Wings Over Scotland

muttley79 says:
“Why is it unionists in Scotland thought ….. ”

The usual. Rules are for the little people, not them. Do as we say, not as we do. One rule for them, another for us. I do wonder what it’s like to feel special?!

Please find below a statement from the SNP on matters involving four SNP councillors in Renfrewshire.

SNP National Secretary, Patrick Grady, commented:

“I have written to the Convener of the party’s Disciplinary Committee, making a complaint against the four individuals concerned, and the four will be suspended from the party until that complaint is heard.”

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said:

“Levels of engagement in politics have never been higher and the passionate argument and debate which characterised the referendum has been inspiring.

“Many people are disappointed with the result of the referendum and the level of devolution recommended by the Smith Commission, however Scotland will only make progress if we debate our views openly and with respect.

“It is essential that in that debate, conduct does not fall short of the high standard that is rightly expected by the public. My clear view is that setting fire to something because you don’t agree with it is not acceptable behaviour.”

ENDS

The old, dying beast IS still dangerous and we must never forget it. Another Ireland would suit them. What has happened during the referendum does not !

I don’t buy the idea that the Labour vote will collapse next year. I think for now we are locked in the 45 voting for anyone but a unionist party and the 55 voting for anyone but the SNP.

Labour voters WILL vote Tory to keep the SNP out next year. Labour might win at Holyrood they might not. But once they are interchangeable with the Tories they lose the centre left forever in Scotland.

Just because we lost does not mean the tactics are wrong. Every year a new set of voters appears on the scene, internet savvy and getting their news from twitter. This is where our power lies. Engaged, funny, decent, intelligent ideas and discourse, honest policies from the Yes political parties and biting analysis from sites like Wings.

WE are breeding. They are hanging on to the 2.2 children they have. Yes, Westminster could do a Spain and crush future referendums. But I do believe that would be a tough one – Britnats like to think that they are more democratic than their European neighbours. Not sure there would be the political appetite to do it in an England that is also starting to change.

Let’s not allow the bastards to drag us down and control the narrative of failure. Let’s steal that good old Anglo Saxon attribute of assuming success and behaving accordingly.

When the BBC refuses to make any programmes illustrating the democratic structures and civic rights missing from Scotland, and how instituted, either by independence or by Unionist gift, and constitutionally it’s built on sand, no wonder then many in the nation will assume the Scottish Parliament is a permanent fixure.

This has gone viral on WordPress: ‘The Bastardisation of the BBC,’ indicating more than Yes voters are interested in BBC’s role as Westminster cheerleader and anti-democratic referee.

@craig P and Bugger the panda who commented on ireland gaining independence

apart from the famine etc in ireland the events leading up to the 1916 rising and the war of Independence are well described here in a speech by by an historian.
Well worth reading to see how many constitutional avenues were blocked along the road to irish independence and the role played by the Ulster Unionists.
link to millstreet.ie

My 81 year old dad struggles with a progressive dementia, so needs a little help in following the indy debate. I took the time recently, to explained the non-permanent nature of the Scottish Parliament and the desire of certain Britnats to abolish it. His response was immediate and cogent.

There will be blood on the street.

Sinn Féin MP Pat Doherty is in Scotland for two days of briefings on the current state of play in the political process and the ongoing multi-party talks.

Speaking from Edinburgh, the West Tyrone MP said:
“I have had a series of useful meetings in Glasgow with individuals in civic society and the Irish community in Scotland, and with political representatives in the Scottish Parliament.

link to sinnfein.ie

@liz

My thoughts exactly.

AuldA: The UK having no constitution is, in a way, staggering

Not really a surprise when you think about it.

A nation that celebrates the bravery, and marks out the Dorset village, of the Tolpuddle Martyrs while doing its best to wipe out union power is sure to be the last to advocate a written constitution.

Better leave the maze of constitutional rights buried in Acts and laws and court cases to highly paid lawyers. Too complicated for the small brains of Plebs to assimilate.

We keep our anger, we keep out dignity and we refuse to give up

Wull – good post but I would take issue with

“Within such a system, a logically consistent version of Home Rule or Federalism is impossible to achieve”

It is possible to achieve, as a stepping stone. Some of this is constitutional principle, but more of it is institutional and bureaucratic. ‘Secure Autonomy’ would effectively create a UK constitution with one article. An end point for some, and a stepping stone for others.

Derick fae Yell,
Thanks for reading the post, and for the encouragement. You are quite right, of course: ‘Full Federalism’ and ‘Full Home Rule’ (both meaning everything except Defence and Foreign Affairs) could be achieved at the stroke of a pen. There is no theoretical reason why it cannot happen.

At that point the old UK would have died, and a new one would have been born. For the first time ever, there would exist a UK based on a principle. The totally pragamtic, utterly unprincipled basis of the old UK will have been blown out of the water. So too will the old attitudes it fostered. It will be as if a new (international) nation-state has emerged from the old one, which no longer exists.

One of the things I should have mentioned about the old UK, and the ‘system’ under which we presently live, is that the two unwritten and unreconciled constitutions which still run underneath it represent two totally different, incompatible and irreconcilable notions of what the Union achieved. From the ‘English’ perspective, Edward I’s project had at last won out: Scotland had (effectively) been subjected to English rule. The documents might not say that, nor the politicians involved, but, underneath, at a deeper posychological and social level, only semi-buried, this was the real prize for those on the English ‘side’ of the bargain. Forty years later, after Culloden, this subjection / colonisation assumption could only have become stronger, with garrisonned forts spread across the highlands, even if it was not always openly stated. The ambitions of England from Edward I, through Henry VIII forwards had at last been realised.

