The real constitutional issue

Stephen Flynn MP

Once again, our old friend James Murphy makes a very pertinent observation in a below-the-line comment on an item in The National (Economic case for UK ‘torn apart’ by Labour Budget, Stephen Flynn says).

This piece burns a lot of words to tell us things everyone already knows — that Britain is stagnating, that living standards are flatlining, that austerity is back by another name. None of that is new. None of it moves the argument on. It just reheats the same bleak diagnosis without adding anything that actually advances the independence question.

Worse, it sidesteps the one fact that now makes all this economic commentary feel beside the point: Westminster has openly said a Scottish majority won’t be honoured with a referendum. That turns this whole article into a kind of shadow-boxing — describing decline while avoiding what that decline now means politically.

If the mechanism is blocked and everyone knows it’s blocked, then writing long pieces as if nothing has changed isn’t analysis — it’s time-filling. At this point the real question isn’t how broken the UK economy is. It’s why we’re still being fed arguments that pretend the same old route out of it still exists.

The point to which James is responding is illustrated by this passage from the article.

“That is the opportunity that the SNP offers – by winning a majority next May we can unite and break beyond the brokenness of Britain and give people the hope of a fresh start with independence.”

[Stephen] Flynn has urged voters in Scotland to back his party in May in the hopes of securing a majority at Holyrood and a subsequent referendum on Scottish independence.

As James Murphy implies, Stephen Flynn horribly misconstrues the constitutional issue. He and his party continue to insist that the problem is forcing the British state to agree to a referendum. In fact, the issue is how do we deal with a situation where that ‘route’ is closed, shuttered and barricaded. We might also ask whether it was ever a ‘route’ in the first place. We might. The question evidently has never even occurred to Stephen Flynn and his colleagues in the upper echelons of the SNP.

Once you ask the question about the viability of the Section 30 process it is only by a very determined effort that you can avoid the conclusion that it was never a ‘route’. One plain fact suffices to make it obvious that a Section 30 referendum can never suffice as a ‘route’ to independence. In a proper constitutional referendum, the people have the final say. In a Section 30 referendum, the final word resides with the British state. A proper constitutional referendum is determinative and self-executing. A Section 30 referendum is deliberative and non-self-executing. It is the diametric opposite of what a proper constitutional referendum is.

The constitutional issue we face right now is not restoring independence. That may be the ultimate aim. The proximate task, however, is securing the means and opportunity to exercise our right of self-determination in a proper constitutional referendum. John Swinney is proposing to drag Scotland’s cause down a ‘route’ that has been permanently and irrevocably blocked. And which was entirely the wrong ‘route’ anyway!

What is even more shocking is that Swinney is supported in this madness by his entire party - with the almost solitary exception of Mike Wallace.

That said, some might find the most disturbing thing to be the fact that not a single voice seems to have been raised within those upper echelons of the SNP questioning John Swinney’s plainly daft ‘strategy’. I’m being generous calling it daft, because further consideration brings the realisation that it is not merely crazy, but reckless and treacherous. Validating the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty as Swinney intends not only denies the most fundamental principle underpinning Scotland’s distinct identity - popular sovereignty - it also seriously undermines at least one aspect of the means to secure a proper constitutional referendum.

By requesting a Section 30 order, the First Minister - speaking for the nation and not just his party - confirms it as a valid and viable ‘democratic route to independence’. He makes it possible for the British state to challenge any action to secure a proper constitutional referendum by pointing to the fact that there is an existing ‘route’ acknowledged and accepted by the Scottish Government. This is one of the reasons the #ScottishUDI strategy starts with repudiation of the Section 30 process.

James Murphy is also irked by the fact that The National seems to be going along with the pretence that John Swinney’s ‘strategy’ is something other than delusional, treacherous, and deleterious to Scotland’s cause. To be fair, the paper is only quoting Flynn’s words and stating the SNP’s position. What is missing is any critical assessment of those words and any scrutiny of that position. It is a glaring omission.

Whatever you think of The National, it remains the sole finger-hold Scotland’s cause has in the edifice of British mainstream media. It needs to be more than just the SNP’s newsletter in the way the Daily Record was/is regarded as the ‘voice’ of British Labour in Scotland (BLiS). Laura Webster must ensure that the paper she edits covers the constitutional issue in its entirety, and not merely the issue as viewed and portrayed by one political party - no matter how dominant that party may be.

The real constitutional issue is not what the SNP says it is. Surely The National should at least acknowledge this fact.