THE Supreme Court in its ivory tower is going to wade through a mountain of documents concentrating on the meaning of words in various acts of parliament to reach a decision on whether or not the Holyrood Parliament has the power to hold a referendum.
The people of Scotland need a decision on whether Scotland is a country in a voluntary union with others – free to decide, at any time by its own means, if it will stay in or leave that union – or if it is no longer in a voluntary union.
There is increasing suspicion that Scotland is simply an area of the UK that can be exploited by the Westminster government for its own ends. Fifty years of UK Government exploitation of North Sea oil and gas assets have left few more signs behind on the land than on the water that they lay beneath.
READ MORE: UK Government's Supreme Court arguments to block indyref2 published in full
The Unionist parties have not presented any evidence of how Scots benefit from a union in which their country is excluded from the UK’s decision-making body in all areas of the economy, human rights and international policies. In addition the requirement to run an annual balanced budget, based on spending in England on devolved matters, ensures that there are very few opportunities for the Scottish Government to make significant advances in any devolved area.
All three branches of the London-based Unionist parties in Holyrood have made it clear that they no longer recognise that Scotland has the right of self-determination.
Even more concerns about the status of Scots in the Union have been raised by Angela Rayner saying that the UK Labour party needs the people of Scotland for their votes, soon after Murdo Fraser said that the UK needs the people of Scotland for its armed forces to further its global ambitions. All agree that the UK needs Scotland’s natural assets.
Twenty-three years of devolution might not be long enough to persuade the Supreme Court that Westminster’s Holyrood branch has evolved into the parliament of the people of Scotland, but it will not halt the movement towards independence.
John Jamieson
South Queensferry
THERE is currently some discussion in the media and in independence forums which runs the risk of sapping confidence in the way forward, by conjuring reason upon reason why the process is bound to fail – a modern case, perhaps, of the Caledonian antisyzygy. Could I offer the following, as a simple antidote?
The Union between Scotland and England is based either on consent (in which case Scotland is free to leave whenever its people so decide), or on compulsion (in which case Scotland is its prisoner).
READ MORE: UK arguments against independence referendum explained
The Union has no provision whatsoever to block Scottish secession. There is no supra-legal constitution which prohibits it (akin to the Spanish constitution which does claim to block Catalonian independence), and indeed no ordinary law to that effect.
Furthermore, all UK and Scottish government statements on the matter have repeatedly confirmed that we are in a Union of consent. There is no ground for the view that the Union can bind Scotland against the will of its people.
In 2014, the people of Scotland chose by majority to remain in the Union. By simple logic and the democratic imperative, so long as the people are enabled to express their view, independence cannot follow unless the people vote for it, but it must follow if they do.
If we cannot have our vote by means of a Holyrood referendum (which point will be decided as a matter of law by the Supreme Court later this year), we will have it by means of the next General Election, on the appropriate manifesto (as promised by the First Minister to the Scottish Parliament in June).
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If that vote is Yes, the UK Government will either cooperate in negotiating the terms of independence, or it will not. I believe it will cooperate, but if it does not, independence can be brought about by the supreme representatives of the Scottish people – their MPs – by majority, leaving Westminster on a date of their choice, and declaring the body of Scottish MPs to be the parliament of the independent state of Scotland. All Scottish bodies subordinate to the Union parliament will come under the new Scottish parliament’s jurisdiction, which will then be in a position to make any legislative arrangements which independence may require.
The task for the movement therefore is, as ever, to persuade the majority to vote for independence, and to stop scratching each other’s scabs.
Alan Crocket
Motherwell
WHAT a weekend it was for Labour! As Starmer remains MIA (because this would-be PM clearly believes that nothing should interrupt his well-deserved holiday), Broon and Rayner have been carrying the Union flag for Labour, and how they have covered it and themselves with glory!
Brown, to be fair, started well I thought, with his call for Johnson and his acolytes to get together and draw up an urgent, crisis budget. Absolute common sense, and an absolute necessity, but then, alas, at his Edinburgh Fringe show he just couldn’t help himself and diminished his own status by likening Salmond to Putin! A joke that perhaps might have got his “dictator” line a laugh or a shrug in the past, but in the current context was beyond offensive. Shame on you Brown!
READ MORE: Kevin McKenna: Angela Rayner only views Scotland as a source of election fodder
Rayner was then an able and willing follow-up act, who confirmed what everyone following along already knew, that Scotland should be denied its democratic right to hold indyref2 to save England from itself and give Labour a better chance of winning.
With one current MP in Scotland, I feel that arithmetic might be beyond fantasy.
If Labour want a future in Scotland then they should stand up for the Union in a fair fight, ie indyref2. If they don’t, perhaps even Mr “Union” Murray might be at risk.
I Easton
Glasgow
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