Brexit bill progress is ‘nail in the coffin’ of the union, nationalist MPs say

Boris Johnson's latest Brexit bill got loads of opposition during its Third Reading

Union Jack and European flag

The Scottish National Party have said Johnson’s Brexit bill is the “final nail in the coffin” for the broken union, with Scotland now facing being dragged out of the EU against their will by a government with no mandate in their country.

The bill was rushed through Westminster yesterday, Thursday 9 January, at its Third Reading on Tory votes, despite 90 per cent of Scottish MPs opposing the bill and Scottish parliament withholding consent.

SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford MP said: “Scotland has been completely ignored by Westminster and Boris Johnson is imposing Brexit on us despite the Scottish Parliament withholding consent and ninety per cent of Scotland’s MPs opposing this deeply damaging bill.”

“The SNP won a landslide victory at the general election – winning eighty percent of seats on a mandate to hold an independence referendum. The people of Scotland must now have a choice over our future, so we can remain at the heart of Europe as an equal and independent country,” Blackford added.

MPs from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also chimed in to show their opposition for the Prime Minister’s bill, following its third reading.

Pete Wishart, SNP MP for Perth and North Perthshire said: “Could we just dispense with this one country, one nation business?

“This is just the sweep of Brexit harking back to the 19th century and probably to opium wars and gunboat diplomacy”

“The United Kingdom is a Union of nations, and all of them have a particular set of views about Brexit. In Scotland, we overwhelmingly reject their Brexit, and that has to be recognised in the way we go forward from now on.”

MP Angus Brendan MacNeil of Na h-Eileanan an Iar for the SNP added: “The reality is that 43% of people voting in a first-past-the-post system is why all this is happening. It is not that the great British whatever he wants to call them decided it, but that 43% in first past the post and the winner takes all. It is not the great sweep of the proletariat or the bourgeois, or whatever he wants to call it.”

He continued: “Numbers do not matter to a Tory party that was once obsessed with numbers. This is just the sweep of Brexit harking back to the 19th century and probably to opium wars and gunboat diplomacy.

“The unfortunate thing is that the rest of us across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are going to pay a very heavy price for their lunacy.”

“That is where their minds are stuck, sadly. The unfortunate thing is that the rest of us across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are going to pay a very heavy price for their lunacy.”

Then Dr Philippa Whitford, of the SNP for Central Ayrshire said that Scotland has rejected the bill “because it fails to take into account the fact that the people of Scotland voted overwhelmingly to remain in the European Union” and because it’s “not fit for purpose as it continues to undermine the fundamental principles of the Scotland Act 1998 by reserving to the UK Parliament powers that would otherwise be devolved to the Scottish Parliament upon the UK leaving the European Union”.

Tommy Sheppard, Edinburgh East SNP MP, said: “I am against the proposals because they will impoverish the people whom I represent.

“I do not say that this catastrophe will be visited on us the day after exit day; I do not even say that it will happen in the weeks and months after that; but there will be a slow, insidious, grinding reduction in the living standards of the people of this country, until we wake up in a few years’ time and realise that we are so much poorer than we might have been, and so much poorer than similar communities in mainland Europe.”

Lucy Skoulding is a freelance reporter at Left Foot Forward. Follow her on Twitter.

One Response to “Brexit bill progress is ‘nail in the coffin’ of the union, nationalist MPs say”

  1. Julia Gibb

    We must not forget that Scotland relies on English money and would go bankrupt instantly if this were ever cut off.

    Every Scot must pray that England never votes to expel us from the free money union.

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