Back burner?
As regular readers will be aware, I tend to write mostly about the constitutional issue, with many of my articles being prompted by an item in The National. I’m a bit short of inspiration these days. On the constitutional issue, there is nothing to report and so nothing to comment on. Nothing is happening. It is 23 working days since the election, and the only thing that has happened is an almost totally pointless debate in the Scottish Parliament about whether to plead for a Section 30 order. MSPs voted in favour. But John Swinney didn’t even have time to write the begging letter before the plea was rejected by an anonymous Downing Street spokesperson.
We were also told to expect a draft Referendum Bill within the first 100 days of the new administration. But with the aforementioned supplication having been peremptorily refused, this would seem to be another pointless exercise. Why spend time debating legislation for a referendum which isn’t going to happen? Here is what the 100 days document promises the new SNP administration would do.
Bring forward a vote of the Scottish Parliament, on the first sitting day after the appointment of the new government, to approve the development of a section 30 order to give Scotland the power to hold an independence referendum.
We will publish the draft Referendum Bill with the question, as in 2014, being: ‘Should Scotland be an independent country? Yes or No.’
Formally request the immediate transfer of powers to give the Scottish Parliament control of energy policy for Scotland, so people do not have to wait for independence to reduce energy bills.
Convene a Constitutional Convention to help inform the Independence Referendum Bill and start to shape the draft constitution for an independent Scotland.
Initiate discussions with the U.K. Government on the transfer of legislative power to the Scottish Parliament to hold an Independence Referendum.
The third bullet point has nothing to do with restoring independence and shouldn’t be in there. The final one is tautologous and nonsensical. It repeats the first item and there is no way the Scottish Government could “initiate discussions“ that the UK Government declined to participate in. That leaves three things we were told to expect—the vote in the Scottish Parliament has already happened, leaving only the draft Referendum Bill and the Constitutional Convention.
Why spend time debating legislation for a referendum which isn’t going to happen?
As I said, we can discount the draft Referendum Bill as it is contingent on the Section 30 order being granted. So, only the Constitutional Convention remains. Has anybody been approached about this yet? Is this Constitutional Convention going to be established by the Scottish Parliament? If so, where is the necessary legislation? If not, what authority could the convention have? Things have gone very quiet.
This should be the point at which Swinney reveals his ‘secret plan’. He reportedly told the SNP conference last October that "nobody knows what tactics I will deploy". I strongly suspect that includes him. There has been no discussion of an alternative to the Section 30 process within the SNP leadership. The Sturgeon doctrine holds that the Section 30 process is the only ‘legal and constitutional’ way to hold a referendum, and I know from personal experience that even to mention a possible alternative was to invite accusations of disloyalty.
There has been no discussion of an alternative to the Section 30 process within the SNP leadership.
Supposing John Swinney does have a ‘secret plan’, that would seem to preempt a major part of the purpose of a Constitutional Convention. It would also have to be a plan for a referendum without the UK Government’s permission. But that begs the question as to why he asked for permission if it wasn’t necessary.
By my reckoning, the first 100 days will take us to the end of September. The Scottish Parliament is in recess from 27 June to 30 August. If that is discounted as part of the 100 days, it’ll be the end of October. The clock is ticking. And I’m not seeing any indication of anything being done. Surely the constitutional issue can’t have been consigned to the back burner so soon!
All true and depressingly familiar. There is no secret plan, in fact no plan at,all apart from thst ehich has been rejected again by London.
A think Swinney and Flynn etc are aff tae watch the fitba. Much like former national party elites in African states headed for Paris and London at weekends
On the subject of postcolonial theory, which also tells us of the “Manichaeism of colonial rule” (Fanon), in Scotland what we see is:
– a people in ‘colonial slumber’
– a fake national party ‘co-opted by colonialism’
– a fake parliament - indirect rule, oppressive/'mystifying' laws, delaying independence
– a fake ‘justice’ system - views the native ‘absent of values’
– colonial 'show trials' - to further rupture the independence movement
– all enabling the 'plunder of corporate colonialism' to continue
Thus, colonialism is far more than a dodgy national party elite; colonialism creates such an elite just as it creates all else in colonial society, including the poverty and inequality of the colonized.