Wings Over Scotland

Yes Mia, some people seem to forget the SNP were given several nationalist majorities yet still insist on asking permission from our kindly oppressor to liberate the people.

It was the SNP who opted to become a colonial administration and take the people up a blind alley.

And it was the SNP who ruptured the independence movement.

Much as postcolonial theory confirms:

link to yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com

That election was not “run on the basis of indiref 2 or independence” because the political fraud Sturgeon announced it just a couple of months before the election. But the liar did not change the constitution of the party, so how many people actually knew they were not voting for independence? I bet that it would be less than half of those who cast a vote for the SNP.

The polls released from the end October 2014 were already projecting the mother of all landslides for the SNP and above 50 MPs. Those polls were conducted BEFORE the political fraud Sturgeon announced that a vote for the SNP was no longer a vote for independence. Therefore, it is safe to conclude that those projections were obtained on the basis that those completing the poll thought the SNP would still be the party of independence in the upcoming GE.

What this tells us is that the political fraud Sturgeon actively intervened to remove the teeth of the SNP in April 2-15 to stop the end of the union, which should have happened, if not in 2015, when that political fraud was in control of absolute majorities both in HOlyrood and Westminster, at least in 2016 after the EU ref vote demonstrated England and Scotland were pursuing diametrically opposing and incompatible political paths.

The UK union only remains standing today because the political fraud Sturgeon, Youseless and Mr black pen Swinney abused their positions of power in the SNP to directly betray the yes movement and frustrate its raison d’etre.

And that is why democracy does not exist in the UK and will never exist for as long as the will of Scotland continues to be suppressed. Every political party that has been in power since September 2014 has done so through deception.

Labour got a majority of Scotland’s MP seats with the backing from less than 23% of the Scottish electorate. Compare that paltry figure to that of 41% which is the proportion of the electorate in Scotland who did not cast a vote and which you could interpret as “none of the above”, or a rejection to the current political system. When you actually pay attention to that 41% figure, does that 23% backing labour really sound like “the majority”, never mind a democratic mandate from “Scotland”?

It only does if you ignore democracy.

What a load of twaddle! Make it up as you go along why don’t you.

Your analysis is spot on Mia. Sadly many live in. cloud cuckoo land or are simply not paying attention.

“The 2015 election manifesto did not say that the SNP would use a majority of seats or votes as a mandate for Indyref2”

It did not have to. The political fraud did not change the first article of the constitution of the party which clearly stated what the aim of the party and reason d’etre was: to pursue independence. THAT was my expectation when I cast a vote for the party: to pursue independence through the fastest route. This union started because of the vote of a simple majority of parliamentarians. A vote to end the union by a simple majority of parliamentarians is what was needed to end it. I am sure I wasn’t the only nationalist thinking that way. I certainly voted for the party on the basis of THAT constitution, not to endorse that narcissistic idiot as leader. But then, the thought that all SNP MPs and MSPs were nothing but invertebrate amoebas without the balls to stand up to the political fraud to stop her destroying the party and betraying Scotland had not even crossed my mind.

I questioned at the time and still question today the right of a corrupt and rogue “leader” like Sturgeon to piss all over the constitution of the party in the way she did or to put it on hold for 10 effing years. She should have been expelled from the party immediately. That she wasn’t says very little of MPs and MSPs.

Her aim was and continues to be deception. The deception lies in she (or Yousaf or Sweeney) knowing they have absolutely no intention whatsoever in delivering indyref, never mind independence, but trapping yes voters into continuing to be deceived into believing they will thanks to the serious pro-independence credentials Mr Salmond had built for the party.

Look retrospectively and you quickly spot the deception and the collusion of Sturgeon and the colonial parties. She hardly ever mentioned indyref or independence, but she and her version of the SNP continued to be validated as pro-independence by the colonial parties, which were the (only?) ones actually talking about indyref and independence. It was all a game of deception. That deception continues today.

“the SNP were now very clearly promising Indyref2”

The SNP were not “promising” indyref at all. You either were not paying attention or forgot to read the small print. They were just asking for a mandate “to beg” for an indyref. Those are two completely different concepts. As I said in my previous comment, by then, many had become fed up of waiting and watching her wasting opportunities. Others had realised that “begging” was leading nowhere. Others (me included) were incensed that this idiot saw appropriate to hand over a veto over Scotland’s own sovereignty to a foreign government, which she had no right to do.

“what better option existed in 2017 for an individual voter to further their support for independence?”

