The tint of rose
What with this poll apparently being such terrific news for John Swinney’s runaway popularity with the people of Scotland, readers might be wondering why SNP MSP Graeme Dey has apparently forgotten to include the actual figures or link to the source so that people can find out for themselves.
Or, y’know, you might not.
Because what “most favoured” actually means here is that just 3 in 10 Scots have a favourable opinion of the First Minister – somewhat less than the 38% who have an UNfavourable one, and also less than the 31% who don’t have a view either way.
He’s still a bit LESS unpopular than the Scottish Labour and Scottish Tory leaders, of course. But “our guy is the least hated out of a group of people that the public would on the whole happily lob down a mineshaft” doesn’t make for so snappy a tweet.
And as for what people think of the government he leads, well:
You can see why, weak as it is, they’re playing the personality card.
Lies, damned lies and the SNP
the steady hand of the great oarsman Sween-o is more pleasing to me than a handjob from a girl with palsy
When you have a choice between a big shite, a medium shite, and a small shite, it’s still a shite.
I first got to know Graeme Dey in his former life, as an excellent Sports Editor in Dundee. He was bloody good at his job and it was a pleasure to work with him.
Clearly his ability to put a bit of spin on a story has not deserted him during his years at Holyrood.
I’m I being censored?
I don’t value Scotland censorship (I never block people).
I don’t believe in human oppression.
Yes, you’re on pre-moderation for filter evasion.
No worries Stuart, it’s your website and Rules.
I can only assume that you are alluding to certain forbidden words/topics (re. R & U: highly relevant issues to our Scotland/world circumstances?).
I value freedom of speech and Team-Scotland players.
This will be my last post here given that my best Scotland efforts (heart and soul) are unwanted and oppressed under censorship. Hopefully you will allow my final post to be seen (after being a Wings supporter for well over 10 years).
Many thanks to the people here who supported me (you are wonderful humans).
Goodbye and good luck to you (including the bigots:)
Love you Scotland forever…
Excellent stuff Stu! This site will be so much better when every single post isn’t immediately derailed by the same tiny group of people posting exactly the same talking points on exactly the same topic continuously day and night. I can’t immediately remember the last time there was a fruitful conversation on the policy or governance context in Scotland or anything really relating to Scottish independence. Hopefully that can come back.
What a truly depressing state our national politics are in, that this droning “I speak your weight” machine, recycled from his previous stint as failed leader of his party, is the most popular of the current bunch of disasters.
He’s defo goat a bigger heid than the ither twa.
Nae a bad tan either. Nae cant’s gonna be shouting “white, white, white” in his direction.
Haud oan though. Could he be slowly but surely morphing into an orange hue? A bit like that hair stuff you apply daily and it imperceptibly gets rid of the gray (obviously he disnae use that).
Come to think on’t, that could be a very smart move for dealing with some very important people. So fair play tae him fer thinking oot the box.
Humza, Shona Robison, Fiona Hyslop….will the last one out of Holyrood please put the lights out.
Swinney’s got a personality? Who knew eh?
It’s a spray on personality, like his tan. it tends to wear off quickly though.
I had to start a new list of Swinney’s blunders. Last year’s got to long.
Starting 2025
Coming out against a newly elected US president
Calling for unity against the far right but forgetting such a move helps the unionists.
Sturgeon back in the press and tv
Still silence on Branchform and Perjury case.
Supporting continued war in Ukraine
Still no sign of a plan for Indy
Shug
If an Irishman may comment?
Coming out against a newly elected US president if he is DJT is not an error imo. Have you watched DJT’s actions recently?
Supporting continued war in Ukraine == supporting Ukraine’s right to exist.
IMO it would be a tragic mistake for the Scottish independence movement to think that Trump is in any sense their friend.
“My enemy’s enemy is my enemy’s enemy. Not my friend.”
All your other criticisms of Swinney are IMO spot on.
Well said John.
Nobody’s enthusiastically supporting anything. It’s simply that one side has been lying for more years than anybody can remember, so nobody rational can trust anything that side says.
So the support has to be provided, unenthusiastically, because if it isn’t, the fall-out from a fractured Europe, a torn-apart EU, and millions of homeless refugees fleeing in this direction will end up costing an order of magnitude more.
And as an aside, nobody should support the right of an ex-colony to exist, free and sovereign, more than a Scottish Indy believer.
But yet there seems to be a few that don’t. Bizarre.
Reality is he is the president for the next 4/5 years. He might be batshit crazy but he is the man calling the shots and going against him is not going to get you anywhere.
You need to manage your position around him not parrot the westminster line. They will back off soon enough and Swinney will be left looking like a clown
By FAR RIGHT you do know he means anyone who thinks that men can’t get pregnant, we shouldn’t freeze OAPs to death and maybe we should control the borders
Be careful you might end up being labelled as FAR RIGHT yourself
The “Views on Scottish Government performance” chart deserves closer study.
Obviously a fair number of respondents were unable to string together coherent thoughts. Or see the bigger picture.
Take the figures for the climate crisis (24% Good 33% Bad). The respondents gave ScotGov the best marks of all for this.
Surely if the NHS is tanking, standards of living for everybody are not improving, and the economy is doing poorly, these are all circumstances guaranteed to improve the health of the climate?
Early deaths, preceded by scrimping and scraping to get by, with no disposable income. Win-win for the climate, so that’s exactly what the climate devotees should be cheering on.
