Nobody ever accused the SNP of being consistent but when it comes to the question of EU membership, the party’s position is positively incoherent. At a Saltire-strewn rally in Edinburgh on Saturday, party leader and Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf told a crowd of around 5,000 (or 25,000 if you believe organisers’ spin) that Brexit was ‘nothing short of a national tragedy’. Only independence could right this ‘historic wrong’.
Given that almost two-thirds of Scots voted Remain in 2016 this is seductive stuff, but the credibility of Yousaf’s message depends on us ignoring the fact that just two years before the UK voted for Brexit, the Nats campaigned for an outcome that would have seen Scotland leave the EU.
If the nationalists had won the 2014 independence referendum, Scotland would have automatically departed the European bloc. The UK, after all, was the member state. An independent Scotland would have had to join the waiting list for EU membership.
During the independence referendum campaign, senior nationalists — including then First Minister Alex Salmond — tried to bluff their way through questions on Europe.
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