If I told you tomorrow, 3 September, was an important anniversary, I wonder how many of you would know what I’m referring to. This is not a quiz. So, I’ll just come right out and tell you. Tomorrow marks 19 years since Alex Salmond rebranded the Scottish Executive as the Scottish Government.

Pedants and Unionists will now be tripping over each other as they rush to point out the former remains the legal name and dismiss the latter as mere window dressing, a cosmetic change of no significance whatever. I would disagree. Branding is always important. In business, the brands may be the most valuable asset a company possesses. Were I to write ten commandments for the owners and managers of any business, somewhere near the top of that list would be the dictum: Thou shalt not fuck with the brand.

Alex Salmond understood the importance of the brand. He understood the importance of the message conveyed by the brand. Alex Salmond knew the value — in politics as well as business — of a good story well told. As did those who chose the original title. They were at some pains to diminish the Scottish administration and the Scottish Parliament. They didn’t want the Scottish Government to be thought of as a real national government. They didn’t want the Scottish Parliament to be regarded as a real national parliament. In truth, they didn’t want Scotland to be considered a nation at all.

For the ruling elites of England-as-Britain, there is only one real government and only one real parliament, and both were located in London, the capital city of England. From its inception, the Union was in fact the Greater England Project. The ruling elites of England-as-Britain had their story. Alex Salmond set out to tell a different story. In his story, Holyrood, St Andrews House, and Bute House would be portrayed as the vital organs of Scotland, the nation. Westminster, Whitehall, and 10 Downing Street were England’s equivalent. Edinburgh would be the locus of Scotland’s politics in the same way as London is the locus of England’s politics.

Unionists insist that London’s remit extend beyond England’s borders to all of England’s remaining possessions — the remnants of the once globe-spanning British Empire. Alex Salmond’s story is more modest. It eschews the imperialist pretensions that inflate England-as-Britain’s conceit of itself. Its most vaunting claim is that Scotland has a distinctive political culture and the right to further develop that political culture, as is the way with all normal nations.

There are some who say they’ll take independence no matter how it comes about. These are people who do not understand the importance of the story. I’m a Scottish nationalist. I desperately want to see Scotland’s independence restored within my lifetime. But that does not mean I’ll take it regardless of how. I don’t want future generations hearing about Scotland being granted independence by a beneficent England-as-Britain. I think the nation’s psyche would be adversely affected by such a story in much the same way as being the inferior to England-as-Britain’s superior has been deleterious to the psychological well-being of Scotland’s people.

We need a better story. A more heroic story. A tale of us taking our independence by peaceful, democratic means and rugged determination. We need to start writing this story now. Not the least of the benefits of the #ScottishUDI is that it lends itself to the crafting of a compelling story on which to base the campaign.

Stories don’t just entertain. They can also inform and educate. And they can inspire. The campaign to restore Scotland’s independence needs that kind of story. It needs a story which informs people about Scotland’s true situation and educates them about the past which has led us to our current condition. and our campaign needs a story which inspires people. A story which urges them to act. A story which compels action.

One of the most powerful political campaigns in my lifetime was the SNP’s ‘It’s Scotland’s Oil’ campaign. Another was the anti-poll tax campaign. We need a story which captures the public imagination in the same way the ‘Scotland’s Oil’ and ‘poll tax’ campaigns did. We therefore need to understand what made those campaigns so successful. What was it about the stories told by these campaigns that inspired people and urged them to act?

The common denominator with those two campaigns is injustice. The injustice of something that unquestionably belongs to us being taken from us. The injustice of a tax seen as inherently unfair being imposed on us without our consent. Our story must tell of a fight against injustice. Or to put it another way, a fight for justice. A fight to reclaim that which is rightfully ours. A fight to restore our nation to its rightful status.

The #ScottishUDI process lends itself to a story of how we take back our government, which has very obviously been captured by the British political system. We do that by electing to the Scottish Parliament candidates and parties unswervingly committed to bold action on the constitutional issue.

We then take back our parliament. The parliament which was taken from us in 1707 and returned in 1999 bound in the chains of devolution. We do that by striking off those chains. We break the chains by breaking at least one of the rules which form the links in those chains.

With our parliament restored, we go on to take back our nation by providing the people of Scotland with the means and opportunity to fully and freely exercise our right of self-determination.

It’s a great story. It’s a story I would be proud to tell to my grandchildren. It is the history I would like to bequeath to future generations. Alex Salmond wrote the beginning of the story back in 2007. We are still waiting for someone to write the middle and the end.

For a self-styled “political education officer”, James Gray exhibits a surprisingly misguided notion of the nature of his own party – ‘Scottish’ Labour. Or, as it is more appropriately known, British Labour in Scotland (BLiS). Writing in The National today, James Gray issues a familiar appeal to the candidates vying for the scant honour of being the replacement for Anas Sarwar.

The next Scottish Labour leader must set out, unambiguously, the criteria by which the party will back a second independence referendum. Democratic mandates require periodic renewal, and as the years go by, the case for indyref2 grows stronger.

What Mr Gray is groping for is a way for BLiS to use the constitutional issue as an electioneering device. Somebody should tell him we already have a party which does this. Two, if you count the Scottish Green Party. Perhaps a handful more if you are prepared to scour the bottom of the polling barrel.

To be fair, James Gray is not asking that the new BLiS leader should come right out and commit to the restoration of Scotland’s independence. That would be too much to ask. Although there is currently a vacancy for the party-political and parliamentary arm of the independence movement.

But, no! Mr Gray is not quite so deluded as to imagine the new BLis leader might embrace Scotland’s cause. Or give the impression of having embraced that cause for the purposes of an election campaign. There is no vacancy for that role. What James Gray is urging the leadership candidates to do is spell out the conditions under which BLiS might back a new independence referendum.

There is a bit of confusion, as in the paragraph preceding the above, James Gray says:

Until [BLiS] can look Yes voters in the eye and answer the question, “If the United Kingdom is a voluntary union, then by what means can Scotland leave if it so desires?”, the party will continue to fade into electoral irrelevance.

There are two distinct matters here. There’s the criteria which must be met for BLiS to join in calls for a referendum. And there is the process by which Scotland can dissolve the Union. Let’s look at each of these in turn.

What conditions must prevail for BLiS to back a new referendum? Regular readers will know what’s coming next. It is pointless putting that question to BLiS. Because BLiS is not a real political party. BliS is part of a party. It is part of British Labour. Where ‘British’ means English. Moreover, BLiS is but a small part of British Labour with no real autonomy and, these days, not even a convincing pretence of autonomy. The only ones who still regard BLiS as a real political party are the media. Even The National can’t shake off the habit of referring to BLiS as if it were (a) a real political party and (b) Scottish.

So, the question really is what conditions would have to prevail for British (meaning English) Labour to support the idea of a new independence referendum? The answer is that there are no such conditions. Only by resorting to magical thinking is it possible to imagine British Labour dropping its opposition to the people of Scotland being allowed to exercise their right of self-determination. The clue is in the name – British Labour.

No British political party can support anything that would put the Union in jeopardy because absent the Union the term ‘British’ would cease to mean what the British ruling elites imagine the term ‘British’ to mean. Without Scotland, the notion of a British state would be a bit of a joke.

As is the notion of a defined process by which Scotland can leave the UK. This would only make any kind of sense if the Union were voluntary, as the British try to pretend. It is not voluntary and never was. Scotland was annexed by England. It is held as a possession of England-as-Britain. Imperial powers and pretenders to imperial power do not generally create easy escape routes for territories they have annexed. The historical tendency is much more towards annexed territories being subsumed in the possessor, their distinct identity obliterated, but for a few hardy souls who cling to scraps of that identity despite all efforts to fully colonise their minds.

I’ve said it many times, but I am not at all averse to saying it many more times in the hope that it can be said enough times for it to penetrate the public consciousness. There is no route to a proper constitutional referendum and independence through the legal and constitutional framework which has developed under the influence of England-as-Britain’s imperative to preserve the Union.

A viable route to independence via a proper constitutional referendum can only lie in the space between the strictures of British law and the fundamental principles of international law. The Union cannot be broken unless you are prepared to break the rules which protect the Union.

James Gray is asking the impossible. He is seeking a way to make a British establishment party relevant to Scotland’s independence movement when the independence movement is anathema to the British establishment.

One of the things that used to be said during the campaign for the 2014 sham referendum was that it was possible to be both Scottish and British. That may have been true then, although it probably wasn’t. It certainly isn’t true now. It is not possible to identify as Scottish and British, other than in a trivial geographical sense. The terms ‘Scottish’ and ‘British’ imply two incompatible and irreconcilable political cultures. If you identify as Scottish, you necessarily embrace the principle that the people of Scotland are sovereign. If you identify as British, you associate yourself with the contradictory doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty.

James Gray must choose. If he genuinely believes that the people of Scotland should have the means and opportunity to fully and freely exercise our right of self-determination, then he doesn’t belong in a British political party which, by dint of being British, adheres to the idea that the people are subordinate to the ‘Crown in Parliament’. And that the people of Scotland are therefore subordinate to a foreign crown in a foreign parliament.

I leave you with that thought and this quote:

I believe civic nationalism is for the birds. It is a nonsense dreamt up by Scots who place so little value on our national identity that it’s conferred on anyone who arrives in Scotland, whether they like it or not. Telling incomers, ‘You’re one of us’ is a nice gesture but it can never be true. It is also to disrespect the national and cultural identity of people who arrive in Scotland, and who may wish to remain who they are. It’s not for we Scots to tell them they’re ‘one of us’. Far better to say, ‘We’ll treat you as one of our own, all we ask is that you respect our country, our languages, our laws, and our way of life.’

Merriam-Webster defines ‘tipping point’ as:

the critical point in a situation, process, or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place

I’m using an American dictionary definition because the term has a somewhat different meaning in UK English. Dictionary.com offers both US and UK English definitions as follows:

the point at which an issue, idea, product, etc., crosses a certain threshhold and gains significant momentum, triggered by some minor factor or change.

the point in a situation at which a minor development precipitates a crisis.

the crisis stage in a process, when a significant change takes place

I have to say, I prefer the US English version, but it is as well to keep all of the above in mind when discussing the possibility of a significant tipping point.

