|
|
Johnson’s meeting with 11 out of the 13 Scottish Conservatives at Westminster on Wednesday is understood to have covered when he should first visit Scotland if elected, how colleagues north of the border could feed into policy decisions and the future structuring of government – Johnson has proposed a “union unit” within Downing Street. The meeting was described as “positive” and “businesslike”.
Brown, the former Labour prime minister, warned of an approaching “head-on conflict” between Johnson’s hardline views and the Scottish National party’s “extreme nationalism”, with its intention to abandon the pound and leave the UK single market and customs union.
Writing in the Scottish Daily Mail about his plans for a new thinktank to make the “positive, patriotic and progressive case for the union”, Brown said: “Nothing illustrates the sterility of this head-to-head confrontation better than yesterday when, in the wake of news of Scotland having the worst and most deadly drug problem in Europe, the SNP and the Conservatives simply blamed each other.”
Brown said Johnson’s brand of anti-Europe conservatism was regarded in Scotland as anti-Scottish and that “no matter what he may say now, two decades of anti-Scottish invective will come back to haunt him.” [...]