“The UK is becoming a failed state, focused on enriching a Tory elite and impoverishing the rest.” Not the words of an excitable Momentum agitator or a red-faced ranter in the Question Time audience, but of a Scottish Cabinet minister.
Mike Russell, Nicola Sturgeon’s Brexit secretary, was tweeting angrily in response to a report on UK poverty by UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston. Austerity, said Alston, had been “punitive, mean-spirited and callous”. “For almost one in every two children to be poor in twenty-first century Britain is not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster, all rolled into one.”
Russell’s rage mirrors a sudden burst of furious rhetoric across the pro-independence movement. The calamity being made of Brexit, and the sense that the SNP government is largely being ignored by Theresa May and her ministers, is driving calls for a second indyref to be held sooner rather than later. This was not in the plan. In her conference speech last month, Sturgeon asked for “pragmatism, perseverance and patience” from her supporters, warning that “our task now is to step up our work to update and strengthen the case.”
It looks like that restraint will not be forthcoming. This week Patrick Harvie, leader of the Scottish Greens, whose votes the minority SNP administration relies on to pass its legislation, said there was now enough clarity around Brexit for Scotland to vote again on independence. Mhairi Black, the young and influential SNP MP, said that if the Westminster government collapses and a general election is called “then it’s time for the SNP to put independence at the core of the manifesto.”
Sturgeon’s cautious approach to a rerun is irritating some. Tony Banks, a wealthy businessman and SNP donor who helped fund the 2014 Yes campaign, accused the First Minister of “getting to be as wishy-washy as Maybot!” Writing on Facebook, he said: “The democracy we live in does…
