IF the old phrase “adding insult to injury” needed to be illustrated to a passing Martian, you couldn’t do much better than point to the actions of both the Prime Minister and the leader of the Labour Party this past week.
For good measure, using those examples, you could also throw in a lesson on how not to do democracy.
It has been clear for some time that the Prime Minister despises devolution, the Scottish Parliament and probably most other things to do with Scotland.
Consequently, the quality of those in his government responsible for the Scotland Office seems be of little interest to him, just as long as they are the “right sort” – that is rich and fawning.
Alister Jack is without doubt the worst Secretary of State for Scotland in living memory, and that is quite an accolade considering the competition includes Jim Murphy.
His number two – the Minister of State – is the MP for Milton Keynes (which is, to quote the title of a short story by the great Argyll writer Robin Jenkins, a far cry from Bowmore) and this week a third member of the team was appointed to replace the hapless Banff and Buchan MP David Duguid who was fired a fortnight ago.
The successor, Malcolm Offord (below), is, however, not an elected Scottish politician and has no democratic credentials at all nor any actual experience of politics, save failing to become an MSP on one occasion.
However he is a financier and, surprise, surprise, a significant donor to the Tories, including to Michael Gove. And now he is also a member of the House of Lords for life, having been given that well-paid sinecure in order to perform the governmental one. This astonishing and appalling appointment is an insult to Scotland but it is more than that. It is also a two-fingered gesture to democracy and good governance by a Prime Minister that cares not a fig for any such things as his track record shows.
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Keir Starmer, however, is little better and I say that with genuine disappointment, having worked well with him when we were both Brexit spokespeople. During his over-long speech in Brighton on Wednesday, he not only repeated a malicious allegation about blood transfusions which was as insulting to Scots as it was ludicrous but he also claimed that the role of Labour must now be to “Make Brexit Work” which is actually an acceptance of permanently lower living standards, more shortages of key workers, further political isolation and even greater xenophobia.
It is abundantly clear that Brexit can’t “work” because it would be taking Scotland in absolutely the wrong direction. Not only did we not vote for it, but Brexit of any sort is a one-way street away from engagement and economic stability and towards British populism and backward-looking exceptionalism.
There is no better trading arrangement than that which we had as a member of the EU, and no better guarantor of prosperity either. Brexit can never work for Scotland. But worse was to come because the speech also included an announcement (actually a re-announcement) that Gordon Brown is to lead a Labour “commission” to “settle the future of the Union”.
In 1989, when Keir Starmer was a newly qualified barrister working as the legal officer for Liberty, Gordon Brown was already an MP and the shadow secretary for trade and industry. As a senior Scottish politician and a member of the Scottish Constitutional Convention, Brown was a signatory of the Fourth Claim of Right which opens with the words “We ... do hereby acknowledge the sovereign right of the Scottish People to determine the form of Government best suited to their needs.”
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The sovereign right of the Scottish people, not Gordon Brown nor the leader of the Labour Party. That principle – the principle of Scottish popular sovereignty – has been constantly asserted across the political spectrum before and after devolution.
Lord Cooper’s famous judgment in the case of McCormick v The Lord Advocate in 1953 states it well, saying as it does: “The principle of the unlimited sovereignty of Parliament is a distinctively English principle which has no counterpart in Scottish constitutional law.”
This has been confirmed again and again and not just in the Claim of Right. The “Democracy Declaration of Scotland” signed by Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP in December 1992 during the Edinburgh EU summit spoke of the “right of national self-determination” and made clear that the Westminster view of absolute Parliamentary sovereignty “has always been unacceptable to the Scots constitutional tradition”.
Moreover, the Claim of Right itself has been endorsed by both the Scottish and UK parliaments, despite the Tories continuing determination to promote and prefer the Westminster position. None of these documents and declarations had a footnote, or a coda in invisible ink empowering Gordon Brown (below) to make ex cathedra decisions about our future rather than bother with the views of the people who live in Scotland.
None of them gave the power to Keir Starmer or any other Leader of the UK Labour Party to make a “settlement” with regard to the future governance of Scotland. And none of the authors or signatories of these documents and declarations would have accepted – nor will they accept for a moment that decisions by the political elite can be substituted for the democratically expressed will of the people.
So nor should we.
The Starmer statement was as arrogant and unacceptable as Johnson’s appointment of an unqualified Tory-donating financier to rule over us. Both show a contempt for democracy and the people of Scotland which must be roundly and completely rejected.
Neither Brown nor Labour have any right to “settle the future of the Union”. Neither has a self-serving clamjamfry of millionaires, Tory donors and MPs from furth of Scotland.
Only we, the people of Scotland, have the right to do that.
And do it we shall.
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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