How is it that the respondents, and no doubt many more besides, can’t see that?
Are there really still people out there who want to live long, healthy lives, with rivers of disposable cash, which they can splurge on consumer goods, exotic travel, big houses, luxuries, holidays, etc?
And they want the climate improved too?
The climate on what fecking planet!
Would have been interesting if the article concluded with a comparison of these general figures with the plummeting voter engagement trends at elections.
our guy is the least hated out of a group of people that the public would on the whole happily lob down a mineshaft” doesn’t make for so snappy a tweet.’ ?
It so does, though, if they had the guts to say it.
Views on Scot Gov performance – 7 questions and not one of them about their performance on Regaining our Independence (hello, have I come to the right place for Scottish Nationalists? No? Sorry, my mistake, I must have got the wrong address) . . . or their understanding of very basic biology 😉 . . . instead, there are 2 Qs that are NOT identical but roughly similar: In work poverty and personal living standards, and another 2 that, again, are similarly linked: taxation and economy.
Climate crisis?? What crisis? The climate may be changing, but where’s the crisis? They could have simply used ‘climate CHANGE’.
The only climate crisis I can see is the insanity of imposing Net Zero targets.
” Climate crisis?? What crisis? The climate may be changing, but where’s the crisis? They could have simply used ‘climate CHANGE’.
The only climate crisis I can see is the insanity of imposing Net Zero targets. ”
Yes , but to use more temperate/accurate langauge would be to commit heresy against the new religion of Climate Hyperbole and incur the wrath of the * Green * Priesthood .
Net Zero is really just a cover for the imposition of ever tighter controls on our freedoms and agency as individuals . It’s on the same irrational denial of reality as TWAW & the whole * gender * lunacy . Soon to be supplemented by drastic cuts to public services/increases in taxes to ( supposedly ) counter the entirely manufactured Red threat from the East .
The entire current Political Class in the U.K / E.U will have be removed if we’re to stand any chance of preventing the dystopian future they have in store for us
“to ( supposedly ) counter the entirely manufactured Red threat from the East”
Congratulations, Bob, on being the first to hijack this thread so that you can wang oan aboot your favourite subject.
Only 19 comments so far too – surely a new record – double congrats.
Seeing as how you brought it up though, is there any event whatsoever that could happen that would make you accept that the threat is not manufactured after all?
Anything?
Or in your world view, does everybody in Europe have it coming. You do know that will include Scotland too?
Nah. You’re probably in denial about that also.
It’s pretty damning to find somebody still believing the aggressive colonialist is “red” – the commies were thrown out over 30 years ago!
Did nobody tell you?
Good grief,
This “Popular Leader” shite started with Queen Nic and voters started to forget that a vote is for the policies of a party that you want to see enacted in the parliament that you voted for.
We seriously need get back to what a vote truly meant rather the popularity of a fuckin person.
When Alex Salmond was in charge, people voted for the policies and alot of people didn’t like him, thought he was smarmy etc etc but couldn’t disagree that he led a competent government which was why he was kept as First Minister till 19th Sept 2014.
Lets get back to voting what a party represent and let the voters decide, I really want to see the NuSNP push forward their Gender policies and allow the public to really tell them what they think instead of sneaking it through the back door because of the “popularity” of the person.
The SNP can add another item to its BETRAYAL list “Respect Scottish Sovereignty has received two written responses from the Scottish Government’s Directorate for Constitution (DfC) and from SPICe, the Parliamentary research unit, regarding our petition, PE2135, asking that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) be incorporated into Scots law.”.
link to dearscotland.substack.com
The ‘Views on Scottish Government Performance’ list seems to lack anything about the efficiency of the police, prosecuting authorities, and courts in bringing obvious criminals to justice in a timely manner. Perhaps that’s because they would know the answer already.
I noticed spineless Swinney the DESPICABLE TERF announcing and celebrating the birth of his grandson on X, how fucking dare he ASSIGN a gender to this child before the child can choose for themselves, WHAT gives this blatant TERF the right to deliberately ignore the wishes of this he/her/them/they/those child and IMPOSE their reviled anti trans bigoted forced opinion and attitude on this young child
I also noticed of the many comments and congratulatory messages from msp’s of all parties to Spineless Swinney and the VESSEL that carried the child and the person who donated the sperm that NONE of THEM were crass enough or despicable enough to actually force or boldly ASSIGN a gender to this child,they realised that after the birth the child was not yet able to communicate their gender specific wishes so were respectful in NOT ASSIGNING a gender to the infant, unlike the hypocritical individual who loudly and publicly insists he knows what a woman is and YET FORCES A GENDER ON A NEW BORN GRANDCHILD a truly reviled and despicable action and one that should be highlighted within Holyrood
Where is “Advancing the cause of Independence”..?
What you need to remember is a competent government carries way more weight and influence then all your wee marches and flag waving
and ps
calling us ("Tractor" - Ed)s really doesn’t help
Have just seen on STV news that Scotland is at a 15 year high on alcohol “related” deaths!!
So much for the much vaunted minimum pricing of alcohol which it would appear to have succeeded solely in making responsible (and irresponsible) drinkers poorer and the retailers richer.
Bin it, it’s clearly not working and is simply a not very stealthy form of tax/ punishment payment.
