Scotland in the Union has a safeword ... it’s indyref2

This volte-face is not unrelated to the fact that the party got its collective backside handed to it by the Scottish electorate on a commemorative indyref2 plate glazed with Stephen Kerr’s tears.

It’s not clear if The National is about to start producing those as a special offer if readers take out a subscription, but they certainly should consider it [Ed: Great idea].

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The mandate for a second independence referendum which was won by the SNP in this election is stronger and more convincing than the Conservative mandate in the UK. That’s the Tory mandate for Brexit which is being described in the press as a landslide.

The Tories won 56% of the seats that they contested, the SNP won 81% of the seats that they contested. If the Conservative victory is a landslide, the SNP one is the shifting of a tectonic plate. That would be the same plate that was handed to Boris Johnson with the Scottish Tories’ backside on it.

Even senior figures in what is left of the Labour party in Scotland are now conceding that the Scottish electorate has clearly and unequivocally demanded Scotland’s right to decide its own future, a future which is not necessarily the Brexit Britain promised to us by Boris Johnson.

When the demand for an independence referendum goes beyond those parties which have historically always supported independence, the issue has escaped from its usual confines and can no longer be so easily ignored by a Scottish media which has historically been Unionist by default.

Naturally, riding on the back of their Commons majority in the rest of the UK, the Conservatives have ruled out any independence referendum in Scotland. Michael Gove appeared on the Sophy Ridge Show on Sky over the weekend to oil the refusal with a coating of slimy politeness. But a man who is hitting democracy over the head with a hammer is still an authoritarian, no matter how polite he is as he kills it. A mugger who holds a knife to your throat but says please and thank you is still stealing your wallet by force of threat and menace.

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The Conservatives are using votes from outwith Scotland in order to impose their will on a Scotland which has rejected them. In doing so they have destroyed the democratic case for Scottish Unionism. The party is still insisting that Scotland is a valued and much loved partner in a family of nations, only we now discover that the Conservatives meant the Fritzl family.

Shortly after his General Election victory, Boris Johnson announced that one of his priorities would be to strengthen the Union. Clearly what he meant was that he was going to invest in some padlocks and iron bars in order to prevent escape, and not that he was going to transform the UK into a state which Scotland feels comfortable remaining a part of. Boris Johnson is so keen for Scotland to listen to his message that he’s turned us into a captive audience. There’s only one way in which you can handcuff and shackle a person while still maintaining truthfully that you love and respect them, and that’s when they have a safe word. Scotland’s safe word is “indyref2”.

The Conservatives’ problem is that a union which relies on saying no, a union which refuses to allow a constituent nation to decide its own future, is no longer a union at all. You cannot plausibly argue that Scotland is freely and of its own volition a partner in the British state when that same British state is imposing policies on Scotland which Scotland’s electorate have utterly rejected and which is refusing to allow the people of Scotland to voice their opinion on the matter.

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All that the Conservatives are doing is storing up problems for themselves, and making it less likely that they will be able to make a case for Scotland to remain a part of the UK when the issue of independence is finally put to a vote, as it most certainly will be.

We’re going to hear a lot over the coming months about Boris Johnson’s legal right to refuse another independence referendum. That may or may not be true, the matter of the lawfulness of a referendum without a Section 30 order has never been tested in the courts. However there is no doubt at all that Boris Johnson does not have the political or the moral right to refuse to allow Scotland to have a say on its own future, and fundamentally the crisis of Westminster legitimacy in Scotland is a political and a moral crisis, not a legal one.

The crisis of Scottish democracy created by the Conservatives’ refusal to obey the will of the Scottish people will find a political solution, not a legal one.

Social media is full of people who voted No in 2014 announcing that they now support another independence referendum, and they plan to vote Yes this time. The election result has generated a momentum in favour of independence, and while the election delivered a resounding victory for the SNP, the wider independence movement has a crucial role to play in the months ahead. It is up to us in the wider movement to ensure that we build upon that momentum, and we create an unstoppable political force within Scotland which gives the Scottish Government and Scotland’s SNP MPs the support that they need to bring about the referendum that Scotland so clearly desires. The people of Scotland have made their feelings absolutely clear, and we will not be gainsaid by a Boris Johnson or Michael Gove who have no democratic legitimacy in Scotland.