Are we seeing a tipping point in the SNP? Is it credible that this is finally the moment when the membership turns on the party’s leadership?

I know! I know! We always get predictions of a last-straw situation when the conference season looms. To date, no tipping point has materialised. Why should this time be any different? Is it any more sensible to anticipate a members’ revolt this year than any other year? I think it may be. The difference is John Swinney.

Say what you will about Nicola Sturgeon, she was quite adept at keeping the rank and file ranked and filed. There was never much possibility of a spot of bother at the conference when she was leader. The only thing Sturgeon had to worry about was the duration of the standing ovation. If it is shorter by so much as a second relative to the previous occasion, the media will surely latch onto this and portray it as a portent of decline in her popularity.

Compared to Sturgeon, Swinney is the proverbial bull in a china shop. He is clumsy. He appears to suppose he can get away with pretty much anything so long as he keeps the independence carrot dangling. The most telling example of him egregiously taking the membership — and the independence movement — for granted is his ridiculous draft referendum bill. What there is of it. It looks for all the world as if it was cobbled together the night before and is almost entirely cribbed from a similar exercise by Sturgeon in 2021.

This pathetic and utterly pointless bill comes on the back of a leaked draft agenda for the SNP conference in October which includes none of the numerous resolutions submitted by branches seeking a debate about the party’s strategy for restoring Scotland’s independence. It is understandable that Swinney would want to avoid such a debate because it’s unlikely he’d be able to conceal the fact that he has no such strategy.

Is the combination of the flagrant doctoring of the conference agenda and the risible draft referendum bill enough to create a tipping point? I’d say this is quite possible. I reckon Swinney has gone too far for even the uncommonly biddable conference delegates. Quashing the independence strategy-related resolutions was a slap in the face of the members. With the draft referendum bill, Swinney has followed up by spitting in the face of the members. He has insulted the intelligence of all but the dumbest party loyalists. He threw the draft referendum bill at them with the arrogant disdain of the laird tossing scraps to the peasants.

There has long been rumbling discontent among SNP members. The leadership has been able to keep a lid on things because for pro-independence voters and activists, the SNP is the only game in town. The party and the cause are so intertwined in the public mind that a blow to the former bruises the latter. The binding of party and cause was broken by Sturgeon. But the effect was not immediate. It has taken time to filter through to a sizeable part of the party membership. Swinney seems not to have read the room. The way he bunged the draft referendum bill at them suggests he is oblivious to the discontent. Or so arrogantly entitled as to suppose he is invulnerable. He may well be disabused of that folly in October. It is entirely possible that Swinney will get no standing ovation.

Arguably a more important matter than whether the situation has reached a tipping point is the question of which way things fall when tipped. It would be foolish to suppose there might be a leadership challenge. Or would it? I’d think a leadership challenge is possible, but for the rule changes which make it extremely difficult to mount a challenge. There is no way a potential challenger could muster support surreptitiously. It would demand a boldness which is as common among our political elite as teeth in hens.

What, then? If the tipping isn’t in the direction of a leadership challenge, which way might it go? What else is there? An emergency resolution? A walk-out by delegates? Fringe meetings discussing the things delegates are not permitted to debate in the actual conference? Speeches on other resolutions which slip in some criticism of John Swinney?

I honestly don’t know. It could be any or all of the above. Or Swinney might buy off the delegates by allowing one of the ‘rebel’ resolutions. He might also revive the de facto referendum idea that’s been picked up and dropped once or twice before. Either or both of these moves could avert the tipping point. Or postpone it for another year.

I know which way I’d like things to go. But I expect to be disappointed. What would be disastrous is if a ‘compromise’ is reached which avoids a revolt but only at the cost of committing the party to a strategy that won’t work.

referendum.’

1. Ethnicity

1. ‘A majority of Scots voted in favour of statehood in the 2014 referendum’

This contention is usually based on the work of Ailsa Henderson and James Mitchell. However, by my count there were in fact at least 3 reports of the same work:

• The initial report by Henderson & Mitchell called “The Scottish Question, 6 Months On“, was published on 27th March 2015. This found that 52.7% of those born in Scotland were in favour.

• Then Douglas Fraser of the BBC stated in his “Study examines referendum demographics“ report on 18th September 2015 that the figure was 50.2%.

• In 2018 another figure, this time of 50.0%, was published in a “Key Findings“ summary of which Henderson & Mitchell were two of the four authors.

The data published in the “2014 Scottish Referendum Study Codebook” are somewhat confusing and inconsistent:

• The volumes of data are not tied back to the demographic percentages.

• There are multiple sources and different collection time periods as well as a lack of clarity around the 3 ‘waves’ of canvassing that were carried out.

• It is unclear whether the large portion of the interviews that were carried out in the weeks prior to the Scottish Independence Referendum were included in the results produced by the study, but if they were, it is surely questionable as to why these would be used to estimate how people actually voted on 18th September 2014.

Analysis of this work suggests that conclusions reported are highly questionable.

On the other hand, an assessment of opinion polls, but primarily that of Norstat (formerly Panelbase), published on the immediate eve of the referendum, tends to indicate that, after allowing for the error compared to the actual outcome of the referendum, a slight plurality of Scottish-born folk voted NO.

Conclusion: Dubious / Improbable

2. ‘Non-Scots’ are not in favour of Scottish independence and are supporters of the Union’

In the absence of a breakdown by family lineage, length of residency and DNA testing, the only proxy for ‘ethnicity’ available is ‘place of birth’, and the sole pollster that regularly surveys YES support by this category is Norstat (formerly Panelbase).

The polls show that YES support among those born outside of Scotland and England had been around 23% at the end of 2014 but is now hovering around 57% now. That represents a 1.5-fold increase. For English-born people, a majority do support the Union, but YES sentiment has grown from 25% at the end of 2014 to 37% now. Proportionately that is a +48% increase. It is the Scottish-born cohort that has stagnated, with YES support registered at just under 52% at the end of 2014 and a little over 53% currently (August 2026).

The data tracking YES sentiment by this demographic breakdown over the period since 2014 are publicly available from the Norstat (formerly Panelbase) polling firm.

Conclusion: Falsehood

2. Psephology

3. ‘Every opinion poll in the last 6 months / 1 year / 2 years / 5 years / decade (delete as appropriate) shows that support for Scottish Independence is the favoured option for Scottish voters.’

Whilst it is true that of the 23 polls to date in 2026 (as of August), 15 have registered a YES lead, 6 of them show a NO lead, whilst the other two are tied. Of the 15 polls indicating a YES lead, only two of them have recorded an absolute majority of voters (i.e., when including those undecided) in favour. The average of all 23 polls is 50.7%.

In 2025 there were 18 surveys, of which 10 had YES in the lead with NO ahead in 7 and 1 tied. Of the 10 showing YES in the lead, only 2 posted an absolute majority in YES sentiment. The average of all 18 polls for YES was 50.5%.

Of the 35 polls published in 2024, YES held the lead in only 8 of these, whilst 25 showed NO ahead with 2 tied. The average of all 35 polls for YES was 48.5%.

In fact, since 2022, only 49 of 148 canvassing of opinion have shown a plurality in favour of Scottish Independence.

A quick glance at Wikipedia‘s compilation of opinion surveys since the Scottish Independence Referendum of 2014 and/or individual polling company websites clearly demonstrates that this assertion is entirely and unambiguously bogus.

As this information is easily verifiable and not open to interpretation or extrapolation, it is reasonable to infer that those promoting such obvious non-truths can only be deliberately lying.

Conclusion: Lie

4. ‘Independence support is higher now than in 2014.’

There is little doubt that pro-YES sentiment has increased since the Scottish Independence Referendum of 18^th September 2014. The actual outcome for YES in the SIR was 44.7%, and in every calendar year since, the average support for YES has always been recorded at a higher level than this result.

However, it should be noted that in opinion polling in the final quarter of 2014 – that is, post-SIR – the average YES measure was 50.1%, an increase possibly a combination of deferred campaign referendum, guilty NO voters experiencing ‘buyers’ regret, and some disillusionment when it became clear that the pre-SIR ‘Vow’ had been a confidence trick. With average YES support among those expressing a preference during the calendar year of 2025 and 2026 to date (as at August) registered at 50.5% and 50.6%, respectively, it is clear that support is no higher than during the final 3 months of 2014.

That is not to say that the opinion polls have been static over the period since 2014, as there have been oscillations in YES sentiment: as the population reacts to socio-economic-political events, measurable upticks in YES support have indeed been recorded, but these have been followed by downturns in support of roughly equal magnitude. These oscillations have left the underlying level of support more or less unchanged since the immediate post-referendum period.

All this is apparent with reference to Wikipedia and the publications of individual polling companies.

Conclusion: Half-Truth

5. ‘YES is surging/soaring/sky-rocketing (delete as appropriate) - Independence is the settled will’

There was an increase in the referendum campaign as average support grew from under 38% in 2012 to 45% in 2014, an increase of over 7% in absolute terms. More significantly, that represents an 18% relative increase in support. That latter might genuinely be described as a ‘surge’.

In contrast, recent increases posted in opinion polls have been modest, despite the more hysterical claims from some quarters of the Independence industry:

In the (Coronavirus) pandemic years of 2019-2021, YES support increased from just under 48% to just under 50%, a +2% increase absolutely and a +4.5% uptick in relative terms. Between 2024 and 2026 (to date as of August) support went up from 48.5% to 50.6%, once again representing a +2% increase absolutely and 4.4% proportionately. Both of these more recent increases might at best be referred to as a ‘ripple’.

Compared to changes in support that occurred during 2012-14, headlines generated in and by certain quarters of the Independence industry referencing recent movements upwards in YES support are very obviously and ridiculously exaggerated.

The levels and trends in YES sentiment can be established by referring to Wikipedia and pollsters’ own publications.

Conclusion: Hyperbolic and Hubristic

6. ‘YES support is being under-reported’

Surveyors of political opinion adopt a generic methodology which involves adjusting raw results obtained in opinion polls by means of turnout filtering, appropriate exclusions and weighting to the population.