If you want a giggle compare the price of a bottle of Buckfast before and after minimum pricing legislation
I think the total difference is almost exactly ZERO
As a responsible drinker myself the only real difference it has made to me is where as before I had the choice of a cheap and awful beer/cider/wine or a decent and not cheap beer/cider/wine
I now have the choice of
not cheap and awful or not cheap and decent
Seeing I was never a great fan of tramp juice then it’s caused me zero changes
Ah!
Pertwee the Casqueteer hath spoken..
Super helpful..
Just curious: what’s with all the SNP MSPs suddenly announcing they will leave come 2026, the rats leaving a stinking shit? What do they know we don’t? Anybody got any ideas? Are they expecting a political wipe out? Pension pots full enough? Trashed the party and country enough? Vermin.
Alex Salmond, would tell Westminster to stop sending money to Ukraine.
I wish Alex was alive just now but he’s alive in my heart. And the dream shall never die.
Why is Swinney so mad keen on going to war? Robin McAlpine’s piece today said he was the same about Iraq – 3 sources on the SNP NEC of the time said that Swinney, then leader, tried to change fundamental party policy in order to support the Iraq War. But the NEC in those days had principles and power and they refused.
Perhaps if Swinney borrowed those fatigues from Drew Hendry and volunteered to lay down his life then we could at least applaud his bravery. But somehow I don’t think he will be doing that.
Good piece by McAlpine – thanks for the reference. Can’t get the image of Swinney wrapped in a blood-soaked Butcher’s Apron out of my head though. What on Earth is the point of the SNP? Sell-outs – one and all.
McAlpine’s article is all over the place. This is what he writes near the end:
“I’m all for a collective European defence system”
Yet he must expect that to be provided by keyboard warriors, or massed battalions of the “just be kind”, as he’s totally sold on the “guns don’t solve anything” fantasy.
Here’s something else he says:
“the SNP really is now unrecognisable from the party I once knew. Swinney’s aides will say this is just the party ‘growing up’”
Sure, it is. And the “march ever rightwards” he’s complaining about is merely the people of Scotland finally growing up too.
But don’t you worry about that, Marie. Anybody believing a reference to a “blood-soaked Butcher’s Apron” settles any debate, automatically gets a pass to remain permanently frozen with the intellectual development of a 13 YO.
“If the authors of the ToU intended to impose that significant restriction, they would have done so explicitly”
And they did it, very explicitly, Aidan:
Article XXV says: ‘That all Laws and Statutes in either Kingdom, so far as they are contrary to, or inconsistent with the Terms of these Articles, or any of them, shall, from and after the Union, cease, and become void, and shall be so declared to be, BY THE RESPECTIVE PARLIAMENTS OF THE SAID KINGDOMS.’
Nowhere in that article it says that those laws can be repealed by the parliament of the union. Nowhere.
As you say, if the authors of the Treaty of Union intended for the parliament of Great Britain to have the power to repeal those laws, they would have said so explicitly. But they didn’t . What is included very clearly in that article is that ONLY the parliaments of Scotland and England where given consent in that treaty to do so.
You may choose to not accept it, and that is your prerogative. But that will not change either the wording of the article or its meaning. It is what it is.
My questions remain:
Why didn’t the parliaments of Scotland and England repeal those laws?
Did something happened between the moment the parliament of Scotland adjourned in April 1707 and when the first parliament of Great Britain started that invalidated the Treaty?
Did Queen Ann truly abolished Scotland’s parliament? Was Scotland’s parliament ever abolished, or was that just hearsay?
No Mia, it’s 180 degrees the other way. The treaty required the two separate parliaments each to dispose of incompatible legislation prior to the two parliaments merging into the commons and the lords. It does not say anything about limiting the powers of the new parliament or reserving any powers to any other legislative body. Once again your campaign of abuse against the English language strikes at the heart of the treaty. You must have a very very low opinion of the people who drafted it, given the vast swathes of information they neglected to mention and only gave us the faintest of hints. How lucky we are to have you help us break free from the confines of the wording of the treaty and allow us to freely indulge in our imaginations. Perhaps references to the Kingdom of Scotland are referring to you specifically, making you the King/Queen of Scotland? That would only be slightly less absurd than what you’re suggesting here.
The treaty explicitly provides for the new parliament of Great Britain as the national legislative body. It’s beyond ridiculous to suggest that restrictions were intended on that new parliament which weren’t written down anywhere and which would create a significant body of unchangeable law.
It’s 180 degrees the other way”
No, it is not, actually.
“The treaty required the two separate parliaments each to dispose of incompatible legislation prior to the two parliaments merging into the commons and the lords”
Prior to merging into the parliament of Great Britain, you mean. Yes, that is correct. But those two parliaments never repealed those laws. My question is why. Was it because a legal union never came to fruition? or was it because those who ratified the treaty in 1707 saw the parliament of Great Britain as an imperfect merging between the parliaments of Scotland and England, so both could continue to operate as independent blocks when regarding matters exclusive to each of those kingdoms?
The latter is exactly what we are currently observing in the way England’s MPs operate: they operate both as MPs and as Members of England’s parliament for matters that concern England only. They keep both dimensions separate, but it is still the exact same people doing both jobs. It could be argued that that was that the way MPs were seen in 1707 too?
“It does not say anything about limiting the powers of the new parliament”
And it does not have to, Aidan. It is implicit in the wording of the article. Article XXV is very clear: it is specifically the parliaments of Scotland and England who are tasked with repealing those laws. Nowhere in the article it says that the new parliament of great Britain can repeal those laws.
