Brexit will leave a weakened UK at the mercy of Donald Trump – Christine Grahame

Scotland’s wishes on Brexit count for nowt to Boris Johnson or his new ‘no deal’ voting millionaire, huntin’ shootin’ Scottish Secretary, writes Christine Grahame.

Blistering heat, Porty beach like the Costa del Sol, the Parly pools awash with children and the occasional happy dug, what’s not to like?

Well, the way politics is going at the moment. In good weather my late mum, ever the realist, would opine that it “won’t last”. Mind you she didn’t say the same thing about gloomy skies. No, they were in for the long haul.

So it is with Boris and Brexit (yes, me too, I have to put my oar in about this). Scotland voted 62 per cent Remain but that counts for nowt. Not only are we out come hell or high water but as seems most likely, without any “deal”.

I have this on good authority from our self-proclaimed saviour Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. He is going to make Britain grrrrreat again. I understand he wrote a book about Winston Churchill. Do you hear those Churchillian echoes in his rhetoric of post-war language. Not quite “we will fight them on the beaches” but close.

Give the man his due, he can entertain, is clever with words, his tousled hair is his USP, but behind the cultivated buffoonery, the bon viveur is a pretty ruthless, driven man. He’s put Michael Gove, who knifed him in the front, in his cabinet and landed him with fixing no deal. Talk about poisoned chalice.

All in his cabinet have sworn on their mother’s graves and children’s lives to support Brexiting on October 31. Now this would all be just a distraction if it were not so serious.

Don’t think because so far the sky hasn’t fallen in that it won’t. Brexit has not yet happened, though there are companies which have left and others having contingency plans.

Never mind, Trump has welcomed Boris as the British Trump. Oops. He claims that the USA can increase trade after Brexit by three or four or five times (like Boris, accuracy and detail are not his forte). This will not of course compensate by any means for tariffs being imposed by the EU on our exports or imported parts for assembly lines. Not to worry, we’ll have good ole US of A chlorinated chicken and hormone-infected beef on our supermarket shelves.

As for our farmers and fishermen, go whistle. The EU subsidies essential to maintaining domestic food prices will revert to the pockets of the Exchequer and Scottish exports of high quality beef and lamb, and our fish will find tariffs imposed on our exports to their biggest market, the EU.

Trump, indeed like Boris, is in election mode, so you can bet your bottom dollar that any deal between the UK and Big Brother will benefit the USA more.

This is just skimming the surface of what we in Scotland did not vote for. Forgive me, Jacob Rees-Mogg, for ending a sentence on a preposition. But never mind, we have Alister Jack as our man in the Cabinet as the Secretary of State for Scotland. “Who’s he?” you may ask. Well he is, by his own regard, a Tory Toff, privately educated, a millionaire, with a country estate and loves hunting etc. Oh and he voted for Brexit and no deal. He is just the right man for Scotland.

By the way, my spell check for “Pfeffel” suggests “Piffle”. If only that’s all it was. Mum was right about those dark clouds.

Christine Grahame is the SNP MSP for Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale