IT was probably wise of Rishi Sunak to make his way up to Scotland yesterday for a conflab with Nicola Sturgeon.
Although, it was wise of neither of them to pose for a photo shoot in an Inverness hotel in front of wallpaper that looked like some nightmarish home decor reject from Abigail’s Party.
Sunak, evidently, has many bridges to build in Scotland - not simply due to the raging childish rudeness of useless Liz Truss, who dubbed Sturgeon an “attention-seeker” and refused to talk to the First Minister, or the still barely believable insanity of Boris Johnson’s administration, but also the blatant lying from his Scottish Secretary Alister Jack.
Ahead of Sunak’s trip, Jack spewed the most appalling disinformation into the public realm. He told a straight-up lie claiming that Scotland doesn’t want to be part of the European Union. Jack, a Brexiteer, told the lie when he was being quizzed on the disastrous impact of Brexit. “There’s no desire in Scotland to have membership of the EU,” he said.
Is he mad? There has to be some explanation for throwing such a whopping great lie into the world and thinking he can just get away with it. The Tories have been descending into conspiracy and hysteria for years now, but this is something else. It’s so blatant. It’s like standing in the pouring rain and saying the sun is shining.
In case anyone is suffering from amnesia, Scotland voted by 62 per cent to 38 per cent to remain in the European Union during the 2016 Brexit referendum. Unless both mathematics and linguistics are reconfigured, it’s unclear how Jack can see this as anything other than Scotland showing that it wants EU membership. Scottish opinion polls show that if the Brexit referendum was held again around 72 per cent would vote remain - that’s a huge increase.
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