On Friday 15 July on Theresa May’s second day as Prime Minister she visited the First Minister of the Scottish Devolved Government, Nicola Sturgeon.  It was reported in the Telegraph On-line on Friday evening that in order to protect the Union of the United Kingdom Theresa May would NOT invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty giving notice that we intend to leave the EU until she has the agreement of all the devolved government of the UK.

What this means is that this ‘Bloody Difficult woman’ who claims to have already gone head-to-head with Angela Merkel has now in effect given a veto to the devolved Parliaments on when and if we can invoke Article 50.

That is not what a determined Brexiteer would do!  That is precisely something a committed Remainer would do, in effect giving themselves a get-out-of-jail-free card.

How is it that Scotland with 1,661,191 who voted remain and 1,018,322 who voted leave counts more than the following;-

 

Region Total votes Leave Remain
South East 4959683 2569116 2390597
North West 3665945 1968612 1697333
East 3328983 1880875 1448108
South West 3171730 1668856 1503874
York & Humberside 2739235 1580589 1158696
East Midlands 2508515 1475007 1033508
Wales 1626919 854432 772787
North East 1340698 777605 563093

 

What is it about Nicola Sturgeon that makes her believe the Scottish peoples votes are worth more than the rest of the UK, when we are massively subsidising Scotland’s economy.

Even when you take into consideration the other major areas that voted to Remain, being London and Northern Ireland you have;-

 

Region Total votes Leave Remain
Scotland 2679513 1018322 1661191
Northern Ireland 790149 349246 440903
London 3376751 1354077 2022674

 

There is no way you can look at any of the figures to produce an argument that one region of the whole of the UK is more important than any other and justifies a veto over the rest.  If you take the total the Leave wins by 4%.  If you take 11 regions then leave wins by 72.7%.

If you use qualified majority voting where England has 70.7% of those who voted, Scotland has 15.4%, Wales has 9.3%, and Northern Ireland has 4.5%, the other three countries together do not win for remain.

For Theresa May the strong negotiator to say she will not invoke Article 50 until she has the approval of all the Devolved Parliament in the United Kingdom is maybe showing her true colours.  She is allowing a 642,869 majority for Remain in Scotland to block the wishes of 17,410,742 voters in the rest of the UK!

Frankly there is no deal that is going to be acceptable to Nicola Sturgeon that will also be acceptable to those who chose Leave the European Union.  Theresa is trying to kick the can down the street but there are several major issues.

The elections in France and the elections in Germany as well as Italy and Greece both in need of serious bale-outs again and also the migrant crisis that is not going away and only likely to get worse while we procrastinate.  Then there is a general election in the UK in 2020.

By far the best policy would be to call Nicola Sturgeon’s bluff by calling for another referendum for Scotland, to Remain in the UK and Leave the EU, or Leave the UK and apply for EU membership.  Hold this in early 2017 and then immediately invoke article 50.  Either they are with us or go independent but we are free to leave the EU without being blackmailed any further.

While we are about it we should move the UK’s submarine base from Faslane in Scotland to England.  The Scottish people are overwhelmingly anti nuclear and don’t want the base and are unhappy that it is in effect forced on them by Westminster.  We don’t need that anger and we do need the jobs down south so we could reactivate Plymouth or Portland or Portsmouth to be the new home of the fleet.

According to the Office for National Statistics, as of 23 June 2016 the estimated population of the UK (Britain & Northern Ireland) was 65,110,000 and broken down as in the following table;-

 

England           54,786,400

Scotland            5,373,000

Wales                3,099,100

NI                      1,851,600

 

Scotland is only 8.25% of the total UK population but due to the Barnett + Cameron formula now receives £1650 per member of its population more from the Treasury than an English person.  That is why they have free prescriptions and free university education.  They are such a massive drain on the rest of the UK that I doubt they would get a fraction of that good a deal from the EU if they left the UK.

Frankly I feel that the ‘Bloody Difficult Woman’ is a push-over and has probably betrayed the 17,410,742 people who voted ‘Leave the European Union’ by giving Nicola Sturgeon the veto on invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.