The hon. Gentleman is making really important and valid observations. Those are the key tactics that we need to adopt.
Whichever UK Prime Minister comes next, while they may have every technical right to stifle, subdue or ignore the Scottish Parliament, the British state has no locus to limit the inalienable human rights of the people
of Scotland or the march of our nation. Yet in this Union, that is precisely where Scotland finds its democracy —denied. That flies in the face of commitments given. In Margaret Thatcher’s memoirs, she said of Scotland:
“As a nation, they have an undoubted right to national self-determination”.
John Major, when Prime Minister, said of Scotland that
“no nation could be held irrevocably in a Union against its will”.
The commitments contained in the Smith commission’s agreement, which was signed by all Scotland’s main political parties, said that
“nothing in this report prevents Scotland becoming an independent country in the future should the people of Scotland so choose.”
Scotland will only ever become an independent country as and when the majority of the people of Scotland choose that path, yet that requires a democratic mechanism that is constitutional and satisfies international legal precedent. From Gladstone to Thatcher, no one until now has had the gall to seek to constrain the Scottish people’s democratic right to self-determination. I have made this point many times, but it bears repeating. Democracy is not a single event; it is a continually evolving process that demands opinions be tested and retested regularly.
I anticipate that the Minister will reel off the usual rebuttals and crow about how we have had a referendum, but he should know this. As an option, a referendum has been put beyond reach by Westminster and Whitehall, but Scotland will adapt. Each and every election from hereon in can and will provide a platform on which the people of Scotland can have their say on their consent to this Union. Consistent with Professor McCorquodale’s opinion, that would pave the way to where
“a clear majority of people representing Scotland… indicate their approval”
for independence,
“but it should not be done by the Scottish Parliament, as the latter is within UK domestic law. This could be done, for example, through a convention of elected and diverse representatives from across Scotland with a clear majority in favour.”
Scotland’s separate constitutional tradition is best summed up by Lord Cooper, in the case of MacCormick v. Lord Advocate:
“The principle of the unlimited sovereignty of Parliament is a distinctively English principle which has no counterpart in Scottish constitutional law.”
The UK Government face a choice: give serious consideration to bringing forward legislation for an equitable mechanism for self-determination, as exists on the island of Ireland, or face that test at every election in future. In international law according to human rights declarations, the decision on Scotland is the purview of the people of Scotland, not of any London party. In the constitutional tradition of popular sovereignty in our great country, it is the people who remain sovereign, and it will be the people of Scotland who decide.
6.41 pm