CREATING A NEW COUNTRY 4 THE NATIONAL CONVENTION

We’ve talked about the lack of local democracy in Scotland and about our blockchain-based electorate but one essential element needs to be in place before we can go forward and that is a national convention.

Talk of a national convention has become commonplace in recent times but no such convention has, so far, made it off the starting blocks. Furthermore, most projected ideas seem to consist of closed-room events involving mostly politicians and stakeholder organisations. Their resulting deliberations are to be passed on to the general population as a done deal. That is hardly democratic.

Any convention to be held has to have authority and that authority can only be achieved through engagement of the people. Anything else requires compliance which is a poor excuse for democratic engagement. That is all very well but, of course, having the authority of the people does not mean that political and constitutional issues simply melt away – they do not and in order to deal with them we have designed a structure, a kind of machine, if you like, which can address and deal with the sort of problems that existing political structures in Scotland and the UK have the potential to place in the way of a national consensus such as we wish to see coming from a convention.

It is best to identify such problems that we might face through the following description of the structure that the convention will adopt.

The proposed membership

We suggest that the convention consists of 197 members, broken down as follows:

100 members of the public, 10 from each of ten regions, giving an even distribution across Scotland as a whole. Candidates may put themselves forward or be proposed by local assemblies or interest groups and election decided by STV. It is anticipated that in the event of a truly successful convention, the workload will be quite extensive and we propose that each candidate nominates proxies – three or more each - who can share the work.

40 members of civic/civil society. Only organisations based in Scotland and not branch offices of UK wide organisations will qualify. Local authorities can be represented by COSLA. If this group consists of more than forty individual organisations, alliances of groups with similar interests may be formed or representatives may attend some meetings in place of others as may be desirable according to topic.

57 MPs. When first proposed, this was the most contentious but it happens to be very important. We know that this can be a little difficult to accept but the devolved parliament in Scotland has no constitutional basis. Regardless of what we may think of the Treaty of Union it exists and, in international terms, its sole representatives on Scotland’s behalf are those MPs who represent Scottish constituencies in the Westminster parliament.

The MPs will not be invited to join the convention but will be instructed that, whether they like it or not, they are members. They will be given all relevant information on the convention’s business and will be able to vote on each and every resolution.

Will MPs attend? Probably not, certainly no more than a tiny handful and if they fail to vote when required, their failure will be shown in the records as abstentions. We will take every opportunity to remind Scotland’s electorate that those they have chosen as their representatives are not representing them. If the convention gains the authority it needs, these political representatives will be under increasing pressure to do their job.

The structure of the convention itself

It is vital that the business of the convention is determined by those who are representative in the convention and not dictated by others. It is, however, necessary to ensure that the convention follows a series of rules designed to prevent it from falling into disarray. Such rules as exist can be proposed and ratified at the initial meeting and future meetings held under the control of a moderator who has no vote on resolutions but whose job it is to ensure that business takes place in an orderly fashion and under the rules which the convention itself puts in place.

A second element is the provision of a panel of advisors. The composition of this panel will change according to the subject matter under discussion and, as with the moderator, panel members do not have a vote on resolutions. Their purpose is to ensure that convention members have access to all the information they need together with expert advice as required. They may be questioned and the convention is not obliged to follow their advice although it is to be expected that they will for the most part.

There is much more to follow in the next blog. That’s all for now.