Turnout filtering is used to amend results based on the likelihood of respondents voting. That is, respondents indicate on some numeric scale how certain they are that they would cast a vote in a democratic event on the subject matter under consideration in the survey. Various pollsters then apply their own different and arbitrary thresholds in order to filter out respondents considered unlikely to vote from the final computation of survey results. However, there is no reason to believe that this screening causes any disproportionate distortion effect on any segment or segments of the population.

Pollsters will apply exclusions to their surveys where they consider these appropriate. The most common exclusion is on the age variable, where some pollsters include 16-17-year-olds and others don’t. For Scottish Parliament elections and referendums this will distort results. Furthermore, since it is known that this cohort contains a very high incidence of pro-Independence supporters – around 70% are in favour according to sources that break down sentiment by this demographic – the application of this screening can have the effect of underestimating YES support.

Survey firms apply weighting factors in order to ensure that the sample, and therefore the results, are representative of the population. That is to say, the composition of the survey is forced to reflect the composition of the population according to various dimensions, namely demographic characteristics (like age, sex, etc.) and behavioural variables. The behavioural variables include past voting records at elections and referendums and, as such, are subject to ‘false recall’: these might be due to human frailty, e.g., memory failure, or foible, e.g., hiding the actual voting pattern. Whilst not all firms weigh past voting records, those that do run the risk, therefore, of reducing the accuracy in their final results. Specifically, when pollsters amend results by weighting according to how respondents remember voting – YES or NO or didn’t vote – in the Scottish Independence Referendum of 2014, this does have the effect of reducing the post-weighted YES registered in the final survey result published. It is likely, therefore, that this practice understates the true level of support for Scottish independence.

The common methodology of member firms can be established via the British Polling Council, and the specific approach of pollsters is described in individual survey firms’ publications.

Conclusion: Likely true when 16-17-year-olds are excluded and/or past voting record weighting is applied; otherwise not.

7. ‘Opinion Polls are biased/obsolete/irrelevant.’

Polling firms that are members of the British Polling Council (BPC) adhere to strict rules on statistical techniques employed, disclosure standards and codes of practice. In addition, pollsters are private for-profit (and profitable) organisations whose clients pay a premium for impartial and accurate results and, thus, have a reputation for trust and integrity to protect.

Polling firms conduct their work according to a systematic process and common methodology: surveys are conducted on in-person, telephone and internet bases with a sampling structure that reflects a common set of demographic and behavioural characteristics and a process that ensures individuals are selected at random from within the population. The earliest recorded use of opinion polls was in the USA in 1824, and this has become commonplace since 1945. As probability theory doesn’t change, psephology as a technique for gauging the views of a population is never obsolete.

The relevance of opinion polling is that they provide insights into population attitudes, views, values and priorities. Absent elections and referendums, they are the sole means available for gauging public attitudes, establishing levels of support, and tracking changes in sentiment. They pinpoint pockets of strength and weakness in support and, thus, indicate where focus is required and messages can be tailored to suit specific segments of the population.

It is noticeable that it is only when opinion surveys on the question of Scottish independence produce a result where NO is in the lead and/or YES support has declined that accusations of bias, obsolescence and irrelevance are levelled against polling firms by commenters, bloggers, journalists and politicians in the independence industry.

Membership of the BPC together with subscriber rules can be established easily from the latter’s website, whilst the survey firms separately publish their specific and tailored polling approach.

Conclusion: Conspiracy Theory (unsubstantiated)

3. Devolution

8. ‘We should never have voted for a Scottish Parliament – it has snared Scotland’s Cause’

There is little doubt that the affirmative vote in the Scottish Devolution Referendum of 1997, resulting in the advent of a Scottish Parliament in 1999, facilitated the raising of the profile of Scotland’s distinctive political culture and provided a platform to advocate for and advance Scotland’s Cause.

The rationale for this is as follows:

1. No Scottish Parliament No 1^st nationalist Scottish government in 2007

2. No 1^st nationalist Scottish government  No majority 2^nd nationalist Scottish government in 2011

3. No majority nationalist Scottish government  No Scottish Independence Referendum (SIR) in 2014

4. No Scottish Independence Referendum  No SIR campaign during 2012-14

5. No SIR campaign  YES support would likely be around 25%-33% of the population as per circa 1974

Quite clearly, with those in favour of restoring Scotland’s full self-government having increased by about 75% (relatively) to around half the population between 1997 and 2026 the Scottish Parliament has benefited Scotland’s Cause.

Recorded sentiment on the Scottish constitutional question can be obtained with reference to Wikipedia’s compilation of opinion poll results and the survey publications of individual polling companies.

Conclusion: Not True

9. The Scottish Parliament is a British Unionist trap designed to prevent Indy’

The objective of the seat allocation instrument in Holyrood, known as the Additional Member System (AMS), is to provide a degree of proportionality in election outcomes. That is, the objective is to align the proportion of votes cast by the electorate more closely with political party representation in the parliament.

Perfect proportionality of votes to seats is represented by an index of 1. That is, the proportion of votes cast equals the proportion of seats allocated. Over the first 6 Holyrood elections, the largest parliamentary party had an index on average in the constituency ballot of 1.64, meaning that the volume of MSPs was around 64% higher than merited by votes garnered. However, when taking regional votes and seats into account, the index falls to 1.16, implying that the proportion of MSPs was only 16% higher than could be justified by both votes combined.

The proportionality adjustment effected by the 2^nd (regional list) ballot therefore acts as a corrective to the 1^st (constituency) vote, the stated objective of the AMS. The equalising mechanism produces more representative political assemblies than UK General Elections, where, in the 12 elections since 1979, the disproportionality index is 1.36.

(However, the AMS is not as effective as the method used in local authority elections for allocating council seats. The Single Transferable Vote (STV) system was introduced in 2012 and in the 4 Council elections since the disproportionately index average is 1.07, which is close to a perfect alignment of votes with seats.)

The fact that a Unionist party – Labour – was the largest party by number of MSPs after both the 1999 and 2003 Holyrood elections but was unable to achieve a majority, thus forcing them to govern along with the Liberal Democrats, shows that the AMS did not favour pro-UK parties.

Moreover, since the inaugural 1999 election, a single party majority has only ever been achieved on one occasion: that was the fluke of 2011 when it was the nationalist party – the SNP – rather than any of the Unionist parties that emerged with an overall majority of MSPs.

The results of UK, Scottish and council elections can be obtained from the House of Commons Library, Scottish Parliament, UK Electoral Commission, Wikipedia etc.

Conclusion: Misleading

Swinney is just taking the pish now. No thought whatever has gone into drafting this Bill. And I mean none! It looks very much as if it was cobbled together overnight in response to anger about the conference agenda, which, much like the SNP leadership, is an independence-free zone. Of course, party loyalists will lap it up. But nobody with an ounce of sense will take it seriously. I thought I couldn’t get any angrier at the SNP leadership. But Swinney has managed it.

The SNP leadership has very evidently learnt nothing from the 2014 referendum The main lesson of which is that we should never again countenance a Section 30 referendum. Everything about a referendum stems from the question. If the question is wrong, everything is wrong. The question proposed in this draft Bill is just plain wrong.

Should Scotland be an independent country?

That question makes independence the contentious issue. But independence is normal. Independence is the default status of all nations. Nations are independent so long as their independence is not taken from them. Scotland’s independence was taken away by the Union. It is the Union which is anomalous. It is the Union which should be questioned.

The question posed in the 2014 referendum put the Yes campaign at a disadvantage from the outset. The Yes campaign was required to defend the concept of independence while the Union was assumed to be the natural order, any departure from which had to be justified. The Union was never subject to any scrutiny, while the idea of independence was beset by an incessant barrage of questions, every one of which created or aggravated doubt.

Who would be stupid enough to propose the same question in a second referendum? Evidently, John Swinney is.

This pathetic draft referendum Bill is the product of twelve years of consideration and planning by the SNP leadership. Really, it’s just the Referendums (Scotland) Act 2020 with a different date. To come out with this after all the independence-related hype of the Scottish general election is a gross insult to the people of Scotland. Surely now we can expect some kind of internal revolt by SNP members.

Regular readers will know by now that I rarely, if ever, get excited about polls. They are useful for identifying trends if you have enough of them and they all use the same methodology. Individual polls have only one purpose, and that is to give the media something to latch onto. The one featured in The National today is an example. Pull out whatever figures coincide with your editorial policy, throw in an AI-generated quote from some politician claiming vindication, add a bit of ‘expert analysis’ and the article writes itself.

There is one point from this poll which is moderately interesting. Not because it tells us anything we didn’t know but because it confirms something important that is all too often forgotten. I’m not referring to this:

On independence, the poll found that 47% of people said they would vote Yes in a new referendum, while 43% said they would vote No. With the 9% of Don’t Knows removed, the split was 52/48 in favour of independence.

Which tells us only that support for independence hasn’t increased since 2014. It is a measure of the SNP’s abysmal failure to progress Scotland’s cause over a twelve-year period during which, by the party’s own account, they have been getting a big helping hand from successive UK governments. By rights, that figure should be around ten points higher. So, I’m not sure why Keith Brown is looking so pleased with himself.

I suppose it does no harm to be reminded of how badly the SNP has failed Scotland’s cause. But the bit of the poll which caught my attention was this:

Voters were much more united in saying that the UK Government should devolve more powers to the Scottish Parliament, with 57% approving vs 21% disapproving (a net score of +36).

Not that I’m in favour of more powers being devolved. Quite the contrary. My preference is to see devolution ended, not extended. What interests me is the fact that support for “more powers” is considerably stronger than support for independence. If the figures in this poll were replicated in a de facto referendum on independence, the pro-independence side would lose. But if it was a de facto referendum on increasing the powers of the Scottish Parliament, the pro side would win handsomely.

I don’t have the numbers to hand. But I’m certain this high level of support for “more powers” has been consistent for several years. The Scottish Social Attitudes Survey confirms the relatively high regard for the Scottish Parliament.

What these findings suggest is that a plebiscite used to generate a mandate for the Scottish Parliament to assert legislative competence in matters relating to the constitution would almost certainly be successful. And by a decisive margin. Especially if we factor in a campaign that frames the issue as the people repossessing that which is rightfully theirs.

Such a victory would be a huge boost for the independence campaign. Success breeds success.