“Once again your campaign of abuse against the English language strikes at the heart of the treaty…”
Oh, come on, Aidan. Do you really need to resource to this emotional blackmail nonsense to prop up your argument? Come on, article XXV is loud and clear. Nowhere in that article it says that the parliament of Great Britain can repeal any constitutional law of Scotland. Nowhere. So, either the parliament of great britain acted ultravires when it did so, or the parliaments of Scotland and England remain alive as separate blocks within the parliament of Great Britain, or, perfectly possible, the entire union entity is an illegal construct because something happen that stopped the parliament of Scotland repealing the laws it was meant to repeal before the union started, therefore invalidating the treaty before it even started.
“You must have a very very low opinion of the people who drafted it”
I do not have great opinion of them because they were tasked with negotiating for a federal union and, instead, they succumbed like cowards and within seconds to minimum pressure from their England counterparts (I have read the minutes of the negotiations). But putting that aside, article XXV is pretty tight. It is only the parliament of Scotland who can repeal Scotland’s constitutional laws.
“given the vast swathes of information they neglected to mention and only gave us the faintest of hints”
Oh come on, Aidan. Article XXV does not give “faintest of hints”. It spells it in black and white, loud and clear: ‘That all Laws and Statutes in either Kingdom, so far as they are contrary to, or inconsistent with the Terms of these Articles, or any of them, shall, from and after the Union, cease, and become void, and shall be so declared to be, by the respective parliaments of the said kingdoms’
Let me repeat it one more time: “by the respective parliaments of the said kingdoms’
It cannot be anymore clear than that. It tasks the two parliaments of Scotland and England, and not the parliament of Great Britain, with the repealing of those laws. The parliament of Great Britain is not even mentioned in the article as a possibility to repeal those laws. Implicitly, by doing so, it is restricting the legislative power of the parliament of Great Britain and, more importantly, it is restricting its ability to repeal any of Scotland’s constitutional laws.
“Perhaps references to the Kingdom of Scotland are referring to you specifically, making you the King/Queen of Scotland? That would only be slightly less absurd than what you’re suggesting here”
That silly salad of words above tells me you know you have no more juice in the tank to continue disputing this, but you are too proud to admit it. I am sorry, but your blanket ad hominem does not work with me.
“The treaty explicitly provides for the new parliament of Great Britain as the national legislative body”
Nope. The treaty gives only SOME legislative capacity to the parliament of Great Britain, not full capacity. This is made explicit, for example, in articles such as:
IV. ‘That all the Subjects of the united Kingdom of Great-Britain shall, from and after the Union, have full Freedom and Intercourse of Trade and Navigation, to and from ….; and that there be a Communication of all other Rights, Privileges, and Advantages, which do or may belong to the Subjects of either Kingdom, except where it is otherwise expresly agreed in these Articles’
Article IV is clearly limiting the ability of the parliament of Great Britain to legislate against those Rights, Privileges and Advantages.
XIV. ‘That the Kingdom of Scotland be not charged with any other Duties, laid on by the Parliament of England before the Union, except those consented to in this Treaty; in regard it is agreed, that all necessary Provision shall be made by the Parliament of Scotland, for the public Charge and Service of that Kingdom, for the Year one thousand seven hundred and seven’
Article XIV limits the ability of the Parliament of Great Britain to legislate. It is not given consent to legislate to impose any other Duties on Scotland other than the ones specified in the treaty, for example. The article also indicates that it is for the Parliament of Scotland, not for the parliament of Great Britain, to make provision for the public charge and service of the Kingdom of Scotland for the year 1707 (the union started in May 1707).
Articles X, XI, XII and XIII limit the ability of the parliament of Great Britain to legislate in terms of duties payable in Scotland, some of them until 1710.
XVIII. ‘That the Laws concerning Regulation of Trade, Customs, and such Excises, to which Scotland is, by virtue of this Treaty, to be liable, be the same in Scotland, from and after the Union, as in England”…”that the Laws which concern public Right, Polity, and Civil Government, may be made the same throughout the whole united Kingdom; but that no Alteration be made in Laws which concern private Right, except for evident Utility of the Subjects within Scotland”
Article XVIII clearly imposes conditions like that the laws this article refer to must be the same across Great Britain at all times and also that no alteration can be made to the Private Right laws in Scotland unless it can be demonstrated that it is for the benefit of the people of Scotland. Those conditions clearly limit the ability of the new parliament of Great Britain to legislate.
It can be argued that the special agreement arranged for NI after brexit is a direct violation of article XVIII.
XIX. ‘That the Court of Session, or College of Justice, do, after the Union, and notwithstanding thereof, remain, in all time coming, within Scotland, as it is now constituted by the Laws of that Kingdom, and with the same Authority and Privileges, as before the Union, subject nevertheless to such Regulations for the better Administration of Justice, as shall be made by the Parliament of Great Britain;’
Article XIX gives only limited capacity to the parliament of Great Britain to legislate with regards to the court of Session in Scotland or the College of Justice.
XX. ‘That all heritable Offices, Superiorities, heritable Jurisdictions, Offices for Life, and Jurisdictions for Life, be reserved for the Owners thereof, as Rights of Property, in the same Manner as they are now enjoyed by the Laws of Scotland, notwithstanding this Treaty’
This means the new parliament is not given consent by the treaty to legislate to change any of those or to repeal the “laws of Scotland” referring to those.
