NICOLA Sturgeon’s pledge to lead the charge against a Tory hard Brexit puts her front and centre as the main progressive voice backing Remain.
Sturgeon is unapologetically making the point that her priority as First Minister in 2018 will be to prevent Scotland being pulled out of the single market.
While she says “independence must remain an option” once the terms of the final EU exit deal become known, the SNP leader is making it plain that opposition to a hard Brexit will come first, for this year at least.
By effectively accusing Labour of being “missing in action” over single-market membership, Sturgeon has pinpointed the confusion in Labour over where it stands on the EU. Sturgeon will rightly feel that the SNP’s status as third-biggest party in the Commons, with more MPs than the pro-European LibDems, boosts her case as the woman to lead the fight against hard Brexit.
Her claim that Jeremy Corbyn and Richard Leonard are “ambivalent” about a hard Brexit also represents an escalation of the SNP’s challenge to Labour over its stance on Europe.
Sturgeon’s remarks came on the day that the party’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford launched a ferocious attack on Corbyn for refusing to attend a cross-party summit on protecting the UK’s place in the single market.
With no national elections planned in Scotland in 2018 the SNP will know that they don't stand to make large electoral gains over the EU issue. However, for Sturgeon this is clearly an idealogical standpoint and by calling out Corbyn and Leonard at Westminster and Holyrood she also puts a gulf between the SNP and Labour in voters' minds.
Corbyn has for some time wrestled with the conundrum of Brexit, knowing that embracing a Europhile position risks alienating many Labour and Leave supporters in northern England, where the party made gains in last year’s General Election. At the same time, Sturgeon will have calculated that Corbyn is under pressure from left-leaning metropolitan Remain supporters.
What is clear is that Labour and the Tories are both in utter disarray over the biggest challenge in a lifetime, and the LibDems are too weak and small to be significant. The SNP is the only major party with a clear vision on Europe, and leadership against hard Brexit does indeed lie with Nicola Sturgeon.
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