In hindsight, much better options would have been to either have spoiled the ballot or not voting at all. I was late in realising of that, but the drop in turnout from 71% to 63% from 2015 to 2017 clearly suggests other independence supporters were much smarter than me at the time. I quickly wised up at the end of January 2020, though, when the political fraud embarrassed us all by delivering her infamous capitulation speech on brexit.

If what you are after is Scotland’s independence, then there is absolutely no point in continuing to cast your vote for a political party that has no intention in delivering it, or is only lukewarm to it, and the only thing it is doing is to deceive you to continue voting for them so they can keep earning big salaries at your expense. The only thing you are doing by endorsing that deception with your vote is to legitimise a political system using deception to suppress democracy and any progress towards independence.

What did we win having Sturgeon, Yousaf or Swinney as SNP leaders from 2014 to today?

NOTHING. Looking retrospectively, we should have crushed the SNP in 2017 already. After wasting 2 years of the mother of all MP majorities, it was obvious they had no intention to take us anywhere. Should we have done that and at least we would have saved ourselves having to wait until 2020 for a serious pro-independence party to emerge.

“that strategy had worked in 2012 with David Cameron”

Actually no. From what I read, Mr Salmond never asked for the S30. He said at the time that he would hold the referendum with or without Westminster’s consent. The tools in Westminster then almost fell over themselves rushing to generate the S30 “to ensure Holyrood had the powers to hold the referendum”. Looking retrospectively, it seems this might have been to stop Mr Salmond becoming “creative” and getting the powers through some other “less conventional” way. If there was something the powers that be knew is that Mr Salmond was an incredibly astute and resourceful politician. Personally, I think they were trying to set a precedent, which, incidentally, was exploited by the political fraud Sturgeon to avoid delivering the referendum.

Now look at the situation in 2012. Mr Salmond commanded a MSP majority in Holyrood. But, for as long as that majority kept abiding by the Scotland Act, Holyrood was a subordinate to Westminster.

Now, how did Westminster look like at the time?

The SNP only had around 6 MPs. There was no chance in hell that a majority of MPs from the colonial parties would ever lift their arses from Westminster voluntarily, heaven forbid on their own accord, and reconvene Scotland’s parliament. So the “incentive” for Cameron to cave in was not coming from Scotland’s MPs. It was coming from Holyrood.

So how on earth did Mr Salmond manage to get Cameron to actually agree and get approval from Scotland’s unionist MPs for the referendum in such circumstances (It is in Hansard that Cameron approached the Scottish MPs and asked them about the referendum)?

Two possibilities spring to mind:

The first is that they probably did not think (they knew?) yes would never be allowed to win.

The second is that they feared what Mr Salmond might have done with that majority in Holyrood if they refused. I favour the second option.

Just think about it for a second. If I remember correctly, Mr Salmond did not have that unelected crown figure “Lord Advocate” sitting in the middle of the cabinet like the political fraud Sturgeon, Yousaf and Swinney did/do. He also had the numbers to pass whatever the hell he wanted in parliament. He could have ditched the Scotland Act, which is the straightjacket restricting Holyrood’s power, and transform Holyrood into a full blown Parliament.

Cameron caved in because the alternative might have looked far, far worse. What this tells us is that Sturgeon is either a complete fake or she has been laughed at for all the years she was in power. The same applies to Yousaf.

“The direct opportunity to demand a second referendum (Brexit) only arose in June 2016”

This is not true. You are only thinking in brexit and completely ignoring the vow and the “breach of contract”, that also represented an opportunity to demand a re-run of the referendum.

People voted no on the assumption that Scotland would get Devo Max. Full Fiscal Autonomy for Scotland was trashed by Westminster pretty much straight away after the referendum. Again, that is a change in the circumstances of the vote. It was also demonstrated by then that The sewell Convention was worth less than wet toilet paper, therefore the promises were not kept.

“What do you think spoiling a ballot or not voting would do?”

Spoiling the ballot is clearly an act of protest. The vote is counted as being cast but it cannot be allocated to any party in particular – it helps to reduce “the percentage of the vote” of the colonial parties. It does not have much traction yet.

Not casting a vote reduces the turnover therefore reduces the pool of votes that can be divided up between the colonial parties. For as long as the turnover remains high, votes not cast are easy to ignore as you say. But if the turnover falls below 50% in a GE, then they will become far more difficult to ignore.