XXI. ‘That the Rights and Privileges of the Royal Boroughs in Scotland as they are, do remain entire after the Union, and notwithstanding thereof”
“do remain entire after the union and notwhithstanding thereof” – this means the new parliament cannot legislate to abolish those either.
From article XXV: “Therefore Her Majesty with advice and consent of the said Estates of Parliament Doth hereby Establish and Confirm the said True Protestant Religion and the Worship Discipline and Government of this Church to continue WITHOUT ANY ALTERATION to the people of this Land in all succeeding generations And more especially Her Majesty with advice and consent foresaid Ratifies Approves and for ever Confirms the fifth Act of the first Parliament of King William and Queen Mary Entituled Act Ratifying the Confession of Faith and settling Presbyterian Church Government with the haill other Acts of Parliament relating thereto in prosecution of the Declaration of the Estates of this Kingdom containing the Claim of Right bearing date the eleventh of Aprile One thousand six hundred and eighty nine And Her Majesty with advice and consent foresaid expressly Provides and Declares That the foresaid True Protestant Religion contained in the above-mentioned Confession of Faith with the form and purity of Worship presently in use within this Church and its Presbyterian Church Government and Discipline that is to say the Government of the Church by Kirk Sessions, Presbytries, Provincial Synods and Generall Assemblies all established by the forsaid Acts of Parliament pursuant to the Claim of Right SHALL REMAIN AND CONTINUE UNALTERABLE within the Kingdom of Scotland”
“That the Universities and Colledges of Saint Andrews Glasgow Aberdeen and Edinburgh as now Established by Law shall Continue within this Kingdom for ever”
“that after the Decease of Her Present Majesty (whom God long preserve) the Soveraign succeeding to her in the Royal Government of the Kingdom of Great Britain shall in all time comeing at his or her accession to the Crown Swear and Subscribe That they shall inviolably maintain and preserve the foresaid settlement of the True Protestant Religion with the Government Worship Discipline Right and Priviledges of this Church as above established by the Laws of this Kingdom in prosecution of the Claim of Right And it is hereby Statute and Ordained That this Act of Parliament with the Establishment therein contained shall be held and observed in all time coming as a fundamentall and essentiall Condition of any Treaty or Union to be Concluded betwixt the Two Kingdoms without any Alteration thereof or Derogation thereto in any sort for ever As also that this Act of Parliament and Settlement therein contained shall be Insert and Repeated in any Act of Parliament that shall pass for agreeing and concluding the foresaid Treaty or Union betwixt the Two Kingdoms And that the same shall be therein expressly Declared to be a fundamentall and essentiall Condition of the said Treaty or Union in all time coming”
Clearly, article XXV limits the ability of the new Parliament of Great Britain to legislate and to repeal laws. Indeed, article XXV explicitly forbids the parliament of Great Britain to change the Church of Scotland, its government, to touch the Claim of Right or to change the oath of the monarch.
“It’s beyond ridiculous to suggest that restrictions were intended on that new parliament which weren’t written down anywhere”
What do you mean, exactly, by “they weren’t written down anywhere? Did you actually read the Treaty of Union and paid any attention to what you read, Aidan? The limitations are very clear. If, as you claim, it is ridiculous to suggest that restrictions were intended without being written down, it is far more ridiculous to suggest that the new parliament was given powers without this being explicitly written in black and white in the articles of the treaty.
“which would create a significant body of unchangeable law”
It did create a significant body of unchangeable law, Aidan. Unfortunately, the greed of England MPs and England’s crown and the complete lack of backbone of Scotland’s MPs colluded to let the parliament of Great Britain go ultravires and stick its nose and paws in laws it never have the power to touch in the first place.
Aidan said;
“@Xaracen – there is no distinction between constitutional law and domestic law, constitutional law is domestic law by its own definition.”
OK then, Aidan, let’s play it your way.
A subset of Scotland’s ‘domestic laws’ are guaranteed their permanence by the Treaty.
That subset was given that guarantee because, despite being only ‘domestic laws’, it is of fundamental importance to Scotland and its sovereign people because the ‘domestic laws’ it contains provide and protect their lawful rights, including their rights as the owners of Scotland’s sovereignty. For convenience of reference, that particular subset has its own name, being called a ‘constitution’.
See how easy that was?
Actually, quite a lot of countries seem to have what they call ‘constitutions’, even England. Shouldn’t they all be using terms like subset of ‘domestic laws’? Hell, even Westminster uses the term ‘constitution’.
So, what subset of England’s ‘domestic laws’ was actually guaranteed its permanence in the new Union? And what subset of ‘domestic laws’ does WM consider The ‘Constitution’? And is that the same subset that WM reserved under the Scotland Act, using the actual title of ‘constitution’, and not ‘domestic laws’ or even ‘subset of domestic laws’? Or should that be ‘important subset of domestic laws’? Is there a ‘really, really important subset of domestic laws’?
Everybody knows what is meant by a constitution, Aidan, even you, so bloody well get over yourself.
“The problem is your view denies the fact that the treaty of union and its implementation created a new successor state to England and Scotland and in many ways a new legal order albeit one that was closer to that which existed previously in England compared to Scotland.”
My view clearly denies no such thing, Aidan, but that successor state is only nominal, literally in name only, because no actual merging of the two former states into one state took place, because while it is now one state, it is not the ‘unitary’ one you keep saying it is. You saying it, and even Westminster saying it, doesn’t make it true. The only actual merger was of the two parliaments.
