Nicola Sturgeon: Brexit will be second best, at the very most

Nicola Sturgeon - credit David Anderson/Holyrood

Nicola Sturgeon and I sit down ahead of her party’s conference on the day that Holyrood magazine has carried an exclusive piece by the Prime Minister, Theresa May, in which she claims that the SNP is as culpable as any party for Brexit.

May’s strong assertion is based on her view that because the nationalists have been in power for almost a decade in Scotland, they are every bit as much a part of that ‘political establishment’ that the PM believes the electorate were railing against when they voted on 23 June to exit the EU.

The SNP leader can hardly contain herself.

“Ha, I actually had to check if it was 1 April or not, I mean, that’s just silly. The SNP campaigned for a Remain vote, you know, like Theresa May was supposed to do but somehow managed to forget to do – and let’s not forget that Scotland voted to remain."

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“Our responsibility now, which is one I take very seriously, is to try to navigate the difficult terrain that lies ahead in a way that best protects Scotland’s interests. But there’s no escaping the fact that we are in the position we are in now, not because of anything the SNP did or didn’t do but because of the recklessness of a Tory government that called a referendum that David Cameron, and supposedly Theresa May, knew could lead to an outcome that they believed would be damaging. The responsibility for where we now are lies squarely on the shoulders of the Tories.”

May also argues in the article that Brexit will enhance, as opposed to diminish, Scotland’s relationship with the rest of the world. This too gets short shrift from the First Minister.

“Do I think Brexit will enhance Scotland? No, I don’t. But don’t get me wrong, I will be working as hard as I can to protect Scotland’s interests and one of the interests I have set out is how we continue to influence the world we live in because it is in nobody’s interests to be in this increasingly globalised and interdependent world and be shorn of influence over the way that world works.

“But it strikes me that so much of what we are hearing about in terms of the Brexit discussions is about how we kind of put back everything that Brexit takes away and for the Prime Minister to argue that that somehow enhances either the UK standing or Scotland’s standing is deeply misguided. 

“It strikes me, and I’m talking in a UK sense here now and not just a Scottish sense, that whatever the end point for the Brexit discussions might be, and who knows how long it’s going to take to get there, that it’s going to be second best, at the very most. So all the options that are now being talked about are not, in my view, the best options, they’re simply a range of the least worst options. So, no, I don’t think that enhances the UK standing, I don’t think it enhances Scotland’s standing and I don’t think it will enhance our economy.”

In the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum result, Sturgeon was praised for showing some leadership in what felt like a political vacuum at Westminster, as David Cameron resigned as Prime Minister and the leading Brexiteers – Boris Johnson and Michael Gove – went to ground as the realisation sunk in that there was no plan.

In stark contrast, the First Minister convened an emergency press conference at Bute House within hours of the vote, where she said very clearly that EU nationals living in Scotland were welcome and revealed that the SNP government would begin preparing legislation for a second referendum on independence in order to preserve Scotland’s place in the EU and stave off the “democratic outrage” of Scots being pulled out of the EU despite voting to remain.

And she was also clear from the outset that while she wants to find an option that could keep Scotland in the EU and that independence was not her starting point, it would always be one of the options.

So while chaos raged at Westminster and Whitehall, as both the Conservative and Labour parties embarked on divisive leadership contests and civil servants were caught uncharacteristically unprepared, Sturgeon established her own expert Standing Council on Europe, appointed a Brexit minister in Michael Russell, fired the starting gun on an autumn independence push, set up an SNP commission to explore economic policy including the currency option and embarked on a charm offensive of other European leaders.

But just over three months on and with no real clarity about what Brexit will actually mean, does she feel she is simply being buffeted by events? And while she was seen to be busy doing something, is she in reality pretty helpless until the UK Government spells out its approach?

