two governments to work together and we’re keen, willing, enthusiastic to do so.”
Mr Blackford countered: “The harsh reality is the Tories might fear democratic debate but they don’t have the right to block Scottish democracy.”
He added: “Just last year (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross) put it in his own words – a vote for the Scottish National Party is another vote for an independence referendum.
“Well, you won’t often hear me say this, but I agree with him, and so do the Scottish people. Scottish democracy will not be the prisoner of any prime minister in this place.
“So why is the UK Government scared of democracy, or has it simply run out of ideas to defend the failing Westminster system?”