The merger of the Crowns into one UK-but-actually-only-English Crown was thoroughly bogus because it utterly ignored the totally different nature of the Scottish Crown in term of rights, privileges, and territorial ownership, and especially in their obligations to respect their respective constitutions.
What I utterly deny is the right of that ‘new legal order’ to permit England’s MPs to overrule Scotland’s MPs on any matter of ‘domestic laws’ for and under your ‘new legal order’. And don’t give me any crap that there is no such entity as England’s MPs and Scotland’s MPs, because that’s plainly stupid and dishonest!
Scotland’s MPs are that body of MPs who “represent Scotland in the parliament”, to actually quote the Treaty. England’s MPs do not represent any part of Scotland, and cannot pretend to any actual authority over Scotland or its MPs, because, as I have repeatedly pointed out, the Treaty doesn’t actually give them any. And an unstated presumption of a flat vote is not remotely the same as a formally agreed flat vote, nor is that the same as an actual formally agreed and stated requirement written into an actual ratified Treaty.
That formally agreed and stated requirement never existed, Aidan, so how did it come into being in that brand new Union parliament, Aidan? Who authorised its implementation?
How many people own England’s sovereignty, Aidan? How many people own Scotland’s sovereignty, Aidan? In a flat vote of all those owners on a matter where sovereignty is important, Aidan, who do you think would win, Aidan?
Why has there never been a formal flat vote between all those owners of sovereignty in the entire history of the Union, Aidan?
Did sovereignty suddenly stop being important in 1707, Aidan?
Oh, it did, didn’t it.
Aidan, why do you think sovereignty suddenly became unimportant in the UK in 1707?
Scots trust the SN to stand up for Scotland
Pish
They copied the Labour Party in the 1980s by doing nothing to
Oppose the closure of the Grangemouth refinery
Imposed this gender ideology rubbish upon the country despite overwhelming public oppsition
Sold offshore renewable rights for a pittance and tried to degrade the justice system by bringing it into line with the far inferior English system.
And still desire to rejoin their vision of a Brussels Brigadoon which contradicts independence and will continue to grab more powers.
Look at the recently launched ferry for an example of brain washing and head in the sand
7 years late
massively over budget
badly built
But no NAT has the balls to say that
They claim it is the best Scotland can do
as a YOON I think we should be able todo way better
ps mention HS2 and you’ve ignored my point
Swinney is a disgusting , treacherous lackey for Brit Political/Military/Business interests who is presiding over the moral & political death of the SNP as it jettisons every value it held since it’s inception .
Ditto fellow bald clown – Flynn as he too jumps into line with the warmongers by ” demanding ” the * Labour * Gov spend untold £billions on weaponry : this at a time when so many Scots and residents of Scotland are facing ever-increasing economic pressures .
He , Swinney & the rest of the mice dressed as sheep that comprise the current SNP make me fckn sick . I long for the day when they are chased from Government and thrown into the sewer of political history : where they belong .
The lunatics in ( most ) European Govs are desperate for a war with R ; even as they know they can never win such a war , as long as they can keep – as they imagine – draining that country’s economy and resources they’ll be happy .
The entire idea of a so-called ” Peace-keeping force ” is merely to allow NATO troops to be in proximity to R troops , ie what’s been referred-to as a ” tripwire ” where the likelihood of an * incident * , eg a ” stray bullet ” real or concocted , increases exponentially and would be sufficient to demand escalatory action . Hey Presto ! they’ll have the war they so badly want .
Look at the hysterical response to Trump’s desire to end the Proxy War and normalise relations with R . FFS ! You’d think he was proposing to make V.P Secretary of U.S Defence , rather than want he is doing – at least attempting in the face of insane opposition – ie creating a safer world where countries of different social/political hues can co-exist , ideally with cooperation and mutual respect .
The fanatic warmongers are showing their perverted colours – and it’s not the Trump Administration wearing them .
A legal route to Independence was presented to the Scottish government and its was turned down without anyone in the SG looking at it and what are we talking about, a tweet from a useless MSP about John Swinney’s popularity.
How pathetic, I thought the goal was Independence. We should be educating everyone to the fact the SNP is blocking every legal route to Independence.
The Scottish parliament will never delivery Independence its designed like that, get rid of the Holyrood and we rid ourselves of the trap set by Westminster. So whats the game plan for 2026 to get everyone to vote for a united front and vote for a pro-Indy parties or I4I individuals, the SNP will never allow it and will still say two votes SNP and the UK will ignore it.
Which legal route to independence was this?
Here you go Aidan, I posted it further up but here is the link again.
link to dearscotland.substack.com
It’s a nice try but it doesn’t work. The authors argument is that the Scottish Parliament has unlimited power to legislate in devolved areas when implementing international treaties which the U.K. has entered into. However, S.29 expressly prohibits the Scottish Parliament legislating in a reserved matter, and Schedule 5 then includes the Union as a reserved matter. There’s no exception given in either section relating to international treaties. The correct interpretation is that the Scottish Parliament can use its devolved competencies to implement treaties in Scotland, rather than the U.K. government deciding how to implement them.
But, Aidan, if “there’s no exception given in either section relating to international treaties”, then it isn’t reserved, which is the point the authors were making. Reserving “the Union” is far too vague to make rulings on, especially when it is also part of the devolution settlement that if a narrow reading of the Scotland Act would permit the Scottish parliament to act then that reading must be accepted.
