DONALD Trump’s election as the next president of the United States has underlined that working closely with Europe has to be “at the heart” of an independent Scotland.
Speaking to the Sunday National in the aftermath of last week’s vote, SNP MP Stephen Gethins said that although Scotland occupied a strategic position in the north of Europe, it could not stand alone in terms of security.
“Common ground must be found with our European partners and we need to look at a common foreign and security policy much more seriously,” he said.
Leaving the EU has made the UK as a whole more vulnerable, he added.
“Brexit was a backward step in terms of our security as we are less secure because we are outside the EU,” he said. “Reassessing that relationship with Europe is an absolute priority.”
The twin successes of recent Russian foreign policy in Europe, Gethins argued, were Trump’s election win, which is expected to result in greater US isolationism, and Brexit, which has made the UK less secure.
“The UK is more isolated now than it has been in the post-war period – and remember, the questions of security are not just in terms of hard security but also in terms of things like food and drink security and this is where being outside of the single market makes us less secure,” he said.
Gethins said the best decision Prime Minister Keir Starmer could make after the Trump election would be to integrate with the EU.
“Starmer needs to open talks with the EU about finding more common ground on a common foreign and security policy but he also needs to at least reconsider his opposition to rejoining the single market and customs union,” he said.
“It is not about what the Tory right thinks is right – it is about what is right.”
The former director of the Scottish Centre on European Relations Kirsty Hughes said Trump’s election had just made the world a “scarier” place.
“The degree of uncertainty and instability at the moment we have got in terms of the Middle East, Ukraine, Russia and China and then you add Trump means that an unpredictable and unstable world has just become more unstable and that is pretty scary,” she said.
She said that Trump’s election underlined the folly of Brexit but even though Starmer was trying to open up a security and defence dialogue with the EU, he was hampered by refusing to cross the “red lines” on Brexit drawn up by former Tory prime ministers Theresa May and Boris Johnson.
“As far as EU discussions and foreign policy discussions go, the UK has given away a huge chunk of its influence because of Brexit and that fact does not disappear just because everybody is talking more and being nicer to each other,” she said.
Even though Labour’s Foreign Minister David Lammy attended the EU’s foreign ministers’ meeting, Hughes said this did not mean the UK would be reinserted into all the multiple levels of meetings between diplomats.
Hughes also pointed out that Trump was intending to bring in tariffs on imports into the US which has repercussions for UK trade already badly hit by Brexit.
“Rationally and logically that will add to the pressure to rethink Brexit but I don’t think politically, from what we have seen from Keir Starmer, will be how he reacts at all,” she said.
Despite the majority of voters in the UK now believing Brexit was a big mistake, Starmer’s Labour was too wary of the right and far-right to encourage another Brexit debate, Hughes argued.
“He will have seen the right and far-right doing well in the US and knows we have Nigel Farage and support for Reform so he will not be wanting to encourage the UK far-right by reigniting the Brexit debate,” she said.
“However, if you are sticking to Theresa May’s and Boris Johnson’s red lines on the single market and customs union, then how much you can do together is limited.”
