Let's stop pretending!

We must be honest about Scotland's predicament

The idea that "the constitutional ­debate shouldn’t have descended into a ­polarised either/or" is decidedly silly. It's a binary issue! Duh! It is polarised by definition. It only comes in one flavour - polarised! You can have any colour of constitutional debate you like - so long as it's polarised!

We either restore Scotland's status as an independent nation, or we retain Scotland's status as annexed territory of England-as-Britain. There are no grey areas here. There is no 'halfway house'. It's one or the other.

Sovereignty is absolute and indivisible. Either the people of Scotland are sovereign and exercising that sovereignty through the Parliament of Scotland, or the monarch is sovereign and exercising its sovereignty through the parliament of England-as-Britain. Brownian notions of a constitutional settlement that satisfies both the pro- and anti- independence lobbies are delusional. Any constitutional settlement which succeeds in terms of the imperialist pretensions of England-as-Britain necessarily fails in terms of the aspirations of those who seek the restoration of constitutional normality.

The reality is that the constitutional issue is existential. When it is resolved, either Scotland as we understand it will have ceased to exist, or the British state as the British ruling elite imagines it will have ceased to exist. That is what I call polarised!

It is unarguable that "the powers to decide our constitutional future must be held in Scotland". The question is how we bring about this glorious situation. For far too long Scotland's political elite and the self-appointed grandees of the independence movement have proceeded (I use the word ironically) on the basis that a 'consensual arrangement' was both necessary and possible. It is neither.

Outside this bubble of delusional dogma, "the intellectual wing of the independence movement" (Alf Baird) has long since awakened to the fact that there is no route to restored independence through the legal and constitutional framework developed by the British state under the influence of the imperative to protect and preserve the 'precious' Union. The realisation is growing and spreading that if we want our independence, we will have to take it in bold and resolute defiance of the British state rather than with its dubious blessing.

The reality is that if we want the power to decide Scotland's constitutional future to be held in Scotland, we will have to wrench that power from Britannia's jealous grasp. If the haughty crone hands it to us, we may be sure that what she is giving is not real power but merely the illusion of power. The act of giving asserts the 'right' to take away. The act of accepting that which is given affirms this 'right'. It's a double-edged sword with both edges drawn across Scotland's throat.

We read a great deal these days about the constitutional question having arrived at a 'logjam' or 'stalemate' or 'impasse'. The Noon / Dugdale paper purports to be a way of breaking this 'logjam', or whatever. But there is no stalemate or impasse. Such terms evoke the idea of an irresistible force encountering an immovable object. The reality is an all too resistible force up against a definitively unmoving edifice.

The thing which prevents Scotland's cause making progress is not an inability to proceed, but the unwillingness on the part of our political elite to do what is required to get past the immobile lump of the British state. Our politicians prefer to pretend that it will cease to be immovable if we just huff and puff enough. They are idiots if they believe this and liars if they know it's untrue.

One of the principal purposes of the nascent New Scotland Party is to bring to our political discourse some desperately needed honesty about Scotland's constitutional predicament. If we are ever to chart a course forward for Scotland's cause, it is essential that we first accurately identify the point from which we depart.