By Rab Bruce’s Spider

Jacob Rees Mogg, the Minister for Brexit Opportunities, has admitted that actually imposing the border checks demanded by brexiteers would be an act of self harm. So, taking back control of the UK’s borders now seems to mean relinquishing control because doing the checks which any normal country would do would result in food shortages, just as many who recognised Brexit as a folly predicted. To avoid the shortages which would result from properly enforcing border checks, those checks have now been scrapped. Sorry, postponed. Implementation will now take place late in 2023. Unless they are postponed again, of course. Since they have already been postponed several times, that seems the most likely outcome.

British exporters, meanwhile, must go through all the hoops of paperwork, extra costs and delays when sending goods to the EU, thus placing them at a disadvantage compared to their EU competitors.

What a pointless farce this all is. And when you add the almost comical resentment of British travellers towards Irish people who are able to sweep through EU Customs checks while the brits are forced to wait in long queues while their passports are checked, you cannot help but wonder what Brexiteers thought they were voting for. It certainly wasn’t to take back control, because all that has happened is that power has now been grabbed by a group of extreme Right wing ideologues who fully deserve the appellation of fascists because their behaviour is very much in the mould of 1930s Italy and Germany.

Like most of those who wanted to remain in the EU, it gives me no pleasure at all to say, "We told you so." The problem was that, most of the information about what we would lose actually came out after the result of the Brexit referendum. Whether the result would have been different had that information been available beforehand is, though, debatable. The referendum was not decided on facts but on emotional attachment to dreams of British past glories, combined with a loathing of foreigners which has long been endemic in UK society.

And now we are seeing the folly of that decision, and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. Future General Elections are being rigged, and the Tories are using every trick in the fascist playbook in order to ensure they remain in power. England’s media seems mostly content to let them do this, and far too many of England’s voters seem oblivious to what is going on. Not that they have a great deal of choice, since Sir Keir Starmer, Knight of the Realm, is dragging the Labour Party further rightwards in an effort to appeal to the xenophobic bigots who have put the Tories in power. And since all three of the Unionist Parties are pro-Brexit, those voters who want to make a protest really have nowhere to go.

Voters in Scotland should have another choice. It’s about time we were given an opportunity to exercise that choice. Because, if we don’t, we risk being dragged down with this Ruritania of a state.