WITHIN days of the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth, in September, King Charles, in what could have been his first formal act since becoming king, articulated that he did faithfully promise and swear that he shall inviolably maintain and preserve the settlement of the True Protestant Religion as established by the laws of Scotland in prosecution of the Claim of Right and particularly an Act for the securing of the Protestant religion and Presbyterian church government and by the Acts passed by both kingdoms for the Union, together with the government, worship, discipline, rights and privileges of the Church of Scotland.
Of course, some people have conveniently short memories, but not the UK Supreme Court (UKSC) when it said; “What this means is that this distinctive Scottish constitutional tradition embodied in the Claim of Right – of the Crown holding power from and in trust for the people assembled “in full and free representative of this Nation”, (Scotland) with the Crown bound by the constitution to honour the terms and limits of the sovereign people’s grant of that power, and with both the people and the Crown subject to a duty to respect fundamental rights and the rule of law – not only survived the 1707 Union, but was expressly preserved by it and is reaffirmed by the Crown in personam every year of her/his reign.”
The UKSC also said elsewhere that certain “actions of the UK Government today can properly be measured and declared to be unlawful to the extent of its incompatibility with the Scottish constitutional tradition,” including the Claim of Right of 1689, “on the basis that the Union preserves both constitutional traditions, and that the rule of law favours that tradition which offers the stronger protection for individual rights”.
Surely then Lord Reed and four other fellow justices can’t have their UKSC cake and eat it as they attempted to last month, when they articulated that England had sovereignty over Scotland.
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The UKSC also said that the parliamentary union of Scotland and England undoubtedly created a new state but it did not create one nation.
Pray tell how a foreign nation, England, can have sovereignty over Scotland, a separate nation whose people are sovereign, and are recognised as such in an international treaty ratified by both national parliaments that were parties to the treaty.
A treaty that was reached via English corruption and bribery of those few who were allowed a vote in 18th-century Scotland and has been insidiously breached by England ever since – a country that has a government that is now regarded universally as institutionally corrupt and untrustworthy.
We won’t for the time being dwell on hundreds of billions of pounds worth of Scotland’s assets that have been misappropriated but consider instead the far more invidious crime of the blatant theft of Scotland’s democratic rights, as incorporated in our constitutional law, which includes the Claim of Right Act of 1689, and is a constituent part of the Treaty of 1707 that has had unintended consequences.
How long now before the UKSC has to rewrite all of its previously documented literature on Scottish constitutional law or apologise for Lord Reed and his colleagues’ slant on it.
The two seem to be horizontally opposed to each other – or are they quite happy to wait for the opinion of the International Court of Justice which blows one of them and the fraudulent Treaty of Union out of the water.
Bruce Moglia
Via email
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