I was all set today to write something on my thoughts about what the independence movement could and should be doing right now. And about what I could and should be doing now. Then I got sidetracked by a suggestion in the comments that I go over to Barrhead Boy and check out some comments by one Gayle Millar. Which I duly did. And it has to be said that she has some very interesting thoughts on the constitutional issue. Very legalistic. But interesting, nonetheless.

I may be being a bit unfair to Gayle commenting on her remarks before she has had an opportunity to fully explain what she has in mind. But my immediate impression is that even if all the legal points she makes are spot on in every regard, this alone is not of any practical use to Scotland’s cause. Very much like the work done by Sara Salyers, I see Gayle’s thoughts on the legalities useful as background and supporting information. In both cases, the thing that is missing is the local (Scotland) party-political and parliamentary process.

There are two strands of thought that we must hold onto as we reflect on the matter of a process by which to restore Scotland’s independence. We might refer to these as the practical and the political. The former being the mechanics of the process, while the latter is the human element — the politicians, political parties, and most importantly, the public.

A synthesis of Sara Salyers’s work and the legal points made by Gayle Millar might produce a legally and constitutionally sound process. But it will serve us not at all if it cannot be readily communicated to the general public. Having a solid mechanical process is of little use if you can’t build a campaign around it. Sara and Gayle might make a formidable team in the courtroom. But how does it play on the political stage?

Again with apologies to Gayle if I am misunderstang her, but I got the impression reading her comments that she is looking for — or claiming to have found — a process by which to restore Scotland’s independence which bypasses the political parties and the Scottish parliament. I know many others think in the same terms. And I can have some sympathy with the desire to cut the politicians and parties out of the process. Let’s face it, the politicians and parties haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory when it comes to serving Scotland’s cause. In fact, for the last twelve years or so they have been worse than fucking useless.

Nonetheless, they are necessary. Political parties are what connect the people to effective power. Parliamentary power. The power to make law. The political parties are what we make them. Or they are what we allow others to make them while we wallow in indolence and apathy. If we sit back and let cliques and vested interests take over our connection to effective power we hardly have a right to complain when they use that power for their own purposes. Purposes which remarkably often are inimical to our own well-being.

Nor should we be surprised that having usurped our connection to parliamentary power, these cliques do whatever that can to encourage disengagement from the democratic process. You wouldn’t expect them to encourage us to take back what they have taken from us.

Once upon a time there was a political party that had more than 150,000 members. Those members sent around 2,500 delegates tio the party conference. And the politicians sitting on the platform looked out at those 2,500 delegates and beyound them to the 150,000 members and they thought to themselves “If this lot start thinking for themselve, we’re in deep shit!”. So, they did something about it. Now, they are secure. And we are powerless.

This is why I say we must first take back our government if we are to have any hope of restoring our nation’s independence. That means we have to take back the political parties and make them work for us rather than themselves and their corporate clients. Doing this requires that we mobilise people in numbers and for a common purpose. To do that, we need a powerful message for them. We need a story that rouses the people. No legal or constitutional or economic ‘case’ is going to do that. Legal, constitutional, and economic material is useful for reference and perhaps to fall back on from time to time. But people don’t vote what they know. They vote what they feel. Ultimately, they vote in the way that makes them feel good about themselves, if only for a moment.

All the facts and figures and legal screeds come in handy when voters, having voted with their gut, then want to make their choice seem rational. Nobody goes into that voting booth studying a spreadsheet or reading ‘Constitutional Law for Dummies’.

This is where #ScottishUDI comes in. We might think of it as a way of packaging all the legal, constitutional, and economic stuff in a consumer-freindly wrapper. It’s more than that, of course. But as well as other advantages, the thinking behind #ScottishUDI translates quite readilly into a compelling message for voters. It informs a story about taking back what is rightfully ours. About righting an ancient wrong. About justice.

Which brings me briefly back to what I had originally intended to deal with in today’s article. What can and should the independence movement do right now that might progress Scotland’s cause? What can I do? What should I do?

Alf Baird tells us there must be a process of educating the people. Which is just another way of saying we need to have a good story to tell. We need an internal parliamentary process to restore independence. Which means we need political party to both carry the story to the people and pursue the parliamentary process that forms the plot of that story. Selling independence like a holiday destination while providing nothing about travel arrangements isn’t working. The polls tell us that very clearly. We need a better story.

We need a story that adds action to aspiration. A story that isn’t just about wanting and being denied, but owning and taking what is rightfully ours. The ‘hero’ of that story has to be the politician and/or party that represents this owning and taking. Any of us can take that story to the people. Indeed, every one of us should take it to the people. But only a political party allows the people to take positive action to bring the story to a satisfactory ending.

I’m going to stop here. But there is a lot more to be said about how we write this story and convey it to a national audience. We should be doing that now.

I have recently remarked that there are signs suggesting some of the SNP loyalists were beginning to wake up to the fact that they have been duped by John Swinney and his accomplices. I regret to say that I must retract that comment. The reason being the below-the-line comments on an article in The National about Scottish Information Commissioner David Hamilton saying the decision not to prosecute Nicola Sturgeon as part of the Operation Branchform investigation conducted by Politice Scotland.

QUESTIONS around the decision not to charge Nicola Sturgeon following a police investigation into the SNP “merit further scrutiny” – and officials’ secrecy around the reasoning behind the acquittal of the former first minister is “not a good look”, according to the head of Scotland’s information watchdog.

David Hamilton is far from being the only one seeking an explanation for the curious decision not to prosecute. Stu Campbell of Wings Over Scotland has been diligently pursuing answers for some time now. Those who are familiar with Stu Campbell’s work will know just how good he is with this kind of investigative journalism. He presents the evidence in a methodical manner that can sometimes make for rather dry reading. But he is quite excellent when it comes to scrutinising politicians and political parties and organisations such as Police Scotland and the Crown Office.

Of course, the SNP loyalists hate Stu Campbell. And now they hate David Hamilton. They detest anyone who voices even the mildest criticism of their party. They are rarely if ever able to contest the facts. They just demand that these facts be swept under the rug and get very ugly indeed when others refuse their demands.

To a considerable degree, these party loyalists must shoulder the blame for what the SNP has become under Sturgeon and her successors. Criticism of the SNP leadership generally starts off being constructive. I myself have come in for a lot of flak for insisting that we needed to work on the SNP in order to progress Scotland’s cause. My criticism of the party was constructive in the sense that I was seeking to steer the party away from some folly and back towards being the party of independence again.

Of course, that was before the election in May of this year and before the SNP conference last October when delegates approved John Swinney’s idiotic and traitorous ‘strategy’ for the election campaign. It was at this point that I was obliged to accept that the SNP is a lost cause. There is no way the party is going to get back to being the party of independence largely because the party loyalists celebrate the leadership’s failure and salute its treachery. Sturgeon and her successors wrecked the once-great party, and the membership gave them a standing ovation.

When Swinney’s first hundred days were up and the manifesto promises were shredded, I thought I detected a change of attitude among the people I knew to be party loyalists. But the response to David Hamilton very reasonable comments has been as appalling as the vitriolic demonising of Stu Campbell and others.

The facts of the matter Mr Hamilton was commenting on are beyond dispute. The SNP did solicit donations to a fund which they stated would be ring-fenced to finance the pro-independence campaign in a new referendum. By John Swinney’s own admission, the ring-fenced money was spent on something other than the purpose stated when the donations were solicited. This constitutes a breach of trust. These are all facts.

As a rational person, it pains me to see how SNP loyalists either ignore the facts or insist that they are not facts while offering nothing which refutes the facts. It’s reminiscent of Orwell’s concept of doublethink. It’s as if these people are simultaneously knowing and not knowing the facts of the matter. That’s as close as I can get to describing this distinctly odd behaviour.

Why does it matter? Well, it matters because the SNP is the party of government as well as being nominally the party of independence. Everything the SNP does or fails to do impacts Scotland’s cause. The behaviour of the party’s leadership and those who support the leadership reflects on the independence movement. This is why the British state and its agents in Scotland are constantly trying to smear the party. By doing so, they hope to undermine the campaign to restore Scotland’s independence.

The criticism of the party offered by myself and others is intended to push the SNP towards being better able to deal with the smear attempts. When there is questionable behaviour within the higher echelons of the party, this adds to the general impression that the party is not to be trusted. Thus, the mishandling of these internal matters actually serves to reinforce the smears, even if only on a no-smoke-without-fire basis.

Some will say that I am giving too much weight to online comments in a pro-SNP ‘echo chamber’ like The National as well as comments on social media platforms. They will say that the people making these comments are not representative of the electorate as a whole. Which is true. But what worries me is that they are representative of the independence movement. The fact that they are commenting suggests they are activists. And, frankly, if activists are as profoundly stupid as SNP loyalists, then Scotland’s cause is in deep shit.

Believe in Scotland has been campaigning for around seven years. It bills itself as the main independence campaign organisation. Its aim is to “make the case for an independent Scotland, to reach out to undecided voters and blah blah blah”. To date, Believe in Scotland has had no discernible effect on support for independence as indicated by polls. This is not to denigrate the activists doing the campaigning work. They are the lions led by donkeys.

Believe in Scotland is led by Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp. The SNP is led by John Swinney. Neither of these men has had a fresh thought on the constitutional issue since 2012. Both put Westminster at the centre of the constitutional issue. Both are wedded – seemingly irrevocably – to the Section 30 process. Both refuse to listen to any dissenting voices. Both refuse to consider any perspective other than their own. Both are locked into an approach to the constitutional issue that was out of date even before the vote in 2014.

Neither Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp nor John Swinney can accept that their approach to the independence campaign is totally ineffective and has been since some time around the middle of 2014. Neither of them has an accurate understanding of Scotland’s situation. Neither of them has a plan for restoring Scotland’s independence. Neither of them is capable of formulating a plan to restore Scotland’s independence because neither of them has a true appreciation of the starting point for such a plan. Neither of them is capable of devising an effective campaign because both imagine that after the vote in 2014 Scotland returned to the status quo ante and remained there.

Neither Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp nor John Swinney has paid any heed to the new thinking in the independence movement among those who have taken on board the lessons of the past and kept an open mind about the future.

