The National:

THE Tories are once again trying to scare Scottish voters using the law as a threat *eye roll*.

Adam Tomkins has written an opinion piece about how “consent” is not enough to keep the United Kingdom together and that there should be something “more robust” uniting the four nations.

First of all, as a woman, to hear that consent is not enough is frightening and disgusting. Translated to whatever field you want to talk about, I don’t care, it makes my skin crawl.

When you need more than consent, you are using force. If Scotland decides that it doesn’t want to be part of the Union, but we are still obliged to stay, the Union stops being a Union and starts being a forced contract.

To save you from reading it, Tomkins then goes to talk about some examples.

He mentions how the Spanish courts said it was unlawful for Catalan pro-independence parties to hold a referendum according to the constitution – a great example because we can see how much the constitution stopped the Catalans from doing it anyway. Not even the police could stop us that day!

I say this not to romanticise the Catalan referendum, but because when the will of the people is there, no court, no old book, can stop a nation from coming together for its freedom.

Tomkins also mentions Quebec, and the United States Supreme Court’s decision in 1869 to force Texas to remain part of the US. Luckily for us, we live in a considerably different reality to that of America in the 19th century.

What the piece suggests, and what scares me the most, is that if the SNP get the mandate to demand a second referendum, it won’t matter.

If Scots decide it’s time to leave, it won’t matter, all because the Union matters more. IN WHAT WORLD?

READ MORE: Tory MSP says Scotland should be legally forced to stay in the Union

I don’t fancy myself as a fortune-teller, so I prefer waiting until after the election to see what Scotland has to say, but it is a good sign that the Tories are so scared they are already suggesting a change to the law to stop us from getting a referendum. Because Tomkins did make an excellent point – there are precedents before in the UK about referendums that have been repeated: Scottish devolution referendums (1979, 1997) and EU referendums (1975, 2016). So it makes it very difficult to argue that Scotland should not have a second say.

Tomkins even admits: “On this view, no-one should say 'never' to a second Scottish independence referendum.”

And yet I found a really interesting article by Tomkins from 2010 (The role of the courts in the political constitution, University of Toronto Law Journal).

There was something he said that I liked: “I find it hard to see why courts ought necessarily to be better judges than (say) Parliament of what is acceptable, reasonable, or proportionate policy making.”

That is why it shocks me so much that he suggests that even if Scotland gives a mandate to Nicola Sturgeon to demand that second referendum, the law should stop us.

If the Scottish Parliament votes in favour of a referendum, and the parliament was selected by its citizens, who can be a better judge?

When you need the law to stop the outcome of a democratic election, is it still a democratic country?

The Union doesn’t want to either integrate us, collaborate with us, or even listen to what we have to say.

For me it is obvious, we have an election on May 6, let’s show them what we think of their Union. It is time to start a new country from scratch. It’s time for a new Scotland.