It is during debates like this that I am sure everybody across the House feels a great sense of pride
in our country, our island nation, our United Kingdom of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland: open and internationalist but of course united, in which Scotland, of course, has played its full part and will do, I predict, for many, many years to come. Together we can achieve much more than we could apart; together as one nation, together with our allies and partners around the globe.
Today, we have heard some excellent maiden speeches. I was reminded by the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), the shadow Foreign Secretary who is sadly not in her place, that the foreign affairs day of the 2017 Queen’s Speech debate was the day that the now Prime Minister was responding as Foreign Secretary. I remember it well, as that was the day that I gave my maiden speech. I am sure it lives long in the memory, especially for the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald). I therefore had to take issue with some of what the right hon. Lady said and remember the prescience of some of the then Foreign Secretary’s predictions. I believe it was on that evening that the now Prime Minister predicted that this country would be leaving the European Union with a deal. And so on one of the biggest foreign affairs issues of our time, the Prime Minister predicted exactly correctly.