“I don’t feel helpless, but I do feel a responsibility to think very carefully about the steps that I, leading the Scottish Government on behalf of Scotland, will take,” she says. “We’re doing an awful lot of preparation and scenario planning and development of options behind the scenes, so we are well placed to try to navigate the best way through it. But there is no doubt that when you are still looking at a blank sheet of paper from the UK Government then it’s difficult to know what scenario it is you are going to be dealing with. 

“That’s difficult for the Scottish Government but I think that’s much more of an issue in terms of the wider economy. It’s three months now since the referendum and every day that passes, I think that uncertainty is going to have more of an impact on the economy. That is why Theresa May really has to start putting some flesh on the bones. 

“I readily accept that this is a two-way negotiation, indeed a multifaceted negotiation, and that at this side of that negotiation not every single point of detail can be answered but what I don’t accept is that Theresa May can’t now say that what she wants is for us to be in the single market or not, or that she’s aiming for us to continue visa-free travel across the EU or to have a situation where all of the workers’ rights that we have now are protected. These are statements of intent in terms of what she is trying to achieve and I don’t see why we can’t have that clarity just now because that at least would let us see what road she is trying to go down.”

Theresa May has, as she reminded us at her party conference last week, been Prime Minister for less than 100 days and on her second day in the job, she very symbolically travelled to Scotland to meet with Sturgeon.

By all accounts, it was a cordial affair with May assuring Sturgeon that the devolved governments would be fully involved in the Brexit negotiations. Sturgeon says that subsequent meetings between key people have also been largely positive. However, she also questions how deeply rooted that approach is.

“The overwhelming feeling, and I’m not trying to make a pejorative point here, the overwhelming feeling we get with all of our engagement with Whitehall and the UK Government is that they really still don’t have a clue about what they’re going to do, so trying to get beyond the very, very skin deep, basic discussions is very difficult. 

“Now as the weeks and months pass we are going to have to do that, and that’s when I certainly will be looking to hold the Prime Minister to her word because she certainly gave me a commitment that not only would we be fully involved but that different options would be considered. 

“I’m not going to sit here and say she gave me a firm commitment that she would agree any of those options. I wouldn’t have expected her to at that stage, but she said she would consider them and she also made the statement when she was in Edinburgh that she would seek to find a way forward that all different parts of the UK could agree. These things were welcome commitments, but in a sense, it’s easy to say the words, what we will have to assess in the weeks that follow is the ability to follow through on that in a meaningful way.”

Indeed, since that initial meeting with the Prime Minister, Sturgeon and her teams have been exploring all kinds of possible arrangements that Scotland could have with the EU while remaining within the UK and outwith. There has even been discussion of a differentiated UK agreement with the possibility of different rules around immigration and trade for different regions but now much of that seems academic.

In the weeks since that Bute House meeting, indeed within the last week, the Prime Minister appears to have taken a hard Brexit pill. Last week she took the unusual step of opening her own party conference and insisted, in a hard-hitting speech, that there would be “no opt-out from Brexit” for any of the four nations of the UK.

She said it was for the UK Government alone to carry out the negotiations and made it clear there would be no special deals for different parts of the country.

“The job of negotiating our new relationship is the job of the Government. Because we voted in the referendum as one United Kingdom, we will negotiate as one United Kingdom, and we will leave the European Union as one United Kingdom,” she said to rapturous applause from the party faithful.

“There is no opt-out from Brexit,” she continued. “And I will never allow divisive nationalists to undermine the precious union between the four nations of our United Kingdom.”

The comments, understandably, sparked fury amongst nationalists and Sturgeon herself tweeted: “PM is going out of her way to say Scotland’s voice and interests don’t matter. Strange approach from someone who wants to keep UK together.”

It was a thinly veiled threat from Sturgeon that basically warned Theresa May that if she wants to fuel support for independence, then she should keep going with the hard-line rhetoric.

