I apologise to the noble Baroness for intervening, but perhaps we can clarify something at the beginning of this debate. She keeps referring to breaches of international law, but in the Kosovo case, the president of the International Court of Justice, Hisashi Owada, said that international law contains,
“no prohibition on declarations of independence”.
The court also said that while the declaration may not have been illegal, the issue of recognition was a political one. Why is that case so different from the case that we are examining today?