RESPECT The Referendum has become the Scottish Unionist three-word slogan equivalent of the Northern Irish Unionist three-word slogan Ulster Says No. In fact it’s become not merely the favourite slogan of people who describe themselves as staunch Unionists but who insist that’s not a euphemism, it’s also become the closest thing to a policy that the Scottish Conservatives have actually got. Well that and finding things to condemn the SNP for while simultaneously ignoring the existence of the large number of people who support independence but who don’t support the SNP, but those are policies which they share with the Labour party and BBC Scotland.
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The fact is that independence supporters do respect the result of the 2014 referendum, which is why we want another independence referendum and haven’t attempted to declare UDI. Ah but ah but, say the staunch non-euphemistic people, that’s not respecting the result. Respecting the result means you put up and shut up. And they would have a point, but only if the people who won the referendum in 2014 were showing an equal amount of respect for the way in which they achieved the result that’s so precious to them. Personally I am sick to the back teeth of being told to respect the result of the 2014 referendum by people who pay not the slightest heed to the promises and commitments that they made to the people of Scotland in order to get a No vote.
It’s a bit like a shopkeeper claiming all sales are final even though they had assured you that what you were buying was a life time’s supply of super-dooper devo-max extra soft toilet paper, when what you actually received was a loan of one very small piece of wet and dry sandpaper. You’d be rightly annoyed, and you’d write in to one of those consumer programmes on the BBC and Angela Rippon would doorstep the shopkeeper asking them a series of highly embarrassing questions until they finally broke and apologised profusely and promised you a refund. All the more so because the shopkeeper had only managed to get you to agree to buy their shoddy goods in the first place after scaring the wits out of pensioners and telling them that if they didn’t buy it then no-one would get a kidney transplant.
People who demand that independence supporters respect the result of the referendum but who have not the slightest intention of respecting the promises that they made in order to get the result they favoured aren’t dealing in respect at all. They are dealing in hypocrisy and a demand for blind and unquestioning obedience, and frankly I’ve got a small piece of wet and dry sandpaper for them.
But what makes it all the more galling is the silence when the British government and the Conservative Party drives a coach and horses through the tattered shreds of the Vow. Remember how the Vow was plastered all over the front pages of newspapers? Remember Jackie Bird telling us all that it meant we were going to get devo max in an episode of Reporting Scotland which for once wasn’t dominated by the fitba? So where was the same amount of publicity this week when the Westminster parliament awarded itself the right to make any changes it felt like to the powers of the devolved administrations without having to bother its pretty little head with the need to consult them or gain their permission?
This week an amendment was tabled to the Brexit bill currently being debated in the House of Commons. Amendment 158 would have prevented UK government ministers using so-called Henry VIII powers to make unilateral changes to legislation underpinning the devolution settlements in Scotland and Wales without a vote in parliament. The amendment was defeated by the Conservatives. All Scotland’s SNP, Labour and Lib-Dem MPs voted in favour of the amendment. All of Scotland’s Conservative MPs voted with the government to allow fundamental changes to by made to the devolution settlement by UK ministers without the consent of the Scottish parliament, and without the need for a vote in the House of Commons. So much for standing up for Scottish interests. Thanks a bunch Ruth. Scotland’s Tories voted to make Scotland powerless.
We already knew that the promise made by the British nationalist parties in 2014 that no changes would be made to the devolution settlement without the consent of the Scottish parliament was a lie. The Sewell Convention enshrined in the Scotland Act has no force in law, according to a Supreme Court ruling. The failure of the amendment means that the devolution settlement can now be changed by Conservative ministers without any consultation with anyone, without any democratic scrutiny, without any votes. And from that same Scottish Unionist media which crowed about the Vow, which trumpeted the arrival of devo max, of a stronger and more powerful Scottish parliament, there was scarcely a word. In normal countries the media is supposed to be a mirror for society, yet when Scotland looks in the mirror of our media, we see only Ruth Davidson smiling smugly.
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