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Boris Johnson’s Brexit trade deal has been roundly rejected by the Scottish and Northern Irish parliaments, as the UK’s decentralized nations called it disastrous and damaging.
Holyrood and Stormont passed motions condemning the deal by a large majority after the three parliamentary delegates were hastily pulled from their Christmas breaks to debate the UK government’s last-minute deal with the EU.
Only the Labor-dominated Welshman Senedd backed the deal after Mark Drakeford, the prime minister, said the “thin and disappointing” deal was at least “a platform on which better deals can be negotiated in the future.” .
Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s prime minister, told Holyrood that the trade deal ignored the wishes of Scotland, which had repeatedly voted against leaving the EU and then called for the UK to remain within the single market.
The deal betrayed Scotland’s fishing industry and was a “democratic, economic and social calamity” and “disastrous,” he told MSPs. Signing the Brexit deal would boost his party’s momentum for a second independence referendum in the May elections at Holyrood, he said it again established that only independence would protect Scotland’s interests.
“The Westminster system is beyond repair,” he said. “We deserve the best treatment of all, as an independent European country.”
Scottish Labor faced widespread criticism after it backed Sturgeon’s motion, despite Keir Starmer’s demand that the party back the deal at Westminster and Welsh Labor backing at Cardiff.
Richard Leonard, the Scottish Labor leader, rejected accusations that his party was in disarray, voting in different ways in different parliaments.
He said that Sturgeon’s carefully worded motion, which was also backed by Scottish Greens and Scottish Liberal Democrats, focused on Johnson’s failure to properly consult delegate nations and accepted that a no-deal outcome should be avoided.
In a small victory for Labor, a large majority of the MSPs backed Leonard’s amendment calling for intergovernmental efforts to improve workers’ rights and completely replace the Erasmus student exchange program scheme, and for the Sturgeon government to spend the £ 300 million it has in reserve to mitigate the worst effects of Brexit.
The Holyrood vote was symbolic, rather than legislative. In Wednesday’s Commons vote, which did take legal effect, the SNP joined the Liberal Democrats, all Northern Irish parties sitting in Westminster, a Green MP and a Labor rebel in voting against .
The bill was approved by 521 votes to 73, a majority of 448.
In Stormont, assembly members lamented the deal as a blow to Northern Ireland, but disagreed on the damage and who was responsible.
While the main motion simply “signaled” the agreement, the chamber voted 49 to 38 in favor of an amendment sponsored by the Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDLP) that said Stormont “rejects” Brexit in line with Ireland’s vote of the North to remain within the EU in 2016.
There was widespread relief that a no-deal collapse and the specter of tariffs had been avoided, but speakers raised concerns about the disappearance of EU funds and the costs to businesses of customs barriers between the region and the rest of the UK. Unionists also expressed anxiety over the constitutional implications of a de facto border in the Irish Sea.
Sinn Féin nationalists and the SDLP found common cause with the Ulster Unionists and the Non-Aligned Alliance by pointing the finger at the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the only group that had backed the UK’s exit from the EU.
“Those who told companies that their products would be sold in free trade agreements around the world are responsible that these companies are now less well off. So it’s all yours, ”said John O’Dowd of Sinn Féin.
Christopher Stalford of the DUP said that other parties had created the maritime boundary by opposing controls at the land border with the Republic of Ireland. “You campaigned for this, you delivered it, you are the owner, not us,” he said.
