DESPITE the undertone of indignation, it’s not difficult to agree with Brian Boyce and his proposition (Why build a crooked path when a straight one is available?) in Tuesday’s edition.

However, I’m equally able to agree with Andy Anderson when he puts the case for incorporating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) into Scots law. So how is it possible to square such a circle?

Unfortunately, given the fact that so many opportunities have been wasted in the past 10 years, for the majority of independence-supporting MPs to push the cause of withdrawing from the so-called voluntary Union, the present tragic rump of nine SNP members represents a minority without any clout on the matter.

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Had the much larger SNP cohort of MPs (48 SNP MPs from 45% of vote in 2019 and 55 SNP MPs from 50% of vote on a turnout of 71% in 2015) given notice of termination of the Treaty of Union, returned to Edinburgh and under the auspices of a National Constitutional Convention, prepared the case for a referendum for an independent Scotland based on a new constitution then, following a successful vote, they could have proceeded to confirm the end of the Treaty of Union agreement.

However, until such time as we see either the demise of the party of devolution or the rise of a much more independence-committed alternative, there’s no such prospect for Brian Boyces’s “filling the Scottish seats at Westminster with Scotland’s supreme representatives mandated and empowered so to do” at least for the foreseeable future and certainly in what’s left of my baby-boomer lifetime.

That a large portion of the Scottish electorate are disenfranchised and yet again being governed by a government they never voted for is unassailable evidence of democratic deficit. Following the last General Election its representatives are outnumbered 71 to one, and impotent in the face of the first-past-the-post system with 641 Unionist MPs.

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So with the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights perhaps the clue is in the title and it’s only by embracing it that can we square that particular circle any time soon. According to Professor Robert McCorquodale in his Opinion on Matters Relating to International Legal Issues Concerning the Right to Self-determination for the People of Scotland, there are two possible international legal routes to Scottish independence, namely a unilateral Declaration of Independence or letting the International Court of Justice rule on whether or not Scotland is in colonial status with is overbearing neighbour.

However, to avoid the jurisdiction of UK law, this needs to operate through a convention of elected and diverse representatives from across Scotland with a clear majority in favour. Kenyon Wright’s Constitutional Convention sound familiar? Whatever happened to the SNP’s version?

Much as it sticks in my craw, I’ve no argument that our pretendy parliament is a creature of Westminster and there might well be learned debate about which clause of the Scotland Act 1998 controls the implementation of UN covenants, but our political class have failed us and our cause of independence And much as Brian Boyce’s argument about the power of Scotland’s supreme representatives at Westminster is correct, without a majority of the 56 seats occupied by independenistas, that ship has sailed.

So its now time for the people to elbow the political apparatchiks and Holyrood carpetbaggers out of the way and following the visionary example of the Scotland-UN Committee, pursue other means as promoted by Salvo and their Liberation Scotland campaign. If the people of Scotland are indeed sovereign, we need to proclaim loudly and clearly the celebrated words of Kenyon Wright: WE ARE THE PEOPLE AND WE SAY YES.

Iain Bruce
Nairn