BREXIT has “taken the veneer off Britain” and exposed a less palatable, less stable Union which will be harder to sell to voters in a second referendum, a former SNP minister has said.
Kenneth MacAskill said the aftermath of June’s vote to leave the EU had also seen Theresa May and her Tory colleagues guilty of a “shameful” jingoism which jarred with many Scots.
Writing in the Herald, the former Justice Secretary said: “It’s not just their attitude to Johnny Foreigner but Jock and Paddy that offend. The platitudes of ‘Scotland please stay, we love you’ will ring hollow in a country told to know its place.”
Read more: Battle lines drawn over Brexit as Nicola Sturgeon says Scotland ignored
Nicola Sturgeon has threatened to hold a second independence referendum before Brexit if the UK government rejects her plan to keep Scotland in the EU single market.
Mr MacAskill said that, while the Yes side in any future referendum undoubtedly faced challenges, recent months had also made things significantly harder for the No side.
He said that in 2014 the UK could equate itself with stability and independence with risk.
Read more: Battle lines drawn over Brexit as Nicola Sturgeon says Scotland ignored
Former Prime Minister David Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne, even if their policies were disliked, were “at least viewed as reasonably capable and competent”.
But Brexit had changed those calculations and diminished the UK “not just in European and global eyes but doubtless those of some No voters” as well.
There was now “an accidental Prime Minister in power with apparently no idea where she’s heading” surrounded by a cabinet of “incompetents and buffoons”.
While a plunging pound meant sterling was “no longer an ace card held by the No campaign”.
He said: “Whether it’s misfiring missiles of ministerial gaffes, the veneer of the Great in Great Britain has most certainly gone.
“For some, whilst Yes isn’t necessarily more stable, it’s certainly not so risky as once before.”
Read more: Battle lines drawn over Brexit as Nicola Sturgeon says Scotland ignored
Mr MacAskill, who was justice secretary from 2007 to 2014 and left Holyrood last year, also said the Independence campaign faced its own challenges over currency, the economy, borders and the hostility of many Yes supporters to the EU.
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