Michael Russell: Devolution is being scuppered – and it’s no accident

Commentators are of course entitled to their views, and even ex politicians like Luke Graham (one of the authors) are allowed to speculate no matter how daft.

But you would have thought someone who had reached, and still holds, UK Cabinet rank would be more careful about contempt for voters, not least in the middle of an election.

However Alister Jack, the Secretary of State against Scotland, can never resist an opportunity to demonstrate his dislike for Holyrood so, throwing electoral common sense to the winds, he has commenced legal legal action to set aside two pieces of legislation passed unanimously by the Scottish Parliament only a few weeks ago.

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Some Tory apologists are claiming that this is all an exaggerated fuss about a minor legal quibble but the facts which prove the contrary are clearly laid out in the Parliament’s Official Report of the final legislative session on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child Bill, held on March 16.

At 5.45 that afternoon Tory MSP Alexander Stewart rose to move amendments laying out what the UK Government wanted the Scottish Government to do, which was to drop any reference in the bill to Acts of the UK Parliament.

But John Swinney in response to Mr Stewart was very explicit as to why this attack was itself out of order. He pointed out that if they succeeded the Tory lodged amendments would “ significantly undermine the protection for children’s rights in Scotland that the bill seeks to put in place” and were “at odds with the Scottish Government’s ambition that the bill should provide for the highest level of protection possible for children’s rights within the powers of the Scottish Parliament”.

He then went on to conclusively demonstrate that “the amendments proposed by Mr Stewart would remove from the protections offered by sections 19 and 20 of the bill all acts of the United Kingdom Parliament that fall within the competence of the Scottish Parliament (which) would include all pre-devolution legislation over which competence has been transferred” and he subsequently listed listed no fewer than 12 pieces of legislation which would be affected including the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 and the Education (Scotland) Acts of 1980 and 1996.

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There is no doubt that this was an attempt to wreck the legislation and although the Tories bristled at the accusation, it must have struck home because – and this is the highly significant part – Mr Stewart did not press his amendments to a vote.

With that decision he and the Tories explicitly accepted that the Act as debated was indeed competent as John Swinney had argued and then confirmed it with their votes at decision time that day.

The Tories have been very sensitive to issues of competence since Brexit, keen to hem in the Scottish Parliament so that it could not interfere with the unimpeded operation of absolute Westminster sovereignty.

That is bad enough and is a strong argument for setting aside the current settlement for the normality of independence.

But now we have an alliance of a Tory UK Government with extreme unionists (who are often also extreme Brexiteers) which actively seeks to negate whatever Scottish democracy decides .

This is far more than what Parnell described in Ireland in the 19th century – the Unionists’ injunction that a nation, no matter what it wants, can only go “thus far and no further”.

It is actually about getting rid of the Scottish Parliament entirely because it is the seat of a democracy that will no longer be denied.

There is a party standing in these elections which at least has the honesty to call itself the “Abolish Holyrood Party”.

The present UK Tory party shares the same aim but is pursing it with more guile.

I have no doubt that Alister Jack would be delighted if there was no Scottish Parliament. I also have no doubt that the only way to stop him achieving that aim is to secure the full powers of a normal nation for our Parliament.

It is no longer devolution or independence. Devolution is being killed stone dead, to steal a phrase from a former Secretary of State, by the UK Government itself.

The choice now is either independence or the silencing of Scotland. Nothing else is possible.