13. True Scottish and Welsh nationalists must vote ‘Leave’
The official SNP position on the EU is, rather bizarrely, completely incoherent when viewed from a ‘Yes’
movement perspective. ‘Yes’ voters must ask themselves: if the SNP succeeds, through the Scottish
vote, of keeping the UK in the EU, what will be different for the independence movement? After all,
the EU showed no appetite for an independent Scotland in the first referendum in 2014.
Former SNP deputy leader Jim Sillars argues comprehensively in a new study: “If we vote to remain in
the UK and the EU, then seeking sovereignty is but a pretence, because we cannot be sovereign while
remaining locked within a superstate, because the price the EU demands is permanent surrender of
sovereignty. That is the inescapable reality that every one of us in the Yes movement has to face. By
voting to ‘Leave’ the EU on June 23, we shall re-assert the message of 2014: that we in Scotland are on
an irreversible march to independence as a sovereign nation, under the control of no other than the
people.”
What Jim is rightly questioning is why
would the SNP want to gain
independence and then hand it over to
a larger, more remote body? Why
would it want to have even less control
over its economy? That is not to say, of
course, that a vote to ‘Leave’ the EU will
automatically trigger a second Scottish
independence referendum. After all, the
first one was hailed as a “once in a
lifetime vote” and Scotland duly
delivered its verdict. However, as many
in the SNP camp now acknowledge,
Scottish independence will be significantly further away should the UK remain locked within Brussels’
stranglehold.
Political parties such as the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party exist to promote localism and the
devolution of power, yet bizarrely many of their senior party leaders refuse to challenge an EU which is
about the centralising of power.
14. Staying in is the real “leap into the unknown”
Brexit is often described as a “leap into the unknown” but the opposite is actually true. If we elect to
remain, we’ll continue being ruled by a political union which has these fundamental aims: a single
European army, a single European foreign policy, and a single European justice system. This
once-in-a-lifetime vote will not come around again and the bureaucrats from Brussels will not stop in
their aim of creating a single centralised superstate, as more and more of our sovereignty is eroded.
The idea put across by its promoters, that the EU is somehow synonymous with “Europe”, is pure
fantasy and yet the use of this language has become commonplace. We are told that to be anti-EU is to
be “anti-European”, but, in reality, to oppose the EU makes you pro-European. If Europe is its people
and cultures then it is surely better that France, Greece, Poland and every other member state becomes
27 cross-party reasons to Leave the EU | @DavidSeadon