For some, Sturgeon is just being opportunistic. The Scottish Conservative leader, Ruth Davidson, told her UK party conference last week that the First Minister does not speak for Scotland and that her MPs were deliberately trying to “get up the nose” of the English by blocking changes to Sunday trading laws and a repeal of the foxhunting ban. She said the SNP MPs were hoping to infuriate people in the rest of the UK so much that they would eventually just say: “You whining Scots, will you please just leave?” It was, said Davidson, an “absolutely cynical” tactic.
I ask Sturgeon if she simply saw every opportunity, even Brexit, through an independence lens.

“No, and I stood here on the morning after the referendum and said that independence wasn’t my starting point on this. Everybody knows where I stand on independence, and have done all my adult life. This situation isn’t one I wanted us to be in. I campaigned vigorously for a remain vote, I didn’t want us to be here, it’s not a situation we’ve asked for, it’s not a situation of our making so where I come at now on this is how do we best protect the interests of Scotland that I think are materially at risk right now? 

“I think we should be, and we will try to be, part of a UK-wide body of opinion that says: let’s keep the UK in the single market. Whether we will succeed in that is an open question and the signs are not promising. So on a spectrum that goes from trying to get the least-worst outcome from the UK through to the possibility of independence, all of these options are, at this stage, on the table and we will look at them all.

“I take the view that it would be completely the wrong thing to do to take options off the table. So, of course, the option of independence, if we get to the stage where the road the UK wants to take us down against our democratic will, is going to be so fundamentally damaging to our economy and our universities, rural communities, and whole swathes of society, then of course, we have to have the option of considering a better future, but along the way we will consider every conceivable option.”

Meanwhile, she is contending with various voices from within the party including former first minister and party leader, Alex Salmond, variously arguing for and against a quick referendum on the back of Brexit.

I ask her who her members should be listening to. “Me, I am the leader,” she laughs “Look, like all leaders, you get advice and views coming at you all the time. I listen to it all carefully and often it’s contradictory but the responsibility of leadership, of course, is making the judgement - as in taking the decisions. That’s what I will do on this and I will try to do it with the interest not just of the SNP but with the country at heart.

"That said, I don’t think there is a massive contradiction in what is being said at the moment. At the end of the day, we are all expressing the same thing and that is, we’ve got to keep all options on the table and try to get the best possible outcome for Scotland and that independence has to be an option. Now, different people will express it in different ways, with perhaps the emphasis in different places, but the fundamental position is the same one - that we all want a referendum and we all want independence.”

It is the timing of that referendum that is the all-important question and how realistic another one would be at this time is debatable. Looking back to the morning of 24 June, it did feel as if the UK vote to leave the EU had provided the SNP with a golden opportunity to hold a second referendum. Sturgeon herself said it was “highly likely”. 

But the Brexit bounce that the party may have hoped for simply hasn’t happened and the polls remain remarkably stubborn. The second anniversary of the independence referendum last month was a fairly muted affair. The launch of a new pro-independence campaign a month ago, which Sturgeon called “the biggest listening exercise in our party’s history”, was low-key.

Then it hit a sour note with calls – so far rejected by Sturgeon – for the new chair of the SNP-led economic policy Growth Comission, former SNP MSP Andrew Wilson, to be removed from the role because of his corporate lobbying interests as a founding partner of communications agency Charlotte Street Partners.

Sturgeon tells me that she rejects any criticism of the appointment on the basis that Wilson is chairing the commission on a voluntary basis. I refer back to criticism that was levelled at the Labour party by SNP supporters for appointing a PwC partner to chair their Export Commission and suggest there is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to business. I draw a blank and we move on.

And with a backdrop to the latest independence campaign being the latest Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) figures revealing a £15bn Scottish deficit in Scotland’s economy, Sturgeon, understandably, has preferred to focus on another kind of deficit, saying: “Brexit is simply one illustration of the democratic deficit at the heart of the Westminster system. Whether you voted to remain in the EU or to leave, the more fundamental question is: who decides?”