Look at the current situation in Scotland. In the last GE, turnover was 59%, so you could say that a higher percentage still trust the system. Even so, we already have the laughable situation where more people chose to not cast a vote than those endorsing the party of government who claims “the majority”. We are talking of 41% not voting vs 22%, which is almost half, endorsing the “winner” party. The real majority here is the people who did not vote. The more the vote falls, the more difficult to ignore it becomes and the more undemocratic the result looks.

“Do you seriously think a U.K. government saying no to a request by the Scottish government for another independence referendum which was in their manifesto, would say yes and relent just because a few people stopped voting or screwed up their ballot paper? “

You are forgetting that I do not think the UK gov has any right to deny a referendum for which the people of Scotland, who sits above Westminster, has already given a mandate.
I do not care if the UK gov “gives” permission or not. I do not recognise its authority to deny it. What I do indeed care about is that the useless Scotland representatives keep undermining Scotland’s sovereignty by handing to the UK gov a veto that it does not own.

“Not voting protests are the easiest to ignore”

Are they now? Then we may have to keep mentioning it whenever we have the opportunity to make it more difficult for the powers that be to ignore them.

We could even campaign to increase the number of non-voters so turnover in UK General Elections falls below 50%. At that point, we could start demanding that the option “None of the above” is included in the ballot and that the vote is made mandatory. This might make the non-vote a little bit more difficult to ignore.

Why should we just focus on a way to unglue the arses of Scotland’s MPs from Westminster when we can use several strategies at the same time?

“That’s obviously nonsense”

Remind me again what the response from Ms May was to the request?

“Now is not the time”

And what did the useless Sturgeon, who commanded the mother of all anti-union MP majorities in 300 years, who had just achieved the “change in circumstances” that under the Vienna Convention of the law of Treaties gives a reason under international law to terminate a treaty and that had just activated the mandate for a referendum”, replied with?

“I agree with her that now is not the time”.

The political fraud Sturgeon could have ended the union right there and then. Instead, she just pulverised two years of the mother of all majorities achieving the square root of FA. The idea that this was anything other than deliberate is fanciful.

By the way, it may have not been obvious TO YOU that the S30 strategy was going nowhere. Others, far more alert than you, realised of that much, much quicker. Actually, some of us were incensed that she dared to insult Scotland’s sovereignty by even pretending to “beg” for it once. And 10 years of absolute non-progress whatsoever of this deliberately-set-to-fail strategy have proved us right.

“There was a great deal of discussion both in Scotland and the U.K.”

Discussion? What discussion? If Scotland is an equal partner in this union there should have never been any discussion, never mind any questioning regarding if a referendum for which the people of Scotland have just given a mandate was granted or not.

Scotland is not England’s property, hence it is not for England MPs or the English crown to decide if Scotland can or cannot have a referendum. It is because of this that the “strategy” of handing over a veto over Scotland’s sovereignty to our neighbour was the entire wrong thing to do and clearly part of the deception, a direct collusion of Sturgeon and the SNP with the British state to frustrate independence at the weakest point of the union ever in 300 years. You have to be incredibly shortsighted to not realise of that.

” that Brexit would imperil the union”
Brexit should have terminated that union, not just “imperil” it. This became obvious the minute you saw the results after the referendum which demonstrated beyond any doubt that England and Scotland were pursuing completely different and incompatible political paths.

This “union” only remains standing because the expressed will of the people of Scotland has been continuously crushed and suppressed since 2014 thanks to the betrayal of the people of Scotland and what looks like collusion of Sturgeon and the SNP with England MPs and the English crown.

“I can’t believe any serious independence would just give up after being told no, once”

This comes across as whataboutery. You are approaching the issue on the entire wrong way. Scotland is an equal partner in this union, therefore it should not have asked for permission EVEN ONCE, to hold a referendum on ending the union.

The UK government and the UK parliament are byproducts of the treaty of union and therefore they are not above it, but below it. The only two parties that are above the treaty of Union are the parliaments of Scotland and England. The authority to recall Scotland’s parliament lies with Scotland. But until then, that authority is represented by Scotland’s MPs. 56 SNP MPs could have just lift up stakes, reconvened that parliament and empower Holyrood to hold that referendum. Sturgeon and the SNP invertebrates chose to protect their salaries instead.

The only entity that is above the parliament of Scotland is the Scottish people.

The fact that the useless Sturgeon and her acolytes in the SNP thought it was necessary to humiliate Scotland by begging permission from an entity subordinated to Scotland to hold a referendum for which the people of Scotland had already given a mandate for, tells you quite clearly that Sturgeon does not recognise Scotland’s sovereignty, therefore she is no nationalist. She is a colonialist.

