YOU know that the UK is screwed in its Brexit negotiations with the EU when Liam Fox’s Department for International Trade is reduced to tweeting that France needs high-quality innovative British jams and marmalades.

I’m not sure what an innovative jam is, except possibly the one the UK has got itself into as it hopes fervently that Brussels will roll over and allow full British access to the single market while conceding that the UK is exempt from freedom of movement of people.

Otherwise the French will have to make do with cheap substitute Euro confitures and preserves on their croissants. That will teach them. The day is saved for Great Britain with a jar of Dundee jam, and it’s now impossible to distinguish between an official UK Government statement and a parody account. Although that has always been a tough call with anything Liam Fox was involved in.

Over the weekend our unelected Prime Minister did her impression of Gollum and said she’d do all it took to save her Preciousss. She’s not going to allow the precious Union to be threatened by divisive nationalists, except for those divisive British nationalists that she’s got sitting in her Cabinet; those divisive British nationalists to whom she’s conceded a hard Brexit because she was one of them all along. Theresa basks in the applause of a Tory Party that’s voted to destroy the Union she claims to hold most dear.

After Brexit, Britain is going to be able to label its own jam, said Liam’s boss. A clear admission that we’re on our way out of the single market as food labelling comes under what the EU calls "regulatory convergence" and is a fundamental part of the single market. Britain’s jam is going to be labelled rich and fruity, even though all it will contain are the lies and self-delusion of a Conservative Party which thinks a rich and fruity accent substitutes for truth.

It now looks as though Scotland is in for a worst-case scenario. The UK always promises we’ll get jam tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes. We’ll be forever spreading our cold toast with the bitter taste of disappointment and the sourness of hopelessness. We’re going to leave the EU and Theresa May would prefer to surrender access to the single market so that she can impose immigration controls. The nightmare of a xenophobic, hard-right nationalist Little Britain looms large and Liam Fox tweets about jam.

Back during the heady days of the Scottish independence referendum campaign, the leaders of the Unionist parties jointly issued a statement in which they pledged that: “Power lies with the Scottish people and we believe it is for the Scottish people to decide how Scotland is governed.”

Now we discover that power lies with the UK Government and it intends to overrule the Scottish people even when we’ve told them clearly how we want to be governed. The UK is a family of nations, and Scotland’s the troublesome child who gets sent to bed early without any jam. The Tories want Scotland to knuckle down and do what it’s told. During the independence referendum we were a family of equal nations. Now all of a sudden we’re a centralised state. How dare that SNP and those Greens plot another independence referendum? They should be telling us what they’re going to do to make the best of Brexit.

Instead of planning how to get away from the arsonist and saving the house, the arsonists are complaining that the pro-independence parties aren’t saying what they can do to make life more comfortable for the arsonists and their pals in the smoking rubble. That’s Tory Brexmess logic. Create a disaster, foster uncertainty, destroy the economy, then blame those trying to escape your malignity for risking disaster, causing uncertainty, and damaging the economy. Still, the Tories are sure all those people who’ll lose their jobs when companies flee the UK for the EU will do just brilliantly as fruit pickers and jam makers.

Theresa May announced a Great Repeal Act to enshrine EU law into UK law and then it can be picked apart and rejected piece by piece. Piece by piece, the Tories will substitute our European rights for those they see fit to allow us. They’ll take all the nourishment out of the jam and leave us with a thin watery spread. However, EU rights are enshrined in the Scotland Act, so the only way they can be repealed without the consent of the Scottish Parliament is for Westminster to override the express will of the Scottish people. That’s going to cause a constitutional crisis, but eventually Westminster will tell Holyrood what to do. There can be no clearer signal that Scotland is subordinate and subordinated within the UK.

Ruth Davidson doesn’t want the UK Government to issue a blanket refusal for Scotland to hold a second independence referendum. She knows that any such refusal won’t prevent a second independence referendum forever, it will only delay it. And she also knows that it will build a head of steam and anger in Scotland that will ensure that when the referendum is held, the Union will be sure to lose it. Its chances of winning aren’t great as things stand. Within this Union, Scotland is betrayed, belittled, and Brexited. None of the promises Scotland was made by the Better Together campaign in 2014 have been kept. The Union that we were told we were a valued member of no longer exists. The truth is it never existed. It was only ever the bluster of bullies whose bluff wasn’t called. It’s time to call their bluff.

There is now no way in which to resolve the contradiction between the results of Scotland’s independence and EU referendums without another independence referendum. The stakes have never been higher: without independence Scotland will have a future of empty jam jars.

It’s time to choose. We can be a country, or we can be a northern province forever at the mercy of a Westminster that cares only for its own power and privilege. Let’s have our own Great Repeal Act, and repeal forever the power of Theresa May and her like to decide our future for us.



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