I am grateful for that update at 5.34 pm. A statement is expected at 9 o’clock but it may change a couple more times, so I will take that with a pinch of salt.
The Prime Minister has spent the last two years trying to placate her own party while its members peddle their almost impossible visions of a post-Brexit future to the public. After the referendum, the SNP attempted to extend an olive branch and said we would back a deal that offered to keep Scotland in the customs union and the single market. As the right hon. Member for Wokingham said, that fell on deaf ears. Instead, the Prime Minister opted to lead the country towards the hardest of Brexits, simply to pursue her personal vendetta against immigration. She has done so without a plan or a roadmap of what this Brexit will look like; instead she goes around with meaningful words such as “Brexit means Brexit” and “I’m going to make a success of this.” Ms McDonagh, if you know what that means, I would be delighted to know. For the last two and a half years we have been told that Brexit means Brexit, but what does that mean?
With days to go, we still do not know what Brexit will look like. The Lords EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee heard last week that the Government still have no idea whether the UK can remain in EU food safety systems after Brexit. Yesterday, Simon Fraser, the former Foreign and Commonwealth Office official, described the state of affairs as
“a shocking failure of our government and our parliament, and a national humiliation”.
I could not agree more. The Conservative Government in Westminster have shown they are institutionally incapable of acting in the best interests of the Scottish people.
I have described this chaos without even touching on the effects that Brexit will have for Scotland, its people and our business community. As I said in my earlier intervention, people in Scotland voted 62% in favour of remaining in the EU—higher than anywhere else on these islands. It is estimated that more than 100,000 Scottish jobs are under threat from a no-deal Brexit. The right hon. Member for Wokingham often talks about economic analysis. That analysis is not from the SNP but from the independent Fraser of Allander Institute, which has outlined that 100,000 jobs would be at risk as a result of a hard Brexit.