Face the facts – UDI is the only viable route to Scottish independence

My letter published in today's Sunday National.

Photo by Adam Wilson on Unsplash

My thanks to The National for graciously offering me right of reply to Stan Grodynski, who mentioned me in his letter of July 13 (John Swinney will be toast if he can’t confirm a route to independence).

Stan wrote:

Those who maintain that John Swinney is simply a career politician and that SNP politicians are only interested in maintaining high public salaries for as long as possible should note that unless we can confirm another route to independence or the opportunity to vote for independence whether directly before the next General Election or indirectly via a de facto referendum in that election, then John, regardless of demonstrated financial probity, will be political toast.

I would take issue with the phrase “another route to independence”, as it implies there is already such a route. There isn’t.

At the risk of being labelled “negative”, I should explain why I do not consider either the Section 30 process or the de facto referendum idea as routes to independence. In short, it is because neither ends at independence. Largely because they don’t start from where we are in the summer of 2026.

The Section 30 process doesn’t connect to independence because it gives veto power to those opposed to independence. Few people outwith the ranks of party loyalists believed Swinney when he said he could “guarantee” a referendum if he was given another mandate. But even if they had given Swinney a Section 30 order, the referendum this would permit could not lead to the restoration of independence.

The reason a Section 30 referendum cannot lead to a proper constitutional referendum is that Westminster cannot transfer powers which supersede its own. In a proper constitutional referendum, the people have the final say. The doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty prohibits the transfer of powers that would enable the people to override England-as-Britain’s imperative to preserve the Union.

Swinney’s “route to independence” doesn’t connect to independence because he concedes the British state’s veto power. In requesting a Section 30 order, Swinney accedes to the alien doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty.

The reason the de facto referendum idea doesn’t connect to independence is primarily that an election pretending to be a referendum can never be as conclusive as would be required. Referendums are binary. Elections are not. I’ll leave it at that.

The way we’ve been thinking about the constitutional issue has been all wrong. Our colonised minds have placed Westminster at the centre of the constitutional issue where only the people of Scotland have a right to be. We should be thinking of independence as repossessing something which is rightfully ours but which is being withheld from us by a neighbouring nation.

In fact, we shouldn’t be thinking about independence at all. Not yet. Independence is the ultimate aim. The proximate issue is securing the means and opportunity to fully and freely exercise our inalienable right of self-determination. If there is to be a de facto referendum, let it be for the purpose of obtaining from the electorate a mandate for the Scottish Parliament to assert the legislative competence to hold a proper constitutional referendum. That is to say, a referendum which meets criteria derived from international law.

The most important of these criteria is that the referendum should be determinative and self-executing. It must be a referendum entirely made and managed in Scotland. Westminster has no legitimate role in the process by which the people of Scotland exercise their right of self-determination. That we have been in the habit of assuming Westminster must have a role is another part of the mindset problem.

In a similar vein, we should stop thinking of the Scottish Parliament as a devolved legislature bestowed on us by a gracious British state. Rather, we should think of Holyrood as the ancient parliament of Scotland stolen from us in 1707 and returned to us in 1999, bound in the crippling chains of devolution. We must strike off these chains in order to restore to our parliament all the powers of a normal national parliament.

Once the task of decolonising your mind is begun, you will begin to regard the constitutional issue in new ways. At this point, the #ScottishUDI strategy will make perfect sense. The reason Stan so casually dismisses UDI is that decades of British propaganda have made UDI unthinkable. Ask yourself, why would the British want to deter us from thinking about UDI? Could it be because they don’t want us to think about it?

Certain truths must be accepted. There is no “legal and constitutional” route to independence. There is no route to independence through the legal and constitutional framework developed under the influence of the British state’s imperative to preserve the Union.

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

There is only one route to independence, and that is #ScottishUDI. All paths converge at the issue of legislative competence. Anything purporting to be a route to independence which fails to address the legislative competence issue fails the test of a credible route to independence.

Restoration of Scotland’s independence requires only two things – an Act of the Scottish Parliament and the agreement of a simple majority of those who vote in a referendum on the question of whether they accept an Act of Dissolution passed by the Scottish Parliament. Stan’s mistake is thinking that the referendum comes first and nothing can happen until we’ve had it.

Stan also says UDI can’t happen without the support of a majority in favour. This is correct. The mistake lies in the failure to recognise that support for independence will only increase when it is made real in the minds of the electorate. It is launching the process leading to a proper constitutional referendum that will make it real to people. Just as the 2014 referendum made it real. Circumstances have changed dramatically since then, and it is foolish to suppose that we can simply repeat that referendum and associated campaign. The 2014 referendum was as successful as it was because the independence movement was given a purpose. A new purpose is needed. One which takes into account the altered circumstances.

I am firmly persuaded that the #ScottishUDI strategy will provide that purpose, initially to gain a mandate by way of a de facto referendum for the Scottish Parliament to assert legislative competence in matters relating to the constitution and subsequently to gain a decisive Yes vote in a referendum to ratify an Act of Dissolution.

Among the advantages of the #ScottishUDI strategy is the way it takes the constitutional issue out of the realm of electoral politics by making it a human rights issue. Specifically, access to our right of self-determination. With all the pro-independence parties adopting exactly the same manifesto commitment on the constitutional issue, independence ceases to be a political football. There is a great deal more I could say about #ScottishUDI. But I hope what I’ve written here is enough to make Stan Grodynski revisit his attitude to UDI. I would also hope that discourse on the constitutional issue might be widened if I have at least made people wonder about alternative perspectives they were previously unaware of.