There is nothing to indicate that either Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp or John Swinney are aware of any of the hard truths learned by those people in the independence movement who are capable of thinking outside the wee British box of the Sturgeon doctrine. Hard truths such as the fact that Scotland’s cause comprises two distinct tasks and that these must be tackled in the correct order. Before we can engage in the effort to restore Scotland’s independence, we must first secure the means and opportunity to exercise our right of self-determination.

Other hard truths are:

There is no ‘legal and constitutional’ route to a proper constitutional referendum and independence. There is no route to a proper constitutional referendum and independence through the legal and constitutional framework which has developed under the influence of the imperative to preserve the Union. Any route to a proper constitutional referendum and independence that might exist will be branded illegal and unconstitutional by the British state.

There is no route to a proper constitutional referendum and independence which does not pass through a point at which there is acrimonious confrontation with the British state.

Westminster has no legitimate role in the exercise by the people of Scotland of our right of self-determination.

Westminster is not obstructing our progress to a proper constitutional referendum and independence, because Westminster has no legitimate role in this process.

Ensuring the people of Scotland have the means and opportunity to fully and freely exercise our right of self-determination is the responsibility of the Scottish Government, it being the body possessing the greater democratic legitimacy.

The Scottish Parliament is the successor to or continuation of the ancient parliament of Scotland taken from us in 1707 and returned in 1999, bound in the chains of devolution.

Devolution is not about empowering a Scottish Parliament. Devolution is entirely and solely about withholding powers that are rightfully vested in the Scottish Parliament.

Westminster cannot transfer powers which supersede its own because this is prohibited by the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. Transferred powers can never be such as would permit the Scottish Parliament to legislate for a proper constitutional referendum.

Scotland’s independence will be restored by an Act of the Scottish Parliament once it has repossessed the legislative competence illegitimately withheld by the British state.

A de facto referendum can never be conclusive enough to restore Scotland’s independence. Only a proper constitutional referendum can settle such a momentous matter.

A de facto referendum should be used to generate a mandate for the Scottish Parliament to repossess legislative competence in matters relating to the constitution.

The campaign strategy of selling independence as if it were a holiday destination has ceased to be effective. It is only one-third of a campaign. As well as giving people a reason to go there, it is also necessary to give them a reason to leave where they are and an explanation of how they can get from one to the other.

The SNP has abandoned its role as the party of independence and left the independence movement without a party-political and parliamentary arm. That role must be filled by a new party.

That the people of Scotland are sovereign is both a constitutional fact and an inviolable principle underpinning Scotland’s distinct political culture and identity as a nation.

The UN initiative being pursued by Liberation Scotland/Salvo will not restore Scotland’s independence. Restoring Scotland’s independence will require an internal (to Scotland) political and parliamentary process.

The mindset required for a successful campaign to restore Scotland’s independence involves thinking of Scotland as having been annexed by England-as-Britain as well as regarding the Scottish Parliament as the national parliament of Scotland and adhering to the principle of popular sovereignty.

The phenomenon of the colonised mind is real even if Scotland is not perceived to be a colony in any traditional sense. Likewise, the colonisation of Scotland’s political, social, and cultural institutions.

The foregoing is almost certainly not a comprehensive list of the truths that live in the decolonised mind. But the effort to grasp these truths will surely trigger the process of decolonisation. I may add other truths as they occur to me.

No political party or campaign organisation will serve Scotland’s cause that is not informed by these truths.

None of us who have been immersed our entire lives in a sea of British propaganda will ever fully decolonise our minds. Scotland will only be free of this most insidious form of colonisation when children are born into a society that has freed itself as completely as possible from the affliction. Scotland will only be fully liberated when a generation is born which only knows the colonisation of the mind as a history lesson.

Well, are you? Are you listening yet? If you are one of those who tirelessly defend the SNP day after day no matter what, are you listening yet? If you spent the months prior to this year’s Scottish general election urging people to vote SNP for independence, are you listening yet? If you commended “Swinney’s three-point independence strategy”, are you listening yet?

Now that John Swinney’s first hundred days are up with no sign of that ‘Big Secret Plan’ he was supposed to have up his sleeve for when the British state used the veto he gave them to overrule the mandate he claims to have despite failing to replicate the fluke result in 2011, are you listening yet?

Now that John Swinney’s first hundred days are up with little or nothing of what he promised having been delivered, are you listening yet?

Now that John Swinney’s first hundred days are up and no draft Referendum Bill published, are you listening yet?

Are you now ready to listen to the voice of dissent? Are you at long last prepared to give a hearing to those who tried to warn you that you were being duped?

You must have realised by now that you’ve been had. You must know you were lied to and deceived by the SNP leadership. You must surely be aware of just how empty their electioneering rhetoric was.

So, are you listening yet?

Are you an MSP who was elected on the back of John Swinney’s lies and deceit? Are you ready to listen to the voice of dissent within the independence movement? Or now that you are safely ensconced in your well-remunerated position for five years, will you continue to rent your soul to the independence industry?

Are you someone who casts a jealous eye on that well-remunerated position and sees no reason why you shouldn’t use your own empty rhetoric on the constitutional issue to get yourself a piece of that action? Are you one of those who peddles fantasy politics and magical thinking about voting strategies and elections pretending to be referendums? Are you among those flogging the idea of a de facto referendum on independence when that could not possibly work, and even if it could work, it’s a referendum on something you cannot possibly deliver?

Are any of you ready to listen to those of us who don’t see the constitutional issue in terms of its usefulness as an electioneering device?

Are you ready to listen to those of us who have taken the trouble to learn from the past and, yes, from the tricks and tactics of our opponents when these were successful?

Are you ready to listen to those of us whose thinking on the constitutional issue isn’t confined to that wee British box Nicola Sturgeon put it in over a decade ago?

Are you ready to hear some painful truths about the parties and personalities you have elevated out of reach of whatever critical faculties you haven’t disconnected completely?

Are you now open to hearing the truth about Scotland’s predicament? Are you willing to open your mind to fresh perspectives and novel ideas? Are you prepared to think the unthinkable?

Are you up for turning a new page on the story of Scotland’s cause? Are you ready to act in the manner of a sovereign citizen of Scotland? Are you able to set aside partisan loyalty and personal grievance the better to serve Scotland’s cause? Are you capable of questioning first your own prejudices and preconceptions?

Are you a Scottish nationalist?

Scottish Labour MSP Joe Fagan rules out ever backing Indyref2, proclaims The National. There is nothing shocking about this. It’s not as if Joe Fagan has a choice in the matter. He is a member of a British establishment party. As such, supporting independence or a new referendum are not options which are available to him. The British establishment has, from its perspective, a very good reason for taking the position it does. The position which is bequeathed to Joe Fagan and every other British politician. All are bound to oppose independence and a referendum. They are bound to oppose the restoration of Scotland’s independence because without Scotland, the Britain of their conceit does not exist.

They are bound to oppose a referendum only in part because they fear they would lose. That is not as great a fear as some imagine. The fact is, they can’t really lose. Or they can lose the referendum without losing Scotland. So long as the Scottish Government remains wedded to the Section 30 process, the British know their precious Union is safe. So, why not just let it happen? Allow me to explain.

The fear of losing Scotland is well-founded. Dissolution of the Union would be a devastating blow to England-as-Britain. The extent to which England-as-Britain is a major player on the world stage derives primarily from its most prized annexed territory. So, why not lock Scotland in using a constitutional device such as Spain uses to keep Catalonia? The British are reluctant to open that Pandora’s box. They would much rather the relationship between Scotland and England-as-Britain was not subject to scrutiny. Sara Salyers has scrutinised that relationship and concluded that it rests on very shaky ground indeed.

At the same time, the British state needs to be able to claim that there is a democratic process by which Scotland can leave the UK. The British state cannot be seen to be denying that Scotland has the right of self-determination. The Section 30 process maintains the pretence of a democratic route to independence. Were the British state to permit a Section 30 referendum and lose, the pretence would end. It would quickly become clear that independence was not going to ensue from that referendum. When it didn’t, everyone would see that the Section 30 referendum was a sham.

England-as-Britain wants to pretend that Scotland is in a voluntary Union and that we are free to leave the UK whenever we wish. They need to show that there is an existing mechanism for leaving, without which the notion of a voluntary Union collapses. So, they don’t deny that Scotland is a nation. They don’t deny that we are entitled to a referendum. Doing either would put them in conflict with international law. What they do instead is assert the authority to control access to the means and opportunity to exercise our right of self-determination.

So long as the Scottish Government concedes that authority, England-as-Britain is safe. It’s a political balancing act. The British establishment is highly adept at such balancing acts. Were the Scottish Government to challenge that asserted authority, it would evaporate. But challenging the authority of the British state requires a boldness that is woefully lacking in Scotland’s political elite.

How many times have we waited with bated breath for the SNP rank and file revolt that never came? It seems that every year we anticipate the party’s conference, thinking this will be the one where the delegates grow a spine and dare to choose cause before party. Every year, we are disappointed. Last October, it was the Newington resolution, based largely on the thinking behind #ScottishUDI, which promised a major upset. That resolution didn’t even make it onto the agenda despite the efforts of myself and a few others to drum up support for the Newington resolution from outside the party. Again, the independence movement showed little or no interest.

It’s a strange thing. Every time there is an opportunity to give the constitutional issue a mighty shove, the independence movement is nowhere to be found. Both the 2021 and the 2026 Scottish general elections had the potential to be the trigger for a process leading to a proper constitutional referendum and independence. On both occasions, the independence movement chose to let the opportunity slide. The opportunities were squandered.

It looks like we’re about to go through the same routine again this year. The people inside the SNP who are trying to have the party reclaim the right to call itself the party of independence will get no support from the wider independence movement, and their efforts will be fruitless. That’s because the wider independence movement has not yet learned that however much they detest the SNP, it is the party in power. If we want action on the constitutional issue, it is the SNP we must target.

I am far from convinced that making a UK general election a de facto referendum will achieve anything. I am certain that a de facto referendum on independence will achieve nothing. What is the point in having a vote on something that can’t be delivered? What happens if the vote goes in favour of Yes? Nothing! Nothing can happen because the Scottish Parliament lacks the requisite legislative competence. That legislative competence is one of the many powers that are being withheld from the Scottish Parliament by the British state.