It also tells you that she never had any intention to pursue independence and that she was just wasting time, turning pro-independence supporters off and increasing disenfranchisement so that uncomfortable anti-union majority, the fruit of Mr Salmond’s hard work and dedication to Scotland had achieved, disappeared from Westminster.

Sturgeon was fooling us from day 1. She is no leader, never mind a pro-independence leader. She is just another crown and colonial tool using deception to preserve the union. The same applies to Yousaf, Swinney and I dare say Forbes too.

Well said, Alf!

How was the union of the English and Scottish kingdoms brought about if not by treaty? Did it just miraculously happen one day in 1707?

“The Treaty of Union agreed the terms for the union to be entered into”

Thank you

“the effect of the treaty being implemented was to dissolve two states and create a new one”

Actually no. The effect of the treaty was not “to dissolve” anything. It was simply to UNITE two states into one with the main purpose of ensuring the same succession to the crown in both. The statehood of the Kingdoms of Scotland and England was put on hold for the duration of the treaty.

If the treaty is revoked, the states who united into one under the treaty revert to their original status of separate states. And that is all.

If you read the articles of the treaty, you will realise that nowhere in that treaty it says that the states of the kingdom of Scotland or England “would be dissolved” nor that their parliaments “would be eradicated”.

Wording is important to avoid misinformation and misunderstandings.

Both in 1712 and 1713, revoking of the treaty and the restoring of Scotland’s Parliament was considered very seriously in the context of the Hamilton and the Malt Tax affairs, respectively.

Those who considered revoking the treaty and recalling Scotland parliament at those times knew very well if the Kingdom of Scotland state had been “dissolved” or not, as they were the ones sitting in the parliament of Scotland at the time the treaty was ratified and the Act of Union with England was passed.

If the Kingdom of Scotland’s state had ever been “dissolved” as you claim it was, restoring Scotland’s statehood and recalling its parliament would have not even been contemplated in 1712 nor 1713. But it was.

By the way, the reason why the revoking of the treaty did not succeed in any of those two times was because Scotland’s MPs were only looking after their own personal financial interests (by accepting bribes and privileges), rather than the interests of their country. Exactly as we have seen happening since 8 May 2015.

“the effect of which was to merge the Scottish and the English parliaments and the Scottish and the English states into a single state”

The main aim of the treaty was always to ensure that the succession to the crown of Scotland was the same as the succession to the crown of England.

If you do a little bit of research you immediately realise the treaty was very much a crown affair. Instigated and pursued by the English crown. Both, in 1712 and 1713, it was also the crown that prevented that union from breaking apart after the Hamilton and the Malt tax affairs.

I would not be surprised if at some point in the future we are told that it was the English crown who also intervened in 2014, and has been intervening ever since, to ensure the union does not break.

For instance, I have always wondered who empowered and gave enough clout to Gordon Brown in 2014 to recruit the PM, deputy PM and leader of the opposition (and to get them to sign the vow) when the guy was just a hasbeen who was not even an MP at the time.

Where did he get the power to create and publish “the vow”? The guy acted like a propagandist, just like Daniel Defoe did in 1706. Daniel Defoe was a spy working for the English crown who had been tasked with inflating the benefits of the union to convince the scots. Brown is the one who lied to us and inflated the benefits of voting no. He told us that we would get Devo Max, as close to federalism as we could be and the most powerful devolved parliament in the world, if we voted no. Who empowered this guy to preach that propaganda?

It is also rather telling that the crown office was at the heart of the Salmond affair, it remains at the heart of the protection of perjurers and the vietnam group, it continues to aid the suppression of information from the public, it was at the heart of malicious prosecutions of pro-independence supporters and it is currently at the heart of the stalling of branchform. It seems to be right in the middle of an awful lot of bad things, isn’t it?

It is also quite telling that an unelected representative of the crown, in the form of the figure of “Lord Advocate”, who incidentally also happens to lead that crown office, intervened to stop the Keatings case from providing a clear response regarding Holyrood’s real power under Scots law.

It was also that same unelected crown representative figure (albeit a different person) who blatantly pissed all over democracy and Scotland’s Claim of Right by recruiting an English court and English judges to apply English law convention so the English crown could usurp from the people of Scotland the control over Scotland’s legislative power and to stop the referendum bill entering Holyrood.

So much for a “limited powers monarchy”, huh? Representatives of that English crown appear to be everywhere and sticking their fingers in all pies where they shouldn’t.