No it’s the other way around. The Scotland Act explicitly reserves the matters of the constitution and the Union, and it doesn’t create any exceptions allowing the Scottish government to legislate on these areas when implementing international treaties, therefore these matters are explicitly not within the competence of the Scottish Parliament. The author’s argument is that the right to implement a treaty obligation overrides all other limitations on the powers of the Scottish Parliament, which would be an extraordinary thing as it would mean for example, that Holyrood could pass legislation applying in England.
Re your comment around the narrow reading of the Scotland act. See above, the Scotland act specifically and explicitly states these matters are reserved. You cannot imply that parliament intended not to reserve these matters when they passed a bill which explicitly provides for their reservations, and did not provide a relevant exception. You might argue that reserving the constitution and the union creates some uncertainty around the margin, because lots of policy areas interface with the constitution. However, this uncertainty does mean it’s impossible to identify what constitutional laws are in any circumstance. But more to the point, it can hardly be argued that legislation to provide for an independence referendum is not legislation affecting either the union or the constitution. The referendum legislation would go to the very heart of both of those subjects, and not in an indirect or ancillary way. The purpose of that legislation would be to change the constitution.
Xaracen says:
Aidan, you said “The Scotland Act explicitly reserves the matters of the constitution and the Union, and it doesn’t create any exceptions allowing the Scottish government to legislate on these areas when implementing international treaties”
But that’s not true, the relevant exception is crystal clear!
Scotland Act, Schedule 5 ‘Reserved matters’
Foreign affairs etc.
(1)International relations, including relations with territories outside the United Kingdom, the [European Union] (and their institutions) and other international organisations, regulation of international trade, and international development assistance and co-operation are reserved matters.
(2) BUT Sub-paragraph (1) does not reserve—
(a) observing and implementing international obligations, obligations under the Human Rights Convention
and obligations under [EU]
You also over-egged your assertion that “the author’s argument is that the right to implement a treaty obligation overrides all other limitations on the powers of the Scottish Parliament” That is not at all what the author said. It overrides only those limitations that are relevant to the proper implementation of the ICCPR, and that includes the right to hold referendums on independence.
That’s the entire point of the ICCPR, that if a government is denying those rights to a population it controls, then breaking that control is fully warranted, and Westminster’s so-called constitution can lump it! The UK signed up to it, so it has no right to complain.
The bottom line here is the same as it always was; if sovereignty is important to Westminster, then it is also important to Scotland, and WM’s English-based sovereignty does not outrank Scotland’s, and it never has.
@Xaracen, you need to look at Schedule 5(1) which reads:
“The following aspects of the constitution are reserved matters, that is—
(a)the Crown, including succession to the Crown and a regency,
(b)the Union of the Kingdoms of Scotland and England,
(c)the Parliament of the United Kingdom,
(d)the continued existence of the High Court of Justiciary as a criminal court of first instance and of appeal,
(e)the continued existence of the Court of Session as a civil court of first instance and of appeal.“
Schedule 5(7) does not create any exception to Schedule 5(1) above, what (7) does is to clarify that the Scottish Parliament has the power to use its devolved competencies to implement obligations under international treaties. It does not provide that the Scottish Government has unlimited power to legislate in furtherance of the aims of international treaties.
With respect to apparent breaches of the ICCPR, I don’t see how what you’re saying is different to what I’ve said. The authors interpretation is that the limitations of the devolution settlement do not apply to the implementation of international obligations, so the Scottish Parliament may do whatever it likes free from any restrictions in the Scotland Act in pursuance of the objectives of the ICCPR. That is objectively false as a matter of U.K. domestic law, being in straight opposition to both the Scotland Act and the recent decisions of the Supreme Court in the S.30 and the UNCRC case.
Finally, the argument that the U.K. is in breach of the ICCPR is pretty untenable. There is nothing within the ICCPR that requires states to regularly hold referendums on a wide range of constitutional subjects. There are rules on the participation and conduct of referendums if held, but there’s nothing that requires regular referenda. If there were, I cannot think of many countries that would not be in persistent breach of that requirement.
Nevertheless, Aidan, Schedule 5(1) and Schedule 5(7) cover two different topics so the S5(7)a exception is still an exception to the reserved powers!
If a matter isn’t reserved, then it is unequivocally devolved, thus ‘observing and implementing international obligations…under the Human Rights Convention’ IS a devolved competency!
Clarification achieved.
@Xaracen – absolutely, a matter is devolved unless it is reserved, but under Schedule 5(1) the union and the composition of parliament ARE both reserved. There’s no getting around it I’m afraid, it’s written in black and white, and has been affirmed in the UNCRC case which directly concerned the implementation of an international obligations by the Scottish parliament.
@Aidan said;
“there’s no getting around it I’m afraid, it’s written in black and white”
So is the Treaty, Aidan, and there’s no getting around that!
The legitimacy of Westminster governance cannot simply be assumed, it has to be verified against the terms of the Treaty and its supporting Acts, and held fully to account whenever it breaches them. And those carrying out such verifications are also to be held accountable when they make invalid assumptions about what those terms mean, or take them out of context to make them mean something else.
