Scotland’s first minister warns long and complicated exit from EU could lead to ‘lost decade of uncertainty and turmoil’

Nicola Sturgeon has said she finds it “gobsmacking” that Theresa May’s government is still unable to answer basic questions about its Brexit strategy, almost three months on from the EU referendum.



Scotland’s first minister told MSPs she was shocked there was no clarity on what the UK government wanted to achieve in its exit talks with the EU, which now looked like a “very long and very tortuous process”.

She said she feared the delays and complexities of leaving the union would lead to a “lost decade of uncertainty and turmoil” for the economy and society in general. The damage caused could be “deep and severe”, she added.

Speaking to a Holyrood committee investigating Brexit, Sturgeon said it was “gobsmacking that we are at such an early stage”, and that the UK’s early thinking was being kept private within Whitehall.

“The lack of any answers to basic questions about what the UK is actually seeking to achieve is just totally unacceptable and it becomes more unacceptable with every day that passes,” she said. “The idea that it can be under a cloak of secrecy over the UK position is just untenable.”

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It was “utterly, utterly depressing” that British citizens now faced having to pay for visas to enter the EU after Brexit, the first minister added. She said a key goal for the UK was to remain within the single market: that would be the “least worst” option short of remaining a full EU member.

Sturgeon added, however, that she was optimistic the prime minister would give the Scottish government, and other devolved administrations, a direct and meaningful role in the UK’s Brexit negotiations.

Michael Russell, the Scottish government’s Brexit minister, is due to meet David Davis, the UK cabinet secretary for leaving the EU, in London on Thursday, to build on detailed talks between their officials about involving the Edinburgh government in framing the UK’s policy and negotiating stance. Those civil service talks had made progress, Sturgeon said.

In a meeting soon after she became prime minister in July, May pledged to Sturgeon that the Scottish government would be “fully engaged” in developing a UK-wide stance and strategy on leaving the EU.

Sturgeon said civil servants from across the Scottish government – including in education, fisheries and agriculture – were now being assigned to working on the implications of quitting the EU.

She dismissed suggestions that strong quarterly employment figures for Scotland – in which the unemployment rate had fallen to 4.7%, slightly below the UK rate of 4.9% – meant the Brexit vote had had no negative impact on the economy. That data was from May to July, she said, a period that straddled the date of the referendum.

It was too early for Sturgeon to say whether she would want to challenge or block the UK’s Brexit plan with a legislative consent motion at Holyrood – a mechanism whereby MSPs accept or reject UK legislation that affects the Scottish parliament’s power.

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With legal action now under way in London and Belfast to force the UK government to put the Brexit deal to a binding vote at Westminster, it was still unclear whether May would seek parliamentary backing for the Brexit deal.

But Sturgeon’s optimism that the UK government would give Scotland a meaningful and substantive role in the Brexit talks means that if the final deal meets Scotland’s needs, Holyrood will not want to oppose it.

Sturgeon insisted that a further Scottish independence referendum remained a clear option, but again implied that it was no longer an immediate, primary objective. A TNS opinion poll on Tuesday confirmed a spate of recent surveys showing declining support for a yes vote.

The TNS survey said that, including “don’t know” responses, 41% of Scots would vote for independence against 47% who would not.