CREATING A NEW COUNTRY

Before expanding on Scotland Decides and the national convention, it might be worthwhile to examine the general independence movement in Scotland and, in particular, the options open to us for growing the movement of self determination. All the pros and cons.

Since 2014 there have been quite a number of campaigns but none had the impact of the independence referendum itself which, however good or bad we might view it, reached the entire population of Scotland and, moreover gave each adult voter at least some feeling that their individual opinion mattered.

Perhaps the biggest failure, however, was the lack of an inquest following the referendum. This prevented the perpetuation of a nationwide movement for self determination which could have pushed forward an unstoppable process in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote. That’s not difficult to believe with all but three MPs in Westminster belonging to the SNP, a recall of those MPs and the establishment of a full national convention could well have produced full independence by 2018.

But of course that did not happen and with no discussion about what went wrong in the referendum and no attempt to learn from the lessons of 2014, the fire went out. Not among supporters who, the press were regularly commenting on with increasing surprise, remained at their referendum level. No, the fire went out among our politicians and it left behind an increasingly fragmented movement lacking in any national cohesion.

What we have left today is a series of campaigns of limited effectiveness and often lacking in cross-communication.  Two that are worthy of mention, however, are AUOB who have never pretended to be what they are not. As an organisation they have brought together public demonstrations of support for the movement generally and arguably would have been far more successful had there been an underlying cohesion and impetus across the nation. The other is RSS whose campaign for the adoption of the ICCPR into Scots law represents a fundamentally important piece of legislation in terms of the right to self determination. There is more to say about this later.

What is frustrating to read in the various posts on social media in particular is the mixture of opinions on how we might achieve a popular vote and the insistence that it is “independence” rather than self determination.

So what are the options? Let’s start with the easy one:

A referendum under Section 30 of the Scotland Act. This is UK law, not Scottish and no government in England will permit this. Cameron’s government got a hell of a fright in 2014 – it’s not going to happen again. Ever.

Now to the more debatable:

A plebiscite referendum using the Scottish parliamentary election. There are several reasons why this is a non-starter. The first is that this is still held under the Scotland Act and therefore subject to UK law. Any attempt to enforce it would go straight to the Supreme Court and they have already adjudicated on the right of the Scottish legislature to determine such a matter as independence. But that’s not the only problem.  No political party can safely campaign on independence alone. Their manifestos must cover a range of policies and members of the electorate may well judge their voting intentions on their opinion of the parties as they have functioned in Holyrood in the past. Likes and dislikes could well have nothing to do with independence. Furthermore, there has never been a time when the independence supporting parties achieved as much as 50% of the overall vote – not even in 2011 and an overall vote below 50% would generate the argument that, regardless of the number of seats the election produces, this is not a majority for independence. As if all this is not enough, so far the SNP have shown no inclination to subscribe to such an idea as a joint campaign with the Alba party and the Greens.

So-called UDI.  This arises periodically and has no underlying protocol. It does, however, revert back to the plebiscite reference above.  A pro-independence majority, if it were to result in a vote for UDI, must accept that in even maintaining a debate in parliament would be in breach of the Scotland Act and subject to sanctions. With virtually no preparation for the creation of an independent state and no direct avenue for international support (the move would be regarded as secession) not to mention a wholly hostile UK government, Scotland would collapse. Technically UDI is possible just as long as we don’t worry about the consequences.

All the above are subject to the Scotland Act an, by association, UK law.

So, what options are open to us?

This is just the first part of the series on our independent blockchain electoral register, the development of local democracy, the national convention and more.