I know I’m being repetitive on this matter, but what else can I do when there is no indication the message is getting through? All putative routes to independence converge at the question of legislative competence. The fight to restore Scotland’s independence cannot proceed until the Scottish Parliament acquires the legislative competence to authorise a proper constitutional referendum. The only way the Scottish Parliament can acquire the necessary legislative competence is by taking it in defiance of the British state.

If the Scottish Parliament is going to assert the legislative competence under discussion, then it would be helpful if it had a mandate to do so. This is where a de facto referendum comes in. A de facto referendum can be used to generate a mandate. It has to be a Holyrood election, of course. But there is no reason a UK general election couldn’t be used as a dry run before the next Scottish Parliament election in 2031.

It would be good if at least one branch submitted a resolution for the SNP conference in October urging the party to adopt a strategy of generating a mandate for the Scottish Parliament to take the power to hold a proper constitutional referendum. It would be good if the independence movement then created a clamour for this resolution, such as would be difficult for the SNP leadership to ignore.

The National’s recent poll on a unilateral declaration of independence opened a door to a debate outside the confines of the independence industry. That door is swinging shut. We must do whatever we can to ensure this doesn’t happen. We must somehow get the word out to the voters that the politicians are lying to them and deceiving them all for the sake of electoral success and everything that entails.

Most importantly, we must not let the SNP leadership and the rest of the independence industry dictate the terms of debate. Then maybe this time we can get something out of the conference.

Here we go again!

I am a Scottish nationalist. I aspire to Scotland’s rightful status as an independent, sovereign nation fully restored. Nothing less! Nothing else!

I recently published an article titled The federal fallacy, which was prompted by a piece in the Sunday National about a federal solution to the UK’s problematic constitution devised by an investment manager by the name of David Kauders. This scheme is set out in detail in a book called Reinventing Democracy: Improving British political governance.

Mr Kauders’s book was first covered by The National in May 2024 in an article which attracted no comments at all. Which suggests that I may not have seen it, or I’d surely have felt moved to say something about it. Then again, maybe not. I am a Scottish nationalist, after all. By definition, I have zero interest in “improving British governance”.

Following publication of The federal fallacy, David Kauders contacted me in the comments on that article, saying in part:

Thank you for interpreting my book Reinventing Democracy. Your words “It seems” starting your third paragraph reveal that you have not actually read the book, even though it was discussed in The National over two years ago. The following 18 paragraphs are therefore pure conjecture on your part.

He was correct. I had not read his book. I felt no need to do so because I am a Scottish nationalist. No federal arrangement could possibly be of any interest to me. Not even one which features “a mechanism whereby the power relationship would be between absolute equals despite the numerical dominance of England”.

The fact that David Kauders supposes his work might be discussed with interest by Scottish nationalists such as myself rather suggests that he has very little understanding of Scottish nationalism. Being married to a Scottish woman and having family members by marriage who are Scottish is not sufficient to provide an understanding of the perspective of those who have recognised the Union for what it is — an ancient wrong and an abiding injustice, the deleterious effects of which reach into every aspect of life in Scotland.

This is not to say that David Kauders cannot know the sense of injustice because he is English. Plenty of English people living in Scotland recognise the reasons for resenting the Union as well or better than the average indigenous Scot. Indeed, it is clear that Mr Kauders also has some awareness of the grotesque asymmetry of the UK and seeks to address this with his scheme. But knowing the reasons for resentment is not the same as feeling its corrosive effects.

I have lived with the injustice of the Union for almost seventy years, having become aware of it as a child. Children have a sense of what is unfair even if they have little understanding of the mechanics of the injustice. Children can feel injustice without necessarily being able to understand it. Which, come to think of it, is the opposite of an Englishman like David Kauders being able to explain the injustice of the Union without being able to feel it.

At his urging, I read David Kauders’s book, and I am bound to say that it is an impressive piece of work. If I had any interest at all in making the British state function better, I would reach for this volume. There is much to commend the federal setup described. I would even venture to suggest that had these reforms been implemented fifty or one hundred years ago, Scottish nationalism might have found less purchase in the Scottish imagination.

It is even likely that some people on the pro-independence side of the constitutional divide might be attracted to David Kauders’s plan. It might find favour as a sort of ‘middle way’. There might be some who regard it as being as good as independence. Or as close to independence as makes no difference. I am a Scottish nationalist. That shortfall will always matter to me. It will never be tolerable.

That is why I felt no need to read David Kauders’s book before commenting on it. Because I was not commenting on the book per se, but on the whole idea of a federal settlement as a substitute for independence. It really doesn’t matter what the details of the federal settlement are. It doesn’t matter how ingeniously the asymmetry of power is addressed. None of that alters the fact that it is not what I aspire to. It is something less. It is something else.

My original intention was to pick out some points from the book and explain why these points represent fatal flaws in the scheme, meaning it can never be acceptable to those who aspire not to a shuffling of powers within something that remains essentially the British state as we know it, but to actual independence. There is no need for the kind of forensic analysis I had first thought to attempt. To do so would be like checking the vital signs of a mouldering corpse. A federal settlement will always be dead on the table because of what it is not.

As is my wont, I read David Kauders’s book with yellow highlighter in hand, ready to mark those passages on which I might comment. There were more than a few. But the core of David Kauders’s work is his draft constitution for the UK he envisages. The first three words of this draft constitution mark it for disposal. It begins:

The British people…

I am Scottish. I am not British. I abhor the very idea of Britishness, which is really just Englishness disguised. That thought nicely summarises my perception of David Kauders’s scheme. It seems to me that it doesn’t rectify the dominance of England-as-Britain so much as clothe it in a different guise. I know David Kauders will object to this, pointing out things like Article 3 of his draft constitution.

f. The Head of state shall be the Monarch. Succession shall be according to established law. The People’s Council together with not more than five representatives of every parliament, and optionally one for each Overseas Territory, shall determine accession.

g. The Head of state has the prerogative of mercy, to be exercised either on the Head of state’s own initiative or on the advice of any government. All other prerogatives are abolished.

There is no disputing the radical pedigree of David Kauders’s proposals. He could point to many instances of changes that are hugely significant and even drastic. But at no point did I lose the sense that what I was reading was a plan to save the UK. I am a Scottish nationalist. I have no interest in saving the UK.

This sense of an underlying imperative to preserve as much as possible of existing power structures was sharpened by frequent mention of powers being “reserved“ to the UK parliament. And this really is where the scheme hits the rocks as far as I am concerned. In this draft constitution, David Kauders makes much of the fact that the nations are sovereign. However, ‘sovereign’ isn’t just a descriptor that can be attached to the name of a nation. Sovereignty is absolute and indivisible. There can be no such thing as partial or shared sovereignty. When a nation is described as sovereign, there can be no ‘but’ appended to any statement to that effect. And there are some very substantial ‘buts’ attached, limpet-like, to David Kauders’s idea of sovereignty.

One of the questions I put to Mr Kauders asked what Scotland’s obligations would be to this reformed UK in terms of defence. I find the answer in Articles 41 and 42.

41. The armed services, external borders, and security/intelligence services are the responsibility of the United Kingdom parliament. The police and emergency services are the responsibility of the nations. Regional parliaments have the right to manage their police and emergency services, if approved by the people. The police must be operationally independent of all parts of the state and enforce laws equally.

42. Only the United Kingdom parliament has the authority to permit offensive military action. It may do so only to prevent an armed attack upon the border integrity of the United Kingdom, or at the request of a foreign government or international agency seeking assistance, or in extreme cases of threats to significant British interests.

A nation cannot sensibly be called ‘sovereign’ when the power to declare war or not is withheld. If David Kauders’s proposal didn’t fail on any other account, it fails completely on this one point alone.

But it isn’t alone. Article 3(b) states:

The nations agree that defence, foreign affairs, the currency, the sovereign grant, and, to the extent provided here, international agreements including trade, shall be a collective endeavour for the good of all participating nations supervised by the United Kingdom parliament.

As I wrote in The federal fallacy:

All ‘devo max’ or a ‘federal’ arrangement can do is disguise the asymmetry created by the Union. It assumes that there is a form of devolution that is the equivalent of independence. He comes at the constitutional issue with a perspective which regards the UK having powers over defence, foreign affairs, currency, etc. as the ‘natural order’. He doesn’t and probably can’t see it from the Scottish perspective, which regards this as powers being withheld from Scotland. Which is the very nub of the problem. The problem is England-as-Britain being able to withhold powers from Scotland. His ‘solution’ doesn’t change this. His ‘solution’ preserves the characteristics of the Union which grate on Scottish constitutional sensibilities.

But there is a prior problem with this or any other federal solution. How do we get there? How can Scotland and the other nations negotiate the terms of any federal constitutional settlement from within the existing pseudo-colonial setup? How can the nations have parity of status in such negotiations when they are part of an arrangement dominated by England-as-Britain?

A federal solution is a coming together of equals. But David Kauders treats it as England-as-Britain calving off bits of itself and calling them ‘sovereign’ while keeping crucial powers to itself. Scotland could only enter into a federal arrangement negotiated as a nation with equal status to England-as-Britain. In other words, independence would have to be restored before negotiation of a federal system could even begin. Then we would see whether Scotland is prepared to relinquish to a federal government that is essentially the continuing British state the power to take the nation into war.

My guess is that under those circumstances, the people of an independent Scotland would reject David Kauders’s federal notion. I’m a Scottish nationalist. I reject it now.

Like most other commentators among the media professionals, Lesley Riddoch seems to have been surprised by The National’s poll hinting at higher levels of support for UDI than they would have expected. Which speaks to me of just how completely the SNP’s orthodoxy has excluded alternative accounts of Scotland’s constitutional predicament and approaches to resolving it. Away from the independence industry, UDI or more precisely #ScottishUDI, has been part of the discourse for several years. It has increasingly penetrated the mainstream discourse around the constitutional issue as more and more people have come to realise certain truths that Scotland’s political elite would prefer were not known and, if known, were not discussed.

Truths such as the fact that there is no ‘legal and constitutional’ route to independence through the legal and constitutional framework which has developed under the influence of an imperative to preserve the Union. Or that Westminster has no legitimate role in the exercise by the people of Scotland of our right of self-determination.

