Do you want to see some puppies?

Donald Trump has destroyed the United Kingdom.

He has inadvertently fired the starting gun on IndyRef 2 and like the big blundering imbecile narcissist he is, he has also determined the inevitable outcome. He has done this by announcing his enthusiasm for Brexit and his eagerness to arrive at an early trade deal with the UK. Why is this a disaster for the Union?

The starting point for the deal will be the aborted TTIP package. This was rejected at an EU level, but can now be resuscitated as the template for a British deal as a result of Brexit. Nevertheless, the objections to TTIP remain. The EU dodged the TTIP bullet but can now be shot in the back with it by Brexit Britain. Now Trump gets to inflict a Britain-only "son of TTIP" on us.

Among the objections to the terms of this agreement are the way it prevents governments supporting a nationalised public health service in preference to private provision on the grounds that this is anti-competitive. This means that the government will be legally obliged to allow US providers to dismember the NHS.

Consider the possible timeline associated with this.

Trump and the UK arrive at a deal based on the provisions of TTIP very rapidly, certainly within the two year framework of Article 50. Except this trade deal will be even more disadvantageous to Britain than TTIP would have been because (a) the UK is no longer negotiating as part of the EU, (b) the UK will bend over backwards to accommodate the US because it has no alternative and (c) the UK needs a deal badly to make Brexit look like a success. It is folly to imagine Trump will be our saviour. The deal will give carte blanche to corporate interests.

This treaty will take effect at one minute after midnight on April 1st 2019, the UK's first day outside the EU. Immediately the corporate vultures will start picking over the corpse of an NHS that has been systematically deprived of resources in order to make privatisation seem attractive.

Scotland is not exempt from this, as the treaty negotiated on its behalf by a tory government in Westminster applies to the Scottish NHS too.

So Trump's announcement of his desire to make a trade deal with the UK is basically a strange man in a raincoat saying "would you like to see some puppies." It is not really something to get too excited about. It is not "good news," as Boris Johnson would assert.

Brexit Britain will be a playground for Dickensian extremes of deregulated avarice and exploitation for the amusement of corporate America. It will be a haven for tax exiles whose whims are catered for by the native British helots. The UK will continue to exist only because successful parasites ensure their host survives. But it will be a Britain in which a sanctioned serfdom coughs with untreated respiratory infections while queuing to apply for a zero hours contract to toil in the manufacture of its own chains to earn some increasingly worthless pounds to save towards the unaffordable price of a consultation and the extortionate medicine prescribed.  

The NHS will be toast once it has to compete with corporate America as a result of the proposed trade deal, because despite the verbiage about anti-competitive practices, there will be no level playing field. Private interests will have the media entirely on their side, conferring all the spurious prestige necessary on private options - spurious, of course, because there is no such thing as a deluxe exclusive business-class gold-plated executive fucking tumour. But there will be no adverts for the NHS, no celebrity glamour, no sport-star endorsements. It will be stigmatised.

This is what the Brexiteers always wanted. The coup that they plotted was about more than just the overthrow of David Cameron. It was about the weakening of democratic institutions that safeguard our workers' rights, our health and safety standards, our environmental standards. We didn't "take back control" on June 23rd. We already had control, by means of the various provisions administered and enforced by our democratically accountable institutions to prevent unrestricted corporations motivated only by profit from nakedly exploiting us. We lost control.

Brexit was about deregulation on behalf of corporate interests. Now Britain is a juicy plump tax free prize for corporate America, ripe for the picking, in the form of a TTIP-like trade deal.

There is only one alternative to this for Scotland, and that is independence.