Fiona Hyslop's department in frontline battle over Brexit

credit - David Anderson/Holyrood

The main political flashpoints during the SNP’s nine years in government have tended to be centred around departments such as finance, health, education and of course, the First Minister’s office.

Fiona Hyslop, while ever present in the Scottish Government since 2007, was not generally the minister wheeled out for set-piece televised clashes during the independence referendum, with that role tending to fall to Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney and occasionally, Alex Neil and Derek Mackay.

But the UK’s vote for a Brexit on 23 June meant that Hyslop’s brief of culture, tourism and external affairs, the ministry responsible for Scotland’s non-domestic matters, took on huge significance literally overnight.

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The UK’s narrow vote in favour of a Brexit, in a referendum that also saw Scotland decisively vote for Remain, was and is the most dramatic event for any sphere of the Scottish Government during this last year and any other.             

True, Nicola Sturgeon, as would be expected as First Minister, was the one who said a second independence referendum was now “highly likely” and that it would be “democratically unacceptable” for Scotland to be pulled out of the EU against its will.

But none of this changes the fact that the Brexit vote dwarfs any other event that the Scottish Government now has to deal with in terms of its significance on the global stage.

The fact that foreign affairs remains a reserved area, with the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) holding almost all significant governmental powers relating to Europe, means that Hyslop’s external affairs responsibility is not seen as the most influential Scottish Government ministry in the way that fully devolved areas such as health and education are. 

Hyslop was the formal lead for the Scottish Government and SNP during the EU referendum, although purdah rules restricted what she was able to say in her ministerial role during the closing stages of the campaign.

But in an interview with Holyrood magazine, Hyslop talked about how a Brexit result in the EU referendum threatened Scotland’s outward-looking future, stating that such a vote could be seen as the UK saying: “We don’t want to be part of cooperating with you.”   

Hyslop also said that a Remain vote would have meant her department could have a “reasonably peaceful summer”, something that’s obviously now out of the window.

Despite the lack of powers over foreign affairs, with UK overseas EU embassies under the auspices of the FCO in Whitehall, Hyslop’s external affairs department has now taken on a starring operational role in the Scottish Government’s machinery.

The Scottish Government has already started the process of talks with EU officials about attempting to keep Scotland in the EU in line with the wishes of voters.

Again, while the First Minister will take principal responsibility for that, Hyslop’s department will deal with much of the formal representations and diplomacy associated with the fall-out from the Brexit vote.

To seek to take on such a role, given that the Scottish Government unlike the FCO is not equipped with a network of long established overseas embassies, is of course a tall order.

But regardless, some of that work now falls across Hyslop’s desk as a direct consequence of the EU referendum result.     

In the run-up to the 23 June vote, Hyslop, who has a brief that also covers tourism, issued a warning that a Brexit could have a harmful effect on Scotland’s tourism sector.

Again, in her interview with Holyrood magazine, she suggested that Scottish tourism could lose out after a Brexit, if it was thought that the UK was cutting itself off from the rest of Europe.

There were similar warnings from her about what might happen to culture in Scotland in the aftermath of a Brexit.

Issues surrounding the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the Edinburgh International Festival may also loom large, with the prospect of the loss of EU funding for the arts sector when the UK eventually ceases to be a member state.  

“Part of the reason people come here is the warmth of our welcome. It’s hard to promote a warm welcome when you’ve just said no, we don’t want to be part of cooperating with you,” Hyslop said of Scotland’s relationship with Europe.

However, Hyslop, one of dwindling band of politicians to have been in the SNP Government since the start of the party’s time in power, may now well need to pick her party’s battles carefully when it comes to the fight ahead over Europe.

Doubtless there will be position papers and proposals from her department about the EU status of Scotland, which voted by a margin of 62 per cent to 38 per cent to remain, while the UK as a whole narrowly opted for a Brexit.

But either way, we should expect Hyslop to take on an ever more starring role over an issue that will clearly not go away.

The Scottish Parliament’s European and External Relations Committee will also be a big player in relation to Hyslop’s government department and the Brexit issue.

The convenorship of the committee, which is held by SNP MSP Joan McAlpine, a former ministerial aide to Alex Salmond, can be expected to explore all sorts of permutations linked to the controversies about Scotland facing being pulled out of the EU against its will.

In a further sign of the likely importance of the committee, the composition of which has now been agreed, its membership includes experienced hands such as former Labour minister Lewis Macdonald and the SNP former parliamentary business minister Bruce Crawford.

Richard Lochhead, who was in Nicola Sturgeon’s cabinet until this May, the one-time Scottish Lib Dem leader Tavish Scott and serving Scottish Tory deputy leader Jackson Carlaw are also on the committee, which may make for fiery hearings on the Brexit issue and for the external affairs brief being a real flashpoint in this parliament.