But none of the above invalidates the fact that the UK parliament, the UK government and indeed that English court otherwise known as “Supreme Court” are simply by-products of that treaty and therefore subordinated to it. Actually, I am not sure of the legality of that English court otherwise known as “Supreme Court” under the treaty.

If they are not treated like the subordinated entities they are, it is only because our useless Scotland’s representatives keep choosing to hand those subordinated entities a veto over Scotland’s sovereignty, executive and legislative power rather than putting their spines back on, standing upright and acting on the people of Scotland’s mandates and interests.

Secondly, for detailed analysis of the contrasts between Scottish and English constitution heritages, Aidan O’Neill QC is excellent here, clarifying that the religion-related enactments were proxies for political issues (Please note that the PDF link on webpage is defunct): 

UK Supreme Court: Article 50 ‘Brexit’ Appeal –

WRITTEN INTERVENTION FOR THE INDEPENDENT WORKERS UNION OF GREAT BRITAIN (IWGB) [2016]

« 2.2 Answering that question shines a spotlight on just what the UK constitution is. But UK constitutional law has been the law that dare not speak its name. This is because the 1707 Parliamentary union between England and Scotland undoubtedly created a new State, but it did not create one Nation. Various schemes for a wholly incorporating ‘perfect’ Union of Scotland and England had, unsuccessfully, been proposed to the English Parliament by James VI, King of Scots, after he had acceded to the English throne in 1603. The 1707 Union differed from these earlier schemes in that, while ensuring the depoliticisation of Scotland, it put into place measures intended to protect – and indeed to strengthen – other aspects of Scotland’s distinctive continuing nationhood. Conrad Russell put it thus [505] (internal footnote added):

“That the Scots found a perfect union politically unacceptable, and the English an imperfect union intellectually incomprehensible, provides the basis for the odd mixture of the two which was set up in 1707. The English got the unitary sovereign power which they wanted, and got it in the form based upon the existing English Parliament, with an English majority in it. The Scots got their recognition as a separate sovereign state, both from the form of the Union of 1707 as an international treaty, and from the survival of Scots law and the Scottish church. It is that claim that Scotland is a sovereign nation state which is reasserted whenever the English forget that 1707 was not a ‘perfect union’ and has recently been repeated in the Claim of Right. Scotland in accepting the Union in 1707 remained a nation and as a result any sovereignty in the British parliament could not be national sovereignty. This has always been hard for the English to understand.” »

« 3.8 In this early modern period, models of constitutional government are expressed in the terms of political theology. The religious is political precisely because in defining the terms of the Church settlement in a territory you define the source and extent of power of the State.19 So in Scotland at least, the term “Papist” translates into a believer in absolutist government; “Episcopalian” into a supporter of constitutionally limited Monarchy; while “Presbyterians” hold to a democratic model in which the Elect(ors) delegate defined and limited powers to those whom they appoint to hold office. »

« 3.9 The whole point about the 1707 Union is that it constitutionally entrenched the distinct Scottish and English constitutional traditions as embodied in the two nations’ separate ecclesiastical settlements. Thus, the “securing of the Protestant Religion and Presbyterian Church Government within the Kingdom of Scotland” was expressly declared to be “a fundamental and essential Condition of the said Treaty or Union in all times coming.” And it was similarly declared by the English Parliament that the preservation of the Anglican settlement in England also be made “a Fundamental and Essential part of any Treaty of Union” with Scotland. And this is not simple antiquarianism or misplaced originalism. The accession oath which was sworn by Elizabeth II before the Accession Privy Council on the day immediately after her accession, and which is renewed by her each year (whether in writing or in person) before the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland is in the following terms:

“I, Elizabeth the Second by the Grace of God of Great Britain, Ireland and the British dominions beyond the seas, Queen, Defender of the Faith, do faithfully promise and swear that I shall inviolably maintain and preserve the Settlement of the True Protestant Religion as established by the laws of Scotland in prosecution of the Claim of Right and particularly an Act entitled an Act for the Securing the Protestant Religion and Presbyterian Church Government and by the Acts passed in both Kingdoms for the Union of the two Kingdoms, together with the Government, Worship, Discipline, Rights and Privileges of the Church of Scotland. So help me God.” (emphasis added) »

« 3.10 What this means is that this distinctive Scottish constitutional tradition embodied in the Claim of Right – of the Crown holding power from and in trust for the people assembled “in a full and free representative of this Nation”, with the Crown bound by the constitution to honour the terms and limits of the sovereign people’s grant of that power, and with both the people and the Crown subject to a duty to respect fundamental rights and the rule of law – not only survived the 1707 Union, but was expressly preserved by it and is reaffirmed by the Crown in personam every year of her reign. »

“The idea of the U.K. as an entity formed of an international treaty between two sovereign states is complete nonsense”

The United Kingdom of GREAT BRITAIN is formed on the back of an international treaty between the sovereign states of the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England. It is that international treaty and the ratification of the treaty by the parliaments of Scotland and England what gives that union legitimacy. End the treaty, end the union.