Increasingly, people have been coming to the realisation that there is a very good reason for the British state’s propaganda apparatus working so hard to make UDI unthinkable. It’s because they don’t want us to think about UDI. They fear us thinking about UDI. Because thinking about UDI calmly and rationally, it becomes apparent that there is not nearly so much to fear as we have been led to believe.

One of the ways the British propaganda works is by lumping all unilateral declarations of independence under the single rubric of UDI and then burdening that term with myriad negative associations -- largely drawing on the ‘Rhodesia crisis’ of the mid-1960s. Were it not for the fact that it has been rendered unthinkable, people would quickly realise that there are no points of comparison whatsoever between a white supremacist insurrection in an African colony six decades ago and Scotland now.

To those who have succumbed to the British state’s propaganda, UDI is UDI. The fact that UDI can take different forms never enters their heads because it might only do so were they to think about it. And it’s unthinkable, right?

Wrong! In fact, it is not at all difficult to think about UDI. Your head will not explode. Large men in long black coats will not come banging on your door at some ungodly hour of the morning to drag you off for a wee holiday in a re-education camp.

If we assume we’re agreed on what independence is and that a declaration is just informing people, we are left with ‘unilateral’ as the only candidate for a contentious term. But are not all declarations of independence unilateral? After all, who can declare a nation newly independent other than the nation in question?

So, there is nothing inherently scary about UDI. And tarring all unilateral declarations of independence with the ‘Rhodesia’ brush is pathologically shallow-minded.

#ScottishUDI is a proposal for a form of unilateral declaration of independence which is tailored to Scotland’s unique circumstances. There is no reason why it should not be part of the discussion other than the fact that it doesn’t emanate from the SNP or any other part of the independence industry.

Lesley writes:

UDI is a Gordian knot solution – slicing through a complex problem instead of unravelling it. With 99.5% of the population on your side, it might work.

No, Lesley. UDI could be a Gordian knot solution. But it is not necessarily so. #ScottishUDI certainly isn’t. And it is ridiculous to impose a 99.5% threshold on any solution. UDI is highly unlikely to achieve that level of support in Scotland. But neither is any other way forward. Done cleverly, UDI can achieve enough support to be conclusive. Done cleverly, UDI can be part of what increases support for independence. Because, as Lesley also observes,

On the other hand, we cannot sit like this forever. It’s hard to let go of the independence dream, but it’s also hard for volunteers to stay in permanent readiness, relegating the rest of our lives to second and third place. Yet we know what will happen if we give up. Even though Reform UK are dented, they forever sit in the wings, ready to prey on despair.

Indeed, we cannot sit like this forever. Something has to happen.

Perhaps counterintuitively, those of us who take the constitutional issue seriously rather than treating it as a mere electioneering device may have reason to be grateful to John Swinney. The contrast between what he was promising (or ‘guaranteeing’) prior to this year’s Scottish general election and what has transpired since is stark enough as to have shaken the faith of at least some of the party faithful. People who might previously have been expected to shout down anyone who departed from the ‘official’ line are now asking questions. John Swinney may yet be the great eye-opener Scotland’s cause so desperately needs.

In characteristically robust style, Lesley finishes:

I’m sure this poll will be ignored by the SNP leadership. It shouldn’t be. It should be a kick up the arse.

Because we desperately need muscular, ambitious action.

Right on both counts, Lesley. Or is that three counts? Or four? Right on all counts, Lesley. The SNP will ignore the poll and also everyone who wants to talk about it. Like all thinking on the constitutional issue other than their own shrunken, shrivelled, outdated ideas, the poll will not be permitted entry to the party leadership’s bubble. We might hope that it would be a “kick up the arse” for the erstwhile ‘party of independence”. But that is a singularly well-padded and impervious arse. No new thinking has penetrated in at least twelve years. It seems vanishingly unlikely that the poll would even be considered in the higher echelons of the party.

Can there be any question that Scotland’s cause needs “muscular, ambitious action“? Happily, that is another base covered by #ScottishUDI.

My old friend, Mike Fenwick, and I agree on many things. One of them, I suspect, and something at least hinted at in his letter, is the route to independence via a proper constitutional referendum must run through the space between the strictures of local (UK) law and the fundamental principles of international law.

Our nominally pro-independence politicians have been lying to us for at least twelve years. It became obvious to some of us even before the 2014 referendum had played out that there is no such thing as a ‘legal and constitutional’ route to independence. That is why people such as Mike have spent the years since 2014 seeking effective ways of progressing Scotland’s cause, while those nominally pro-independence politicians have been content to sit in their very comfortable bubble, promising much, delivering nothing, and blaming Westminster for what is actually their own failure.

It is people like Mike Fenwick and a host of others who have been doing all the heavy lifting in finding a way to resolve the constitutional issue that ends happily for Scotland. The nominally pro-independence parties have done precisely nothing in this regard. I emphasise, nothing! While Mike and many others whose names will surely be known by those reading this have dedicated themselves wholly to developing our understanding of Scotland’s constitutional circumstances, the better to find a way of changing those circumstances, the politicians have done absolutely nothing. Don’t believe me? Ask to see their research! Let them pile their research on a table next to the pile of work done by Sara Salyers alone. The political parties will be justly shamed.

The SNP, in particular, hasn’t had a fresh thought on the constitutional issue since Alex Salmond’s time. They remain wedded to the now totally discredited Section 30 process while the thinking part of the independence movement left that behind a long time ago.

I know I am repeating myself here. It’s because I am so desperately aware of the need to acknowledge the abysmal failure of these nominally pro-independence politicians and parties and agree to a way to create a new party-political and parliamentary arm for the independence movement. What we have is not fit for purpose.

Right now, however, let’s take a moment to salute all bonnie fechters who have striven at the leading edge of Scotland’s cause for all these years without help or recognition from the political elite.

This is by way of a preemptive apology for what is likely to be some tardiness in responding to comments. Let’s just say that I find myself obliged to address some health issues with more vigour and tenacity than hitherto.

Basically, my new routine is to write less, sit at a computer less, get more exercise and consume less alcohol. There is no prize for guessing which of these I find the most onerous.

My aim always is to publish an article every day. This may not be possible while I fix some of the age-worn bits of my body. But I’ll try.

Peter A Bell

Regular readers of this blog who also delve into the comments (as you bloody well should, because there’s a lot of good stuff in there) may be aware that I have lately been talking about my totally unscientific gauging of the mood in the independence movement involving responses to my comments below-theline (BLT) on The National’s website.

This morning, I find a perfect example to illustrate the point I’m trying to make. It is a single response to one of my comments. The significant thing is that this response is from an individual whose responses to date have all been dismissive, if not abusive.

Bear with me, as making this point requires some generous quoting from the National article on which I was commenting. You’ll get the gist of that article from the headline — First independence poll of Burnham era predicts Scotland would leave UK.

My comment went as follows:

Any strategy that is critically dependent on factors which are not controlled doesn’t deserve to be called a strategy. It deserves to be called idiocy.

All this poll tells us that Scotland’s cause has made absolutely no progress in the past twelve years. We knew that already. Presumably, voters knew it as they voted. But they continued to vote for the party which is responsible for this failure. Pro-independence voted in large numbers for the SNP because there really was no alternative. No other party was offering a better strategy than the SNP. Being better than the SNP on the constitutional issue is very easy.

As I have observed on many occasions, these polls are pointless. It doesn’t matter if the poll indicates 55% support for independence, 65%, or 75%; without a genuine party of independence, nothing happens. We need a way to convert public support for independence into votes in a proper constitutional referendum. No existing party has a plan that will take us to that proper constitutional referendum.

First we take back our government, then we take back our parliament, then we take back our nation. That’s #ScottishUDI.

The response I refer to I’ve captured in a screenshot:

What is interesting about this is the fact that it comes from someone whose responses to me in the past have tended to be very negative. Something has happened in this individual’s mind. I would explain this as him beginning the process of decolonising his mind. This has not been prompted by me alone, I hasten to add. I suspect John Swinney must get a lot of credit. And maybe Andy Burnham. Thanks, guys!

I can’t leave you in suspense, not knowing how I reacted to what I want to see as the first buds of a new spring for Scotland’s independence movement. Before that, however, I would like to point out something that I think justifies the hope that this change of attitude is not confined to this individual. Look at the scores:

Even up to a week ago, that would typically have been reversed. I must reiterate that I am not pretending that this ‘method’ is in any sense scientific. Having said that, I would ask you to remember that I am someone who is perhaps extraordinarily immersed in the constitutional issue and the online discourse around it and who has been for around 15 years. When I say I have a feel for the mood in that part of the independence movement which is active online, that statement carries a bit more weight than it would normally deserve.

Now, to close, my reply to a question I would never have thought I’d get from the individual concerned.

Taking back our parliament is the second step. First, we must take back our government. Meaning, we must elect people who are committed to a process for restoring our independence, which the British state will inevitably say is illegal under local (British) law but which accords perfectly with international law.

At present, there is no politician or party in Scotland that is telling you the truth about Scotland’s constitutional situation, because telling you the truth would mean admitting that the only route to independence lies in the space between the strictures of local law and the fundamental principles of international law. They don’t want to tell you this because it would mean they can’t use independence as a device for getting your pro-independence vote without committing to action which is bold. Our politicians don’t do bold.

The other thing they’re not telling you is that before we can even begin the fight to restore Scotland’s independence, we must secure the means and opportunity to fully and freely exercise our right of self-determination. That’s why #ScottishUDI doesn’t promise independence. What it does promise is a proper constitutional referendum. After that, it’s up to the people.

I leave this for you to ponder upon. And, no doubt, comment.

I see in the Sunday National that the old ‘devo max’ idea has cropped up again (Could a written UK constitution help or hinder Scottish independence?). Why will this nonsense not die? I suppose we can take some comfort from the fact that at least it isn’t Gordon Brown making yet another of his ‘interventions’. He’s not ‘striding onto the stage’ or ‘emerging from the shadows’ to pontificate as if he were some kind of respected elder statesman rather than a has-been politician of no great repute.

