No matter your politics, we must all be Brexiteers now - Brian Monteith

First the good news. Whether you supported it or not, Brexit it is over. It has happened. Elvis has left the building, so to speak. You are – I think – going to hear a lot less from me about Brexit.

Now, sadly, the bad news.

Brexit is not done. Whatever governments and the EU claim, there remains a good deal of unfinished business and from time to time there will be hiccoughs that require analysis and comment.

I shall try and spare you from it being as regular as it has been the past five years, but until we resolve the messy bits hidden out of plain sight or the loose knots that will undoubtedly come undone – think Northern Ireland protocol and fisheries – it will rear its head now and again.

Lorries prepare to embark on a ferry at the Port of Dover following Britain's departure from the European Union. Picture: Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images

As if to confirm that Brexit is decidedly moving into the background, the Brexit Party was given permission last week by the Electoral Commission to change its name to Reform UK and today it will be launching in Scotland, revealing a Scottish leader and no doubt hoping to offer a voice to many that feel they are not represented by existing parties in Holyrood.

We don’t yet know if the elections planned for across Britain on May 6 will even go ahead – for despite the assurances given by the Prime Minister and First Minister, they have become adept at changing their minds at a day’s notice.

Remember how we were going to have all those days for Christmas, or how exams would go ahead and schools would be open?

Last week was only the first week of January, but the OECD was predicting economic recovery will not be strong until “next year” because restrictions will continue throughout 2021.

Various quangos will make their recommendations about the ability to hold free, fair and open elections, but I think they shall save the politicians any blushes at staying in power for at least an extra six months by saying it is going to be too difficult and potentially too dangerous.

When you consider the problems to be faced in campaigning – no canvassing, no hustings or public meetings, no getting the vote out and lifts to the polls – and the possibility that the polling stations and counts could become super-spreader gatherings, it just does not look tenable.

The one thing I believe is certain is that Reform UK and all the other existing parties will have to compete within a new political reality that even in Scotland – yes, even for Nicola Sturgeon – we must all be Brexiteers now.

Unwelcome it may be to some, but the new political paradigm requires the only way to win voters’ hearts and minds is to wish your country well – and that now means making Brexit work.

That does not exclude the prospect of rejoining the EU sometime in the future, but wishing your country ill from Brexit so people suffer can never be the right way to achieve one’s goal.

No right-minded Scottish patriot worthy of that epithet can now wish for all the prophecies of catastrophe and disaster to come true. Schadenfreude is an ugly look.

Who would want businesses to fail, people to lose jobs, fishing communities to fall on hard times and inevitably the poorest to suffer the most, just to make them feel good about themselves and think they might apply for EU membership in five, ten or 15 years’ time?

In other words everyone – leaver or remainer – now has to make Brexit work. We all have to roll our sleeves up.

The faults and difficulties need to be overcome or worked around. The new opportunities presented need to be grasped with both hands and embraced enthusiastically.

We might expect it of Brexiteers, but we must now also demand it of those arch-remainers like Sturgeon, Russell, Swinney, Davidson, Leonard – and practically the whole of the Scottish Parliament and our political class in academia, the media and the third sector.

I thought devolution was a mistake. Almost daily I see signs that tell me I was right to think so, but that has never held me back from trying to make it work for the best of Scotland and the UK.

I lost the argument and had to draw a line, accepting the majority disagreed with me and those that thought like I did.

It’s called losers’ consent and it is part of the democratic process. Now is the time for remainers to do the same and make Brexit work, against their better judgement.

What we cannot have is a Scottish Government putting barriers in the way for good commerce and then blaming Brexit to manufacture a grievance to justify independence.

Just this weekend we have seen reports that the Scottish Government has been badly prepared for the handling of seafood exports.

There is then the question of the tens of millions of additional funding made available to Nicola Sturgeon and Kate Forbes to get Scotland ready for Brexit. Where has it been spent? Is there any left and, if so, why? Should it not have been used already – or is it being syphoned-off for some other pet project as we have seen before?

And what work is being done by the Scottish Government to repeal the laws and regulations that might no longer be appropriate and add extra costs to industry? What about the EU’s water directive that was designed to help parched southern-Med countries, but added unnecessary burdens to businesses in rain-soaked Scotland?

Just think – if we have politicians who, irrespective of their views, make Brexit deliver good outcomes for us all, I might not have to write about it anymore. Now that would be a Brexit bonus.

- Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European Parliaments.