Now, the [(United Kingdom of Great Britain) + Northern Ireland] is the current “UK”. But if you end the entity of “Great Britain”, which is what Scottish nationalists are pursuing, you actually end the concept of “United Kingdom”.

Northern Ireland is not a different Kingdom to England. It is one of the dominions of the Kingdom of England, and it has been so for centuries before the treaty of union between Scotland and England took place. The whole of Ireland and Wales entered the Treaty of union between Scotland and England as a dominion of the Kingdom of England. The Kingdom of Ireland was terminated the moment Ireland declared itself a republic.

“It is an idea that isn’t recognised or applied by anyone in authority anywhere”

If you are referring to the entity [(United Kingdom of Great Britain) + Northern Ireland], then I am not sure that there is an actual treaty, valid under international law, between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. As far as I remember from what I read in Hansard a while back, it was said that when the union was between a power and its dominions an international treaty was not necessary, just an Act, which is a piece of domestic legislation.

But if what you are attempting to peddle here is that the treaty between the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland that produced the United Kingdom of Great Britain does not exist, then you are evidently lying and pursuing active disinformation. You only have to do a google search and information about the treaty immediately appears.

The role of the colonizer ‘is to make any prospect of liberation for the native seem impossible’ (Memmi).

Aye, yer daen a guid job thair.

Well said Andy !
I wish Alf would realise how much harm his constant spamming of every discussion does to the Indy movement.
Random quotes about colonialism in 19th century Africa have no relevance to Scotland in the 21st century !

Much of what we know as postcolonial theory was written from the 1950s and 60s onwards, which corresponded with the mass of declarations of independence after WWII and the creation of the UN.

It is this body of literature that helped create the fundamental principles of self-determination independence within the UN, the intent of which was to bring to an end the imperial powers through decolonization of their acquired territories.

Postcolonial theory is applied to the Scottish colonial situation in this published academic article here:

link to cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com

“The international community would have ignored such a result, and so would Westminster.”

And as usual the FRANCHISE FANNY not only knows what everyone in Scotland, engerland, the uk knows and thinks HE now speaks for the whole INTERNATIONAL community,
what a ballsack

The nutters, there are a good few on here, are incapable of reason. They live in their own wee fantasy world where anything that is said or written is correct if it fits with their warped views. Anything to the contrary has to be shouted down at every opportunity.

I find it difficult to pick out who is the worst amongst them. The least original is definitely Baird but…………….he has a following for some strange reason. Of course, one track minds attract………..one track minds.

After Independence, which will occur by magic, EVERYTHING will be fantastic in Scotland. We will not even need a competent Government. Maybe Dynamo. David Blaine or a whole raft of the Magic Circle will stand for Parliament?

Ireland’s independence happened in the face of incipient civil war after negotiations between British and Irish nationalists predicated on a threat by the British to invade if the Irish didn’t accept partition. Nice try, but no cigar on the comparison front.

The Velvet divorce was indeed cooked up by the leaderships of both sides, but again it’s hardly comparable with the UK: the populations of both countries accepted it, the political leaderships in both accepted it, and there was no successor state, there were two new states. In the case of the UK in the Scottish case and Spain in the Catalan case there will be a successor state.

The international community won’t see any difference between the Scottish, Catalan or Quebec cases: all have differences and all have similarities, but they’ll all be held to the same standards.

There are lots of reasons other countries won’t recognise a unilateral decision: ask the Kosovans, Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, Somaliland, etc. Refer to the points above in response to twatbyname. The onus is on the small coterie of extremists punting non-conventional means to show their concepts have any intellectual, political and popular hinterground.

So far you and they are coming up empty. No change there.

I actually agree with some of you last paragraph: what’s needed is a party with the balls to do it. That clearly isn’t the SNP. Plebiscitary elections need to demonstrate a majority in favour of parties standing on an explicit independence platform, same goes for Holyrood parties proposing to repatriate all powers over our constitutional future.