Standing in for Gordon Brown on this occasion, we have an investment manager named David Kauders. My natural generosity of spirit bids me hope that being Gordon Brown’s understudy isn’t the peak of David’s career.

It seems David Kauders has written a book titled Reinventing Democracy: Improving British Political Governance, which includes a draft constitution for the UK. As luck would have it, his book appears at the same time as Andy Burnham is talking in vague terms about a written constitution for the UK.

Kauders told the Sunday National that a codified route to a referendum as part of a federal UK would stop “England from treating Scotland like a colony”.

I can see the frustration that the Scots meet dealing with the English establishment. If you look at the strategic problem of Scottish independence, Scotland is frustrated with England dictating, and most of those seem to be swept away if the UK became just a defence, foreign affairs, currency, and common standards Union. That leaves vast amounts of everything else to the nations.

Credit where it’s due! At least David Kauders is bold enough to recognise that England-as-Britain treats Scotland like a colony. I can’t imagine Gordon Brown saying such a thing. But he fails to see that the problem he is addressing in the title of his book isn’t “governance” but “British”. Kauders is looking for a non-destructive way of making the Union acceptable to the people of Scotland. Or, at least, the politically aware portion of Scotland’s population.

(I leave Wales and Northern Ireland out of this commentary because their constitutional circumstances are their own.)

Kauders is attempting to find a solution to the asymmetry of the Union, which is to be implemented by the party to the Union which benefits from the asymmetry. He is seeking a British solution to the problem of Britishness. He expects the British state to reform itself out of existence.

It is important to understand what the Union is, why it came into being, what it was intended to do, and what it still does. (I’ll leave the matter of how the Union came about to historians.)

England pretty much always regarded Scotland as an enemy. The attitude was mutual. England regarded Scotland as a weak point on its northern border, just as it regarded France to the east and Ireland to the west as both problematic states and potentially profitable territory. What the Union did — and what it still does — is give England and later England-as-Britain an overwhelming advantage in terms of the power relationship with Scotland. England already had military and economic superiority. It wanted political superiority so it could have the complete set.

England’s ruling elite worried that Scotland’s ruling elite would make choices that England’s ruling elite wouldn’t like. The obvious solution was either to ‘persuade’ Scotland’s ruling elite to make the choices that England’s ruling elite wanted or to remove from Scotland’s ruling elite the ability to make ‘inappropriate’ choices. So, they did both. The Union formalised the conquest and annexation of Scotland.

Never again would Scotland be able to make choices that England didn’t like. Decision-making was removed to London. The disparity between the number of English members of parliament and Scotland’s representation meant Scotland would always be outvoted. The Union was the ‘final solution’ to the problem of Scotland.

What David Kauders is looking to do is have the ruling elite of the British state relinquish the advantage that allows the British state to exist. How likely is that? Is it even possible?

All ‘devo max’ or a ‘federal’ arrangement can do is disguise the asymmetry created by the Union. It assumes that there is a form of devolution that is the equivalent of independence. He comes at the constitutional issue with a perspective which regards the UK having powers over defence, foreign affairs, currency, etc. as the ‘natural order’. He doesn’t and probably can’t see it from the Scottish perspective, which regards this as powers being withheld from Scotland. Which is the very nub of the problem. The problem is England-as-Britain being able to withhold powers from Scotland. His ‘solution’ doesn’t change this. His ‘solution’ preserves the characteristics of the Union which grate on Scottish constitutional sensibilities.

Gordon Brown and David Kauders alike think of the solution to the constitutional issue lying in what power England-as-Britain is prepared to give up. That’s not it! The solution lies in Scotland not being forced to give up any powers. Like any other nation, Scotland must be in a position to freely and fully choose the form of its association with another nation or group of nations.

A federal solution only works if every component part has precisely the same ability to choose what powers it sees fit to pool with other nations. A federal arrangement cannot emerge from an arrangement in which one component part can overrule all the others. A federal arrangement doesn’t arise from a singular entity breaking itself down into component parts. A federal arrangement is a coming together, not a breaking apart.

Only a colonised mind could regard ‘devo max’ as a compromise which might be acceptable to a nation seeking to put an end to being treated like a colony. Devolution is treating Scotland as a colony. Devolution presupposes a power relationship indistinguishable from that between coloniser and colonised.

The thing about ‘devo max’ is that it’s not independence. Devolution cannot become independence. They are two distinct conditions. If, like John Swinney, you are thinking in terms of devolution, then you are not thinking in terms of independence.

We should think of devolution as something we must bring to an end. Something we must kill rather than something we should nurture in the hope it grows up to be independence.

I haven’t posted an article for a couple of days. For which I apologise. My excuse is that I got involved in a below-the-line ‘discussion’ prompted by news that Wings Over Scotland blogger, Stu Campbell, had once again been dragged in by police for questioning after yet another malicious complaint laid against him by one of the most deranged members of the gender cult. It was not Campbell himself that I was defending against a pile-on of nasty bigots but his forensic journalism. The guy is an excellent investigative journalist skilled at gathering and presenting the facts. We could do with more like him.

To be honest, that wasn’t the only reason I didn’t publish anything yesterday. The truth is that there was nothing in the news that caught my attention. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve been getting a very distinct impression of late that the independence industry is trying to divert my attention. The front page of the National’s website has been littered this past couple of days with articles about public transport — often featuring the SNP’s current golden boy, Stephen Flynn. It has been like a magician doing a flourish with his right hand so you won’t pay attention to what he’s doing with his left hand.

Don’t get me wrong! I recognise that public transport is an important issue. But there has been a distinctly frantic quality to the spate of SNP statements and Scottish Government press releases on the subject of late. Or maybe it’s just me and my somewhat single-minded — not to say monomanical — focus on the constitutional issue. I readily admit that I do tend to see everything through the lens of my Scottish nationalism. I don’t apologise for that. But it does mean that other matters can sometimes slip by me.

What strikes me at the moment is how little John Swinney has to say on the subject of Scotland’s cause. The term ‘back burner’ comes constantly to mind. We’ve seen it all before, of course. We’ve seen how independence rises to the top of the SNP’s agenda in the weeks prior to an election only to slide rapidly down again once the votes are counted and the self-styled ‘party of independence’ is safely returned to its cosy place in the bubble.

At the end of April, John Swinney set out what he promised his government would deliver in its first hundred days. There were promises about healthcare, housing, education, and more. On the constitutional issue he made two promises. Firstly, he undertook to have the Scottish Parliament immediately validate the British state’s veto over the will of Scotland’s people. That’s not how he described it, of course. But that is what it was. The British Prime Minister’s response was to send some lackey to tell John Swinney to fuck off. That’s not a verbatim account either. But it’s what it sounded like to my Scottish nationalist ears.

Swinney’s second promise on the constitutional issue was stated quite bluntly.

Within the first hundred days, we will publish the draft Referendum Bill.

By my reckoning, the first 100 days are up at the end of September. It’s probably a bit later if we count only sitting days. But I’ll leave that wee fiddle for John Swinney.

Where is the promised Referendum Bill? Why haven’t we heard any more about it? Surely a draft would have been published by now if it was going to be laid before parliament before the end of September. Maybe Swinney is planning on springing it as a surprise at the very last minute. Or maybe it’s never going to be mentioned again.

No doubt the First Minister will plead that a referendum Bill would be pointless since the British state has already used the veto he gave it. But we all knew the supplication for a Section 30 order would be curtly dismissed. So why promise a Referendum Bill? If the Bill is pointless, then so was the promise. Unless the only point was to rake in a few more votes from people gullible enough to believe Swinney when he said he could “guarantee” a referendum if the SNP was returned to power.

Incidentally, there really is a Scotland (Independence Referendum) Bill. But not at Holyrood. It is a Private Members’ Bill sponsored by Graham Leadbitter MP (SNP). This Bill is destined for the same bin that received a similar one sponsored by Neale Hanvey in November 2023, when he was an MP and Westminster leader of Alba Party, which then existed.

I seem to recall Ash Regan talking about “A Bill to amend the Scotland Act 1998 to transfer the power to legislate for a Scottish independence referendum to the Scottish Parliament; and for connected purposes”, as Mr Leadbitter’s Bill is titled. I don’t think that one even got as far as being drafted

It’s all performative. The vote in the Scottish Parliament for a Section 30 order was performative. Neale Hanvey’s Bill was performative. Graham Leadbitter’s Bill is performative. It’s all just ineffectual theatrics. The only thing anybody gets out of it is a reason to whine pathetically about Westminster ‘blocking democracy’.

It’s all deception and fakery. It’s all pretence. It’s all false. I’m not even sure this article is real.

Prior to the 2016 EU referendum, I devoted a great many words to warning that among the consequences of withdrawing from the European Union would be the possibility that the British state would use the opportunity this presented to constitutionally redefine the UK so as to lock Scotland into a ‘reformed’ Union. That didn’t happen. At least, not in the way I anticipated. But the warning may have been valid after all.

In Andy Burnham we have a British Prime Minister flying a kite about the creation of a written constitution for the UK. This should worry all who value Scotland’s identity as a nation distinct from England.

There cannot be a written constitution that doesn’t transform Scotland’s status within this newly defined UK. (I shall leave Wales and Northern Ireland out of this, as my focus is on the Union.)

The doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty and the principle of popular sovereignty are totally incompatible and irreconcilable. They cannot coexist in a written constitution. The Union is only possible because there is no written constitution. In writing a constitution for the UK, one would be obliged to choose between the Crown in Parliament and the sovereignty of the people. Sovereignty is absolute and indivisible. There cannot be two sovereign authorities because to be sovereign is to be the ultimate political authority. All political authority is vested in and derives from the sovereign. There cannot be two ultimate authorities.

The Union gives England-as-Britain the power to impose a constitutional status on Scotland without reference to the people. You might think they would never do that. But I invite you to look at the things the British state has done and is doing and then try telling us they’d shy away from imposing on Scotland a written constitution in which the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty is enshrined.

A written constitution would inevitably see the realisation of the Greater England project. It would be the final stage of England-as-Britain’s influence extending into Scotland.

A written constitution for the UK would all but certainly kill Scotland’s cause stone-dead. To imagine a written constitution for the UK would include a mechanism by which annexed territories could restore their independence is laughably naive.