If the British government won't respect the devolution settlement, why should we? Why do our politicians feel bound by rules that the British state treats as optional? Day after day, British politicians exhibit what at first glance appears to be plain ignorance of Scotland's constitutional status within their 'precious' Union, but which is in truth an attitude born not of lack of learning but absence of regard.
And why should they have any regard for the Scotland Act or any other matters relating to Scotland? They know with a certainty that is all but genetically imprinted on their minds that the Union gives England-as-Britian the power to dispose of Scotland in whatever manner is expedient or best serves the interests of the British ruling elites.
An all too evident sense of superiority and entitlement is a defining characteristic of the people who rise to positions of authority within the British political system. They don't care about the democratic will of Scotland's people because neither they nor any of their predecessors has had any need to care. From its very inception, the Union subordinated Scotland. Whatever may be said now by mealy-mouthed British politicians who prevaricate as easily as others breath, the Union was never seen by the ruling elites of England as a 'voluntary political union'. It was regarded as a conquest. As is confirmed by the subsequent military occupation. As John Smith, Speaker of the House of Commons, for example, remarked at the time:
We have catch’d Scotland and we will bind her fast.
This is not the language of mutual respect. This is the language of eighteenth-century imperialism with all its triumphalist contempt for 'the other'.
The fundamental effect of the Union has not changed since John Smith uttered those revealing words. And neither has the attitude of the British ruling elite towards the last remnants of empire. That effect was and remains precisely what was intended when the Union was imposed on Scotland. The root purpose of the Union was then and is now to ensure that England (now acting as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) has an unassailable advantage over Scotland in all matters.
British politicians have never known anything other than this massive advantage. They regard it as the 'natural order'. It simply does not occur to them that Scotland might be anything other than subordinate to what they regard as their 'home nation'. In fact, they don't so much think of Scotland as subordinate as in its rightful place. The inherent superiority of the British state is taken for granted. There is no need to think of Scotland as inferior. There is no need to think of Scotland at all.
This is the reality of Scotland's status under the Union. It is a status that our own political elite neither acknowledges nor questions. They decline to question or challenge British authority in Scotland - which is the authority of an imperial power over annexed territory. Scotland may not be officially a colony. But Scotland is very thoroughly colonised.
This reality will not change unless and until we have politicians in Scotland who are prepared to break the rules which ensure Scotland's subordinate status. I ask again, why do our politicians feel bound by rules that the British state treats as optional?
For over 300 years the very existence of Scotland as a part of the "union " has been ignored by English governments but undeniably excepted as bona fide by Scotland governments and even the "reconvened " Scottish parliament.
This indemnified acceptance over 300 years, coupled with the ethnic post Culloden cleansing of Scotland’s national cultures, has been inbred to such a depth that, until 2014 happened, it was considered the status quo. Now at last, Scotland's people have begupron to educate itself, thanks to people like Sara Salyers and others of that ilk.
Scotland has been awakened and is slowly but surely escaping the unionist net. It now remains for the necessary mechanisms of the SNP to recognise equally its in built constitutional history and re oil the necessary springs and cogs to get the independence movement a track to run on.