LABOUR are in a “conspiracy of silence” with the Tories about the harmful impacts of Brexit on the UK, top SNP figures have said on the third anniversary of leaving the EU.
Stephen Flynn, the party’s leader at Westminster, said the matching support for Brexit from Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak made clear there was “no route back to Europe” for Scotland as part of the UK.
And Angus Robertson, the Constitution Secretary, pointed to research suggesting Scotland had lost some £3.2 billion in tax revenues to Brexit – calculated as a fraction of the estimated £40bn lost by the UK as a whole.
The Scottish Greens also hit out at the “unmitigated disaster” of leaving the EU, taking specific aim at Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar (below) for having “loyally stuck to the line that has been set for him in London, rather than fighting for what people in Scotland actually voted for”.
Media experts including Stephen Cushion, a journalism professor at Cardiff University, have previously told the National that the silence on Brexit from top figures in Labour and the Tories has bled into the broadcast media.
Cushion said that services like the BBC or ITV should try to provide an “outside-Westminster perspective to see what the actual evidence base is”, rather than relying on balancing the views of the two main UK parties which means factors like Brexit are omitted from debate.
Robertson said: “Labour and the Tories are engaged in a disgraceful conspiracy of silence over the costs of Brexit which means that under Westminster control – regardless of who is in office at UK level – the damage will continue.
“But Scotland can have a better future. The Scottish Government is committed to giving the people of Scotland a choice in line with our democratic mandate – the opportunity to become a wealthier and fairer economy with independence or a sluggish, stagnating Westminster-controlled economy outside the European Union.”
The SNP minister said that the UK economy was “5.5% smaller” as a direct result of leaving the EU, adding: “The UK economy is fundamentally on the wrong path and there is no real alternative on offer within the Westminster system.”
And Flynn (above) said: "The past three years show Brexit has been an unmitigated disaster for the UK economy, public services and cost of living. It has cost billions, reduced trade, squeezed growth, hammered household incomes – and provided none of the so-called benefits that were promised.
"With the Tories and pro-Brexit Labour Party ruling out any return to the EU, or the world's biggest single market – there's no route back to Europe under Westminster control. Independence is now the only way for Scotland to escape Brexit decline and regain our place in Europe.”
The three-year anniversary will see protests across Scotland against the EU exit, including a torch-lit procession to Holyrood to mark the moment Brexit took effect: 11pm, January 31, 2020.
Dundee, Dumfries, and Perth, are among the places outside Edinburgh set for a demonstration, with the capital set to see SNP MP Alyn Smith and MSP Jim Fairlie join Green minister Lorna Slater on the stage.
Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer, the party’s Europe spokesperson, said: “From rising prices in shops to staff shortages in hospitals and hotels, there is barely a part of our economy that hasn’t been damaged by Brexit.
“All of the evidence shows that it has been an unmitigated disaster, as it was always going to be. It was based on snake oil promises by Tory fantasists who wanted to live out their isolationist and imperialist fantasies.
“That is why Scotland opposed it so overwhelmingly in 2016 and why support for the EU has only increased since then.
“In Westminster there is a cosy and self-defeating consensus that we need to maintain Brexit at all costs. The Tories have continued to double down on their disastrous vision but stunningly, Labour have endorsed it as well.”
He added: “It doesn’t need to be like this. We don’t have to accept that Brexit Britain is as good as it gets for Scotland.”
The UK Government was contacted for comment.
