All of us!

That the people of Scotland are sovereign is both a constitutional fact and an inviolable principle.

In principle, I have no quibble with “returning class to the centre” of the constitutional debate as Jonathon Shafi proposes in The National today. In practice, however, that’s a very crowded space. Everybody who has a hobby-horse wants their agenda prioritised. For some, it’s women. For others, it’s the ‘business community’. For others still, it’s the environment or freeports or any one of countless single-issue campaigns. For far too many, it’s their favoured political party.

Personally, I take the view that there is no argument about what belongs at the centre of Scotland’s constitutional debate. I contend that this space cannot rightfully be occupied by anything other than the sovereign people of Scotland. I see the problem not as one of what the debate should revolve around but of what it shouldn’t concern itself with at all – Westminster.

It is plainly, maddeningly evident from every word our politicians utter on the subject of independence that all their ‘thinking’ on the matter revolves around Westminster. Their thinking is confined within the box of the British political system. And I do mean all our nominally pro-independence politicians as well as the more obvious occupants of that box – the British parties.

This must change. Scotland’s political class needs its collective arse kicked to remind the lot of them – especially Stephen Flynn MP! – that the sovereignty of Scotland’s people is not just an effective electioneering slogan. Our nominally pro-independence politicians desperately need to be reminded that the sovereignty of Scotland’s people is the spine of Scotland’s democracy. It is a principle as inviolable as our right of self-determination is inalienable.

That the people of Scotland are sovereign is both a constitutional fact and an inviolable principle.

With all due respect to Jonathon Shafi, I don’t think it benefits Scotland’s cause in any way to prioritise any subdivision of Scotland’s people. The Yes movement of old may have been predominantly working class. But it was a mass movement, not a working class movement. The Yes movement was as powerful as it was because it inspired combination. It broke down class divisions as much as it did any other social division. It wasn’t a working class movement. It was a people’s movement.

The knowledge of how to combine that came to the fore in order to make the Yes movement possible appears to have been mislaid. My hope is that it has not been lost. My hope is that something of that spirit of solidarity can be rekindled. I am firmly persuaded that unity of purpose can be restored. It can only be restored, however, if there is a single purpose around which people can unite. It follows that this purpose cannot be to progress an agenda which is specific to any group or faction.

Scotland’s constitutional battle cannot be primarily a fight to restore independence. (Although it would be gratifying to hear politicians talking in terms of ‘restoring’ rather than ‘winning’ or ‘delivering’.) Independence is what we have when we remove the things that make us less. The constitutional battle is, therefore, first and foremost a fight to remove from that central location in Scotland’s politics the dogma of parliamentary sovereignty and the Union which seeks to impose this alien concept on our nation.

That is not a purpose particular to the working class or any other section of society. It is a purpose held in common by all those who would rescue from the scourge of imperialist British Nationalism Scotland’s national identity and our ability to develop a distinctive political culture.