It wasn’t austerity that led to Brexit, it was nationalism – and Nicola Sturgeon knows it

All her political life, the SNP leader has brandished the narrow nationalism of separation from the union of the European offshore nations on the western edge of the continent

The message of the Brexit campaign was to 'take back control' – precisely the line Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP have promoted over Scotland (Getty Images)

As Britain grapples with how to handle Brexit, the debate from top politicians is becoming confused and incoherent. At the Labour Party conference in Liverpool the organisers refused to hold a debate on Brexit, the most importance political topic of the day. They feared exposing Jeremy Corbyn’s incoherences on Europe – in favour of unrestrained free movement but opposed to the Single Market and competition policy – would lead to yet more mockery.

Some pro-European Labour MPs are now backing an end to the four key EU freedoms of movement – of goods, capital, services and citizens – by calling for work permits and managed migration. They are dubbed “Red Ukip” and add to the confusion around how to respond to Brexit.

Now Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, steps forward to add her own message at the annual conference of the Institute of Directors. She told delegate that Brexit was “born of inequality, of feelings of powerlessness, of austerity budgets.”

The idea that austerity equals anti-European votes is fast becoming an accepted cliché on the part of those politicians and opinion-formers, especially on the left, who will not accept their own share of responsibility for the 23 June vote. Other countries with no record of austerity, such as Switzerland or Sweden, have also had plebiscite votes against Europe in recent years.

But the main message of the Brexit campaign was to “take back control” from an outside body. This is precisely the line Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP have promoted for years about Scotland – namely, that Scots should wrest control from the external power with too much sway over the Scottish nation: the United Kingdom and London.

Substitute the European Union and Brussels for the UK and Westminster and the SNP rhetoric matches that of Tory-Ukip nationalists saying freedom requires divorce from our neighbours. Arguably the UK is a prototype European Union of four nations – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – with full rights of movement, residence and even voting afforded to all citizens of a foreign republic, Ireland.

All her political life, Sturgeon has brandished the narrow nationalism of separation from the union of the European offshore nations on the western edge of the continent. She has proclaimed that Scotland will thrive economically free of the shackles of union with its neighbours.

There are no single causes for the Brexit vote. Certainly many working class voters felts let down by the ‘financerisation’ of the economy promoted by Gordon Brown and sustained by George Osborne. But Ukip and the anti-EU campaign were funded by wealthy Mayfair and City hedge funds and spread-betters. Big money and the offshore-owned press constructed a political project which won once David Cameron gave way to the Ukip demand for a plebiscite.

It tapped into deep atavisms of prejudice, strong in English politics since the days of Enoch Powell, and above all Brexit took the most powerful force in politics since the French Revolution – a cry of the “Nation über Alles” – as the only hope for salvation from an external force.

In this, the Tory-UKIP Brexiteers had only to read the playbook written by Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP to win.

Denis MacShane is the former Labour minister for Europe. He is the author of 'Brexit: How Britain left Europe', published by IB Tauris