It’s surprising, in some respects, that given how Scotland voted in the EU referendum there hasn’t been more of an outrage levelled against the UK Government that led us into an EU referendum. But if anything, Theresa May - at least before her inflammatory conference speeches - is proving ever more popular in the polls. I wonder if Sturgeon thinks this is a false calm before the storm.

“I suppose it’s the calm after the storm before the storm,” she says. “I get very frustrated when I hear people say the sky hasn’t fallen in because of Brexit. Well, that’s because it hasn’t happened yet. It hasn’t even started formally with the triggering of Article 50. 

“So, don’t get me wrong, I’m not wishing for bad economic consequences, but I’m just being open-eyed about what is likely to happen and while the sky hasn’t fallen in yet, I think most economic commentators and observers, and most people taking decisions in businesses, are very, very nervous about what will happen in the future. 

“I think it is likely to be the case that we’ll see the real impact of this when we move on from the vacuous, meaningless soundbites like ‘Brexit means Brexit’ into a really hard discussion about what that actually means.

“Some of what you are hearing just now - not just from the Tories but from Labour as well about a need to find a way where we can stay in the single market but limit the freedom of movement - there’s going to have to come a point where there is an awakening.

“That kind of ‘have your cake and eat it’ scenario – that the UK can just pick and choose and the rest of the world is going to fall into line – is not going to be how it is. 

“I don’t think the political class has really got there yet and I think when it does start to get there, that’s when things will become really, really difficult.”

Brexit is such a massive existential challenge, that it’s hard to believe that it is just 12 months ago that I was interviewing Sturgeon for that year’s party conference and matters were so much more focused on the domestic. 

At that time, Michelle Thomson, the MP for Edinburgh West and one of the 56 SNP candidates elected to Westminster in the 2015 general election, had just been suspended from the party following allegations about property deals involving her company solicitor who had been struck off and was under police investigation. 

A year on, Thomson remains an independent MP and she is joined on those benches by Natalie McGarry, originally elected SNP MP for Glasgow East but soon withdrawn from the whip following allegations of fraud which she has now been charged with. Now a third SNP MP, Chris Law, has had his financial affairs investigated by the police - although he remains, thus far, within the SNP fold with Sturgeon standing by him. There has also been the resignation of the SNP deputy, Stewart Hosie, who stood down earlier this year following revelations about his personal life. 

On top of these internal party issues, the SNP’s record in government has come under constant attack over a whole range of failings in education, health, local government spending and failures by Police Scotland. In the meantime, however, the party has also won an historic third term in office, albeit as a minority government, and Sturgeon’s popularity rankings have remained record-breaking high – except for one poll which, unthinkably for some and on rather an arbitrary measure, had Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson ahead of her.

Sturgeon laughs. “I’m never entirely sure what these polls signify but I’m ten years into government and the SNP’s ratings, my ratings, are in a reasonably good place, so I’m not losing sleep over any of that. I also think the deeper into leadership you get, and I’m not about to say I’ve stopped looking at polls or anything as that wouldn’t be believable or true, but I think the deeper into leadership you get, you do get more of an understanding and appreciation, particularly when you are at the start of a five-year term, that it’s about more than the day-to-day trials and tribulations.

"It’s about more than where you stand in one opinion poll versus another opinion poll. It’s about what you’re trying to do with the power you’ve been given and there are big things I want to achieve and that’s what I’m trying to stay focused on.

"Obviously, that’s been added to by the Brexit situation which, as I say, I didn’t choose but I can’t ignore or pretend it doesn’t exist. But the objectives I set out in the election and that we had in our manifesto, particularly around childcare, education, and I don’t mean this to sound trite, but around genuinely making Scotland the best place in the world to grow up, are the things I have to also focus on.

