I DESPAIR! Will we ever get our independence? I ask this because of the accumulation of events that bring us to our present position, plus the utterances, in The Telegraph (should I say Torygraph?), of the hopefuls attempting to become the new prime minister; and the obvious consequent events. They have already stated they will not only not issue a Section 30, but they will also stop any attempt at a referendum.
We had to wait while the SNP tried to stop Brexit (that was never going to happen). Then we had to wait while they tried to get the best deal possible. We got the worst deal possible. Northern Ireland got the deal we wanted and should have had but Westminster denied it to us. Isn’t it stupid that the DUP over there, where they are performing much better economically than the rest of the UK, want to scrap those benefits just because they don’t want a border between them and mainland UK? They don’t know how well off they are!
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Then we had the pandemic so independence was put on hold once more. Now we have a date for the referendum. But, instead of putting the necessary legislation to hold a referendum through the Scottish Parliament, the First Minister has sent it to the UK Supreme Court for a ruling on its legality. Why exactly? That’s another several months unnecessary delay – because the Supreme Court will not rule on it. It is a hypothetical situation. That is, it has not happened yet and they have, in the past, refused to make rulings in such instances.
So, it will come back to Holyrood and then the legislation may be put through. The Scottish Government may decide they haven’t enough time to campaign for a referendum, and so they will have a plebiscite with the next General Election instead. Let’s assume it goes through Holyrood and is passed. Therefore, it will go back to the Supreme Court and this time there will be a decision. It is, to my mind, more likely that they will side with the Westminster Government rather than Holyrood. That will bring us almost to the 2024 General Election.
The First Minister is intent on using that election as a plebiscite. That could be disastrous for Independence for several reasons. We will lose all 16 and 17-year-old supporters who were 74% in favour of independence at the last referendum. They are allowed to vote at Scottish domestic elections or referenda, but may not vote in UK General Elections. We will lose all foreign nationals living here. They were in favour at the last referendum but we won’t have them this time because of Brexit. Under EU regulations they could have voted in a General Election but Brexit has now excluded them.
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And finally – the SNP seem to think they can win a majority of the votes on their own. They can’t. Even Boris’s latest 80 seat majority was won on 44% of the vote.
I believe the policy advocated by Joanna Cherry and Tasmina Ahmed-Sheik last week in The National might just have an outside chance. But that would involve forming some sort of independence coalition with one person standing, unopposed by other independence-supporting candidates in each ward on behalf of it.
The SNP and Greens seem to oppose that, although I am not hopeful that it would succeed in any case. But suppose it does go ahead and every independence candidate got 46% of the vote and the Tories and Labour got 27% each in every seat, then we would win every single seat but still with a minority vote. Disregard the plebiscite – it’s too dodgy!
There needs to be some sort of change in strategy, because if we don’t stand up to them now, they will take all our renewables and charge us the earth for them and we will be tied in to Westminster forever.
Charlie Kerr
Glenrothes
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