May says won't trigger EU divorce until UK-wide approach agreed

[Denzil_DC]

20. A righteous rant, but I think people are in danger of making too much of May's statement,

and the media aren't helping. She actually said:

I won’t be triggering Article 50 until I think that we have a UK approach and objectives for negotiations. I think it is important that we establish that before we trigger Article 50.

https://next.ft.com/content/ff1d0c72-4aa0-11e6-8d68-72e9211e86ab

It would be lovely to interpret that as "when hell freezes over", or even that little Scotland or another component of the current UK could flex its muscles and make it anything except more awkward and possibly long-winded for Brexit to go ahead if My & Co. are hell bent on doing it. But it doesn't sound to me anything like a veto. The word "think" in there gives May a lot of leeway, because who knows what May may think, now or in the future? A "UK approach" could amount to "We've offered those pesky Scots everything we could, and they're still not happy, now they're just going to have to lump it. Agreed? Good. Pull the trigger."

I don't agree with Orr that moves for Scottish independence during this process would necessarily make "an insanely complex, expensive and pointless process of Brexit just that little bit more insanely complex, expensive and pointless". It might actually simplify matters, depending on how it's done. Vast bodies of laws and treaties, national and international, would need to be amended in either case (and they definitely don't just include Scotland), so there might be economy of time and effort in doing it all at once through some sort of consolidated Act or series of Acts. Otherwise, unless there's the idea that any ambitions for Scottish independence will somehow be buried for ever, the process would no doubt have to be revisited again anyway.

As for things like an armed border between Scotland and England, I was strongly pissed off when Miliband used that as a blatant scare tactic during the indyref. I'm less bothered now. Visiting NI/Ireland, I crossed such a land border quite a few times. It was less scary and intrusive than the armed guards, checkpoints and bus inspections in force in Belfast at the time, or indeed the presence of armed guards at our airports nowadays, let alone outside the nuke facilities up here.

Would I rather not see all this, and all the complications for me visiting family down south and vice versa, our tourists, neighbours living near the border, trade etc.? Of course. But what the hell. I didn't choose any of this anyway.