Sunday saw millions of voters on the continent heading to polling stations for the 2024 EU elections.

These elections took place just as Brexit emerged as a key issue in the General Election campaign in a UK whose economy has been decimated by the trio of Tory-created chaos – alongside austerity and the cost-of-living crisis.

Brexit hadn’t happened at the time of the last General Election. The fateful vote might have taken place on 23^rd June 2016, heralding a highly uncertain period for the UK as drawn-out negotiations took place. However, it was 31^st January 2020 before the UK made its exit from the EU, entirely against the will of the Scottish people, with every single local authority area, including Orkney, having voted to remain.

It meant that during the 2019 General Election campaign the impact of Brexit was still largely guesswork, though it was forecast that Orkney’s key industries of agriculture and food and drink production would be adversely impacted.

Now the reality of uncertainty over agriculture funding in a post-Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) era is a reality and the inability to have the kind of long-term funding certainty that EU membership brought is a significant issue for Scotland’s farmers, not least those in Orkney.

The truth of the matter is that the seven-year planning that was part of operating under the CAP has now been replaced with annual and diminishing funding from the UK Government.

It is a highly important impact of Brexit in Orkney, but by no means the only one, with so many projects in the islands having benefited from EU funding over the decades.

I know that our candidate Robert Leslie has been campaigning strongly on the fact that the SNP is providing the only route back into the EU, with all other parties having wedded themselves to Brexit, no matter how damaging.

And it was heartening this week to see 36 MEP candidates across ten EU countries pledging to support Scotland’s democratic will to be part of the EU.

In Holyrood, I was able to highlight another impact of Brexit – on the likelihood of school pupils pursuing music education. I know, for example, that many musicians from Orkney have visited festivals on the continent in the past, and will more than likely find it less straightforward these days.

Brexit has put significant barriers in place that have had a negative impact on opportunities for creatives in Scotland, and that is why the Scottish Government is calling on the UK Government – whatever colour it is after 4^th July – to rejoin Creative Europe and to engage positively with the European Commission’s proposals to open negotiations on youth mobility.

With Stephen Flynn having been so warmly applauded during the BBC leaders debate when he highlighted that Brexit ‘has been an unmitigated disaster’, I hope that folk in Orkney and Shetland, and across Scotland, will vote accordingly and create the circumstances for an independent Scotland to once more dance to its own tune as a member of the EU.

This is a regular column by SNP MSP Emma Roddick, All Highlands and Islands MSPs have been offered the same space in The Orkney News to share their personal views.