“I’ve just come from a meeting with a group of young people who have been in care and that was a part of trying to make sure that every young person, regardless of their background, gets the best chance in life. Now there’s different aspects of that in terms of our education policies, our childcare policies and so on but that’s about me thinking ahead, which I don’t often do, ten or twenty years and thinking about what I will want to look back on and say ‘yeah, we made things much better’. So for me, the deeper into leadership I get, that long-term vision does become much more important than the day-to-day ups and downs and trials and tribulations that litter politics.

“Of course, all of this is part of the day job and I just find people who try to distinguish between trying to navigate a way for Scotland through something as monumental as Brexit and other responsibilities and make a distinction out of that, clearly have a limited grasp on what it means to govern a country. 

“Every day I do my day job and day-to-day different aspects of that will be more to the forefront than others but if I look back over the past couple of weeks, what are the issues that have absolutely dominated my day-to-day work? It’s been the economy, education, childcare, the sort of big things that we have set out to do over this term in parliament and I’m absolutely focused on those.”

How then does she respond, particularly as a former and very passionate health secretary, to the recent Scottish Health Survey that shows, despite all the efforts and the millions of pounds, that on a whole range of health indicators to do with alcohol, smoking and obesity, things have remained static or got worse in the decade during which her party has been mainly in power?

“Of course, any indicator that shows we are not as healthy as we should be is disappointing – in fact, that is not an adequate word – because it means we are not fulfilling our potential, collectively or individually. That said, given the longevity of Scotland’s health problems and the deep-rooted nature of those, there are plenty of elements of the Scottish Health Survey where we should take encouragement from. The dramatic reduction in smoking rates, for example, the reduction in the number of young people that are exposed to cigarette smoke and the benefits that’s going to deliver in terms of health for the next generation. 

“In terms of weight, in terms of alcohol, we’ve still got big challenges as a country but I don’t look at the Scottish Health Survey and say, ‘ah well, let’s give up’, I say that we need to continue to make sure we have the right policies in place, that we’ve got the right motivations for people in place and that we are trying to support people because ultimately, of course, many of these things do come down to individual choices and behaviour. 

“Obesity is a challenge and it’s one that I hesitate to say is going to be our next challenge because I think that’s suggesting that we are going to start from day one when actually, there’s a lot of stuff underway but obesity has so many links into other health problems that it’s absolutely essential we stick with it. 

“I know that people will look at the health survey and say nothing is working but actually, I don’t buy that. I think much of what we do is working but it’s a difficult challenge, it’s a deep-rooted challenge and we’ve got to stick with it and see the health survey as a spur to doing more and not as a counsel to despair.”

Sturgeon’s electoral rallying cry to tackle inequalities in health, education and the economy will no doubt feature at the SNP party conference this week, in both the main hall and the fringe events, but debate will inevitably be dominated by the question marks hanging over two very different unions: the one Scotland shares within the UK and the one it voted to continue within the EU.  

The hard-line Brexit rhetoric over immigrants from the Conservative Party conference last week, which has been branded xenophobic and greeted with collective revulsion by political leaders across Scotland, will undoubtedly only help to fuel calls from the SNP faithful gathered in Glasgow for another independence referendum. 

Sturgeon herself is clearly still enraged by the whole Brexit scenario that Scotland finds itself in despite having overwhelmingly voted to remain, and she will be keen over the course of this week’s conference to stress to an audience inside but more importantly, outside the SECC main hall and way beyond Britain’s borders, of the unfairness of that democratic deficit.

“Scotland, because of our history, has always had a very strong international profile,” she told me. “I think that has been enhanced in the last three months because the world has seen Scotland voting to stay part of that world.

“Based on my discussions and observations during my travels since the EU referendum, there is definitely more of an awareness of the fact that Scotland doesn’t always think the same way, on a whole range of issues, as the rest of the UK.”

It will then be up to Sturgeon to win her side of the argument over whether Scotland wants to be part of Theresa May’s vision of a post-Brexit Britain, which the First Minister has described as a “deeply ugly one”, or an alternative one. An independent one.