Westminster’s presumption that it possesses unlimited sovereignty over the whole of the UK is fundamentally bogus, and it always has been; it possesses no sovereignty at all over Scotland, it possesses only a level of delegated governance authority that Scotland sent down in 1707 in the form of its MPs. Scotland did not transfer its sovereignty to England’s MPs, or even to Westminster, because those doing the delegating did not have the formal authority in Scotland to do that as they didn’t possess sovereignty over Scotland either.
Scotland’s sovereignty is vested in its people under Scotland’s own Treaty-guaranteed constitution, and they were trenchantly against the Union, so they definitely didn’t delegate any of their authority to the new parliament. That the UK’s Supreme Court lapped up Dicey’s convoluted bait-and-switch propaganda that gave the impression that WM actually had ‘unlimited sovereignty’ over the whole of the UK is to their eternal disgrace. That unlimited sovereignty and its ownership of the Treaty of Union are as phoney as a thirteen-pound note!
All of the authority that Westminster can exert over Scotland is Scotland’s own authority, and is wielded exclusively by Scotland’s MPs because they are the sole formal representatives of the entire sovereign kingdom of Scotland in the Union’s parliament under Article XXII of the Treaty, and they wield that authority exclusively on Scotland’s behalf. No-one else in that parliament is entitled to any formal authority over Scotland, or over Scotland’s MPs. No-one! And nothing in the Treaty or Acts of Union says otherwise!
Scotland’s retained sovereignty and retained constitution, plus the complete lack of any agreement in the Treaty for Scotland’s subordination to England’s MPs, plus the complete lack of any agreement for the use of a flat voting system in the new Union’s parliament is why England’s MPs are not entitled to overrule Scotland’s MPs on any matter of governance.
I suspected this is where we might end up. We’ve been around the houses in this subject plant of time, but to summarise, no court, administration or other source of authority anywhere in any way affirms that what you are saying as the correct interpretation of U.K. constitutional law. It is objectively wrong, and sits in direct and incontrovertible opposition both to what is described in law and what happens in practice. I suspect you’ll get around the numerous judgements that dismiss this view completely out of hand by saying you don’t recognise the legitimacy of the court system. In which case we live in a system without any form of law.
I knew it was always going to come to that, too. 😀
But my interpretation is not wrong, because it doesn’t contradict anything in the Treaty, and it doesn’t ignore the fact that Scotland’s sovereignty and constitution did NOT both vanish into Scotch mist in 1707.
All of those other interpretations you talk of basically presume the unlimited sovereignty of the UK parliament, an inherently English tenet, and that is a fundamental error. They also take no formal account of Scotland’s sovereignty and constitution, and how they affect the application of the Treaty’s terms over the governance of the territories of the Union, and they take no account of the fact that the two bodies of UK MPs formally represent two different sovereign kingdoms each foreign to the other, and thus they cannot sensibly be regarded constitutionally as a single homogenous body of UK MPs.
Nothing I have said in my arguments on the matter is demonstrably untrue, and no-one, literally no-one, has actually bothered to explain in any meaningful way why they may be irrelevant or false, including you.
The key point for me is that I will not accept that England’s MPs have any legitimate authority that allows them to overrule Scotland’s MPs on any matter of Union governance, and nothing whatsoever in the Treaty as ratified requires me to.
So, why don’t you be the first to actually address that specific point?
@Xaracen – but it is fundamentally wrong, for the same reasons I’ve pointed out at length previously.
Firstly, the first paragraph of the treaty of union merges what it describes as the two kingdoms, reading as follows: ‘the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England shall upon the first day of May next ensuing the date hereof and forever after be United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain‘. I can’t see how you can reconcile that paragraph above the the idea that the treaty, despite its express wording, intended to preserve two separate kingdoms.
Secondly, over the last 10/15 years the fundamental aspects of the U.K. constitution have been scrutinised by our courts system in great detail, through the Miller brexit cases, reference from the advocate general (s.30), the hunting ban case etc. In none of those cases is there a positive statement that the U.K. is formed of two separate sovereign kingdoms (which really means states, kingdoms is not a legal term) and the outcome of many of those cases would be different if that were to be true. These are case that deal directly with things like the claim of right, and the UNCRC case explicitly affirms that the U.K. parliament has unlimited power to make laws in Scotland.
Lastly, there are numerous examples in recent history of laws applying in England and Wales that have only passed using a majority of Scottish MP’s (e.g. tuition fees) and vice versa. If you think that Scottish MP’s and rUK MP’s are functionally in any way distinct (other than representing differing geographies) can you find a single example of where this is described in parliamentary processes or where it has had a formal impact on the legislative process or any other activity in parliament?
Thank you for your response, Aidan.
Despite all that you have written above, I’m afraid you didn’t really address the challenge I asked of you.
Your response doesn’t show why Scotland’s MPs are obliged under the Treaty to defer to England’s MPs on any matter of Union governance. That was the essence of the challenge, after all.
Instead, you appear to have attempted to confirm the legitimacy of the Union parliament’s governance as it has been carried out over the last 318 years, but even there, you have only confirmed its ability to govern the Union, but without having confirmed its legitimacy.
What we have here is the failure to agree on what the fundamental basis of the Union is.
My stance is that the fundamental basis of the Union is the Treaty of Union and its ratifying Acts, as formally negotiated and agreed by the two sovereign kingdoms which, along with the associated Acts of both former parliaments preserving their respective state religions, also empowered the new Union’s shared parliament with their respective national authorities. That is, the authorities to be wielded by the new parliament are the combined authorities of