IN reviewing the news and reports of the last week, it’s very heartening to know that not just in our “wee nation” but across the whole of Europe and beyond, the “Scottish Six” – with their now fully confirmed win at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) – have struck a hammer blow for common sense and democracy.
By democracy, refer to the fact that Scotland as a whole and every individual constituency within it voted Remain in 2016, therefore it should not be forced from the EU against its will.
By the promises made in the 2014 referendum, we are equal partners in the UK. Those guarantees should automatically extend to not being dragged along roads which we communally choose not to travel.
With that in mind, could anyone be faulted if Holyrood now raised an action that 2014 was in fact turned into a “promissory referendum” by Westminster, and that the plebiscite of 2014 should now be legally enforced as a result of breach of promises on which so many Scots based their vote, thereby forcing true intra-national democracy on Westminster?
The outcome of such a case would be interesting indeed, for it would essentially state that either politicians must tell the truth then be bound by it (for The Vow was a fully cross-party consensus, witnessed, signed and published), or, legally, that politicians can lie through their teeth with complete impunity. It’s clear, absent a judicial opinion, where every appearance leans at present.
Who can dispute that it’s beyond time to throw a cat into Westminster’s constitutional flock of pigeons as we also force adherence to the Good Friday Agreement? An injunction to stop Brexit followed by a challenge to Westminster’s authority to pull us away from the EU against our wishes would achieve that. It would also effectively federalise the UK, which London could never accept.
The action by the Scottish Six opens up the avenue of using this path again, with another question which might be worthy of the ECJ: “If a member state, existing as a union of multiple nations under a treaty at the time of entry to the EU, then voids those internal treaties to subsequently become two or more individual nation states, are all nation states then regarded as successive EU members, does only the state regarded as the successor state have continuity, or are all subsequent nation states then summarily ejected from the EU?”
Essentially, we would be asking the EU if it would delight in disenfranchising entire tranches of its citizens.
Clarification here would not only be of benefit to the Scots, it could also aid many others, and it would allow prospective new members to fully consider what they are actually signing up to.
It could even be worth co-joining an affirmation of support with alignment to the UN’s rights of nations and peoples from the ECJ which should then bind the EU at its myriad levels, potentially assisting everyone from the Kurds to the Catalonians. Surely the UK couldn’t object – after all, it’s a signatory to that UN declaration.
The brave have walked the path, now our government should also – not frivolously, not just for ourselves, but in the name of decency, democracy, and the rights of the underdog. For if we did, we could chart the course for many.
Ashley MacGregor
East Kilbride GLAD
I did something useful on Wednesday night amid the farce that passes for politics in London. I caught up with addressing Xmas cards and managing to postcode them. The farce simply highlights the incompetence of Tory and Labour politicians and more to the point their complete irrelevance to most people in the UK, let alone Scotland.
Ian Johnstone
Peterhead
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