On a visit to the RBS Accelerator in the former Ladies Branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland on Princes Street on Thursday the leader of the opposition said that in revisiting the Brexit debate, Prime Minister Andy Burnham is opening a “can of worms”.
She said in answer to The Edinburgh Reporter’s question about what she would do about Brexit: “We saw how much chaos there was last time with an extremely divisive referendum. I understand that not everybody got the result that they wanted, just as we had people who thought that leaving the EU would solve every problem.
“The EU is the cause of every problem. We now have the reverse with people believing that we need to rejoin and every problem will go away. This is not serious. We need to stop talking about having endless referendums, whether it’s in Scotland, whether it’s on Scotland leaving, or whether it’s on the EU.
“This has been a distraction for our country. It has contributed to a lack of economic growth, and that is because when people think that something significant like that is happening, they pause investment. We need to stop that. It is time for us to start using the powers that we have now and the opportunities to start generating growth for the whole of the United Kingdom.”
Harriet Cross, Shadow Scottish Secretary, added that while Douglas Alexander is in India this week on a trade mission looking at whisky, looking at salmon, that First Minister John Swinney is going on a similar mission to India next week. She pointed out that would no longer be possible if Scotland rejoined the EU.
She said: “There is benefit to Scotland to trade, in being able to do free trade deals, free trade agreements around the world, and these are the sort of opportunities which Andy Burnham is effectively saying that he will throw away again if he wants to open up this debate.”
We asked for clarification on this point – was Ms Cross saying that trade missions would not be possible if we were within the EU? She confirmed that within the EU Scotland would not be able to do its own individual deal with India.
Ms Badenoch backed her up saying: “You don’t get individual trade missions within the EU – not anything serious. It is all symbolic. I’m a former trade secretary and as much as I would have liked to have done things with France or Germany we always had to speak to the Commission.”
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