March 22nd 2016. The polls were predicting we would vote to remain in the European Union. Leicester City were just five games away from winning the ultimate prize at the end of a fairytale football season, and the idea of Ed Miliband talking toilets with Radio 2 listeners was merely a figment of a BBC producer’s imagination.
It was also the date in which the Scottish Parliament last passed any legislation other than the statutory Budget. That was all in the past on Tuesday this week when MSPs voted to change the way in which tax is paid by passengers on flights from Scotland's airports. However, having now navigated the SNP’s ultimate plan to cut aviation tax - a move they say will be a "fundamental component” to boosting Scotland’s economy and connectivity – it is likely to encounter some turbulence in future, with opposition parties ready to put up fierce opposition over what the rate of the new levy should be set at.
On Wednesday, the debate in Holyrood shifted from cutting tax to the cropping of something rather more delicate. Following a lively debate between MSPs across the chamber, the decade-old ban on all tail docking was scrapped in favour of introducing exemptions for certain breeds of dog. From a political point of view, if you pardon the pun, it’s actually difficult to make heads or tails of this policy reversal in what seems to be a case of ‘all pain and no gain’ from an SNP perspective. On the face of it, it is a move that will be welcomed in the rural parts of Scotland, constituencies where the party has haemorrhaged support in recent elections. However, whether this subject alone, as emotive as it may be, will be enough to attract this segment of the electorate back, having lost many of them over more fundamental issues such as pursuing another independence referendum, remains to be seen. Allied to that, in a double whammy to the party, all the veterinary evidence in the world is unlikely to convince those voters who switched from Labour that this is a progressive act.
There was a moment of complete consensus amid all the division this week in Holyrood when Conservative MSP Brian Whittle rose to his feet to pay a tearful tribute to Doddie Weir, the former Scotland rugby international who announced earlier in the day that he had been diagnosed with motor neurone disease. As Whittle delivered a compassionate speech about his friend to a parliament in sombre silence, it was another poignant reminder of the words of Jo Cox that “we have far more in common than that divides us”.
On the one year anniversary of the referendum vote, it’s only right that the weekly round-up turns its attention to the subject of Brexit.
No sooner had David Davis touched down from Brussels after starting the formal discussions for our exit from the European Union than a new potential negotiator appeared on the scene. Theresa May admitted during the Queen’s Speech that her government may require the consent of the Scottish Parliament to overturn the 1972 European Communities Act - a term grandly labelled the Great Repeal Act – before she can enshrine all current EU law into domestic law.
Nicola Sturgeon was unsurprisingly insistent that this should be the case, asserting that it would be “unthinkable” to bypass the consent of the Scottish Parliament and would only serve to show that the UK government was planning a Brexit ‘power-grab’, with powers destined for Edinburgh from Brussels being hijacked at Whitehall.
The First Minister has some constitutional decisions of her own to make this summer, with an announcement on her plans concerning a second independence referendum likely before Holyrood breaks up next week.
Having undergone a period of reflection following the loss of 21 seats at the general election, and facing claims of political miscalculation over her decision to align a second vote with the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, she may be keen for any renewed pitch to voters to demonstrate that Europe is not the only tail that wags the independence dog.