SEAMUS Logan, in his piece of August 14 (Catalonia shows there is no quick wheeze to indy) typifies the entirely negative attitude of the SNP hierarchy to the whole question of actually bringing about Scottish independence, in that the barrier he puts up (“no quick wheeze to indy”) is a concoction.
He correctly writes that, unlike Spain, “the UK state has no similar assertion of unity for itself written anywhere in law”, and that we require “a means which can command both internal and external legitimacy” that can only be through “the unambiguous consent of a majority of Scottish voters”. But he then goes off the rails by asserting that London does not actually accede to the principle of consent, and that by blocking a Holyrood referendum it prevents Scotland from having the choice.
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The servile nonsense of his position is encapsulated in his pronouncement that “challenging the Westminster parties to concede the principle of consent in letting Scotland determine its own democratic future points the way”, a cultish and entirely groundless article of faith of the modern SNP, and one that guarantees failure. If the UK Government’s true position was that Scotland was not free to go, how on earth could the Edinburgh Agreement ever have arisen, or the Northern Ireland Act 1998 for that matter?
London’s refusal of consent for a Holyrood indyref is merely a devolution issue. It does not equate to denial of Scotland’s right to decide. London is not going to help Scotland to leave, but nor can it do anything to stop it, if that is what Scotland wants. We can have the choice at any General Election if a party standing throughout Scotland issues a proper plebiscite manifesto seeking a majority of votes, on which it undertakes to withdraw Scotland from the Union.
A majority electoral result would put an indy MP in virtually every Scottish seat. They are our supreme representatives (unlike our MSPs), and are the only body with the legal and constitutional power to declare Scottish independence over London’s head, undoing the step of entering the Union which their predecessors carried out three centuries ago.
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Of course it would not actually come to that, because London would simply accept it at the end, and independence would finally be by an agreed settlement. But we would need to have taken the vote, and to show resolve to carry out the final step if necessary.
That is what the SNP avoided offering at last month’s election, and they have paid the price, Mr Logan being one of their MP cohort that has been pulverised to less than one-fifth of its earlier size. And Scotland has to wait until the next UK General Election to have any chance of electing a sufficient quota, mandated for independence and with a proper appreciation of their own supreme constitutional power and authority, to restore Scotland’s independent statehood.
But so long as the party adheres to the servile and self-defeating line that Westminster is preventing us – a line entirely of their own invention – yet remains Scotland’s only major political engine for independence, we are sunk.
Ian Roberts
Wishaw
SURGEON’S SNP had a perfect opportunity to prise a formal recognition of Scotland’s right to self-determination in exchange for abstaining in Westminster on Theresa May’s Brexit bill.
After fluffing such an open goal, we deserve everything we get and Westminster will have stopped taking us seriously a long time ago. It wasn’t just Sturgeon. Half the columnists of The National were in Westminster at the time. None of them said anything.
Wendy Rivers
via thenational.scot
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