On the other hand, Scots were allowed to continue with their perception of the Union that they had not been conquered or colonised, but that they were equal partners in a joint enterprise. That perception was closer to what the Union documents said, but not necessarily to the deeper feelings on both sides. The Union, as so conceived, was originally a Scots-born idea, going back to John Mair in 1520 or thereabouts.

During the period of the British Empire, Scots might not have been completely mistaken in thinking that this was what the Union was. Underneath, however, it is not so clear that the perception was genuinely shared. Whatever the case, since the end of Empire, the deeper, older English perception of the Union, going back to the earlier, medieval imperialism of the likes of Edward I and his successors, has re-surfaced. It had never really gone away. It has even been quasi-internalised by many Scots, with adverse effects not just politically but on the psycho-social level. It would be interesting to analyse the Smith Commission proposals with this perspective in mind.

What is sure is that a genuinely Federal Britain – never truly on offer – would undercut these attitudes altogether. It would be a massive cultural as well as constitutional change. It could be done, and it would be a good thing, but within the present system – the present underlying if unstated sets of assumptions – it is never going to be on the cards. Such a move would in fact ‘undo’ the whole system, requiring it to unravel.

If it did happen, as Derick rightly points out, some would see such an arrangement as the end of the road, and others as a final staging post to independence. I don’t know which it would turn out to be, how long Federalism would last, or whether it would even gain the day and become permanent. But the ‘staging post’ argument is a good one, and makes it worth trying.

It could even turn out that this proposal – genuine and full Fedralism – will be the main plank of the SNP’s manifesto for the May 2015 General Election. With a detailed exposition of what it would involve. On that basis, the SNP could even sponsor some non-Party member candidates who voted No in September in the expectation that full Home Rule, as seemingly promised by Brown, would follow. Appeal could then be made to those No voters who are now genuinely disappointed by the feeble powers the Smith Commission has come up with.
The SNP or SNP-sponsored candidates can then argue that

1) a vote for the SNP in May 2015 will be a vote for Full Home Rule / a Federal UK / genuine Devo-Max, whatever you prefer to call it (personally, I dislike the term ‘Devo-Max’, but that is another story);

2) it will not be taken as a vote for independence as such, but SNP members and the whole of the Yes movement can understand the achievement of Full Home Rule as a major step in that direction, which would eventually lead to that outcome;

3) No voters who really want Full Home Rule, and who see that as the solution to the UK’s problems can also vote for the SNP in 2015, and after Home Rule is achieved they can still vote against any further move to independence (which the SNP will guarantee will not occur during the five-year lifetime of the next UK parliament, 2015-20, thereby showing that they have accepted the result of the referedum, for the time being, without tying their hands to it for any time longer than is necessary);

4) the SNP thereby accepts the result of the referendum, while at the same time insisiting that what the Unionist parties jointly seemed to promise the Scottish electorate in September 2014 should now be fulfilled, as of 2015;

5)if this platform does well for them in May 2015, the SNP will also call for Full Home Rule in their manifesto for Holyrood in 2016;

6) if the SNP win a majority of seats (or have a majority of votes) in both the 2015 General and the 2016 Holyrood elections, there will be a clear mandate for Full Home Rule, which Westminster would be morally obliged to implement;

7) both manifestos could point that out, saying a referendum on Home Rule should not be necessary, but if Westminster showed its undemocratic teeth by refusing to agree to it, despite the manifest wish of the Scottish people shown in the elections, then the SNP would insist on a referendum being held on the topic (though the risk here is ‘referendum fatigue’);

8) if the movement for independence continues to grow in the coming years, even after Full Home Rule has been gained, the SNP will still be able to propose a second referendum on independence as soon as the time seems ripe;

9) depending on what happens next, that proposal of a second independence referendum could even appear in the SNP’s manifesto for the 2020 General and/or the 2021 Holyrood election;

10) if the Scottish people vote for Full Home Rule in 2015, and again in 2016, by voting for SNP and SNP-sponsored candidates, and Westminster refuses to ‘grant’ that Full Home Rule, the independence movement will only grow and grow;

11) maybe even in 2020 and 2021 the SNP will therefore be campaigning, as will other Yes-supporting parties, for a new referendum on independence (or even for independence outright) and there will be a landslide in favour of this proposal;

12) alternatively, it may turn out that Full Home Rule is achieved before 2020; people want to give it a try; it works well and the movement for independence loses steam, for a very long time to come, though it could always come back.

Nos. 11 and 12 are both real possibilities: the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. The genuinely important question will remain what is best for the Scottish people and – let us not forget it, perhaps above all – the world at large.

Foreign policy (including Defence) did not figure as greatly in the Yes campaign of 2014 as it might have done; if Home Rule is ever achieved, it will become the focus. For me, it was always the main point.

It is British foreign policy over the past 20, 30, 40 years or more that has turned the UK into the bankrupt country it now is, not just financially but morally. It does not deeserve to continue. The creation of an independent Scotland – and a reduced but revived England – will be a real service to the world as a whole.

But what is equally disturbing is the phrase buried at the bottom of the page on the devolution of corporation tax: “We talked about it at great length and eventually decided it is not something that would be in the interests of Scotland to have as a power.”
Which is like saying, “it would not be in the interests of a three year-old to have candles in her room.” While plenty of other small countries can manage corporation tax, Scotland somehow can’t. For one, Swiss villages as small as several hundred people have more control over corporation tax than Scotland post-Smith Commission. Strangely, the country has not gone to seed.

What I found to be really hilarious over the past wee while is BBC Radio Scotland’s sound-bite, “No other Station like it”.

It’s the only true thing they have broadcast in many a long year. I suppose that’s got to be an improvement but they are blowing their own trumpet a bit too hard.