Iain Macwhirter, political commentator for the Herald and Sunday Herald, told IndependenceLive.net recently: "It is clear that the Brexit process hasn’t just meant that the U.K. is leaving the European Union. It means that there is going to be a new [U.K.] Union afterwards and it is going to be much more of an incorporating Union. A much tighter controlled Union and a much more centralised Union."
During the interview Macwhirter went on to say: "it looks like decision time, doesn’t it really!".
Turning to the impact on Scotland of recent events in the U.S., Macwhirter said: "what we’ve also seen, distressingly, with the kowtowing, the obsequies attitude towards the new president of the United States is that it won’t just be Brexit U.K. that we’ll be in. It will be Trump U.K. because we’re so desperate to strike some kind of trade deal, for whatever reason – it seems like a mystery why you would give up a perfectly good free trade deal with Europe, to go and try and have one with America, but that’s what they intend to do. The kind of concessions that are going to be made to Donald Trump in the process, I think, most people here will find profoundly distasteful and have al sorts of implications for the standards and integrity of the National Health Service, Health and Safety, agriculture, GM crops, fraking, you name it, it is all going to be down there, and I think that is going to make people think very carefully whether or not they want to continue down the road of a U.K. which is basically under the tutelage of Donald Trump.”
Transcript of video clip below
“It is clear that the Brexit process hasn’t just meant that the U.K. is leaving the European Union. It means that there is going to be a new [U.K.] Union afterwards and it is going to be much more of an incorporating Union. A much tighter controlled Union and a much more centralised Union.
“I think before the whole Brexit process began there was a sense, even among many in Westminster, that the U.K. was moving towards a kind of federal constitution, where there would be a division of powers. The Scottish Parliament, on domestic legislation at least, would be its own boss. It would decide what the laws were to be in Scotland about these areas, these domestic areas – you know, education, as I said, the law, criminal justice, the environment etc. And that the border issues, maybe like currency, defence and foreign affairs, would be managed on a U.K. bases. And there are plenty of models for that obviously. You have in America and Canada, states like Quebec which have extraordinary latitude. States in America like Oregon which legalised cannabis, which has the power to set its own statutory minimum wage. These are very significant powers.
“So there was a feeling that this was kind of where we were moving. That almost by default Briton was become a federal entity. And I think that really the Brexit process has exposed that, clearly that is not the case. And the test of this was really the Sewel Convention – whether or not the Scottish Parliament now had a right to exercise sovereignty in the areas of its own responsibility? Or did it now? You can’t have two ways about this. Clearly it does not. Now this doesn’t mean that Holyrood is useless. It can still pass lots of laws. But it will always under the understanding that theses [new laws] are explicitly endorsed by Westminster, and they can be taken away whenever necessary. And that will be important coming down the Brexit road when we get to the Great Repeal Act, Great Repeal Bill, which will supposedly repatriate all the laws that are currently exercised by Brussels – agriculture and fisheries and what have you. [Control over these laws] will go to Westminster initially. There is a suggestion that Scotland will get more powers as a result of this process, but, if it does – and I doubt it very much – they will on the bases of this provisional nature. That so long as they accord with Westminster’s view of things, then the Scottish Parliament will be allowed to exercise its power. As soon as there is a constitutional issues, a constitutional confrontation it will be asserted that the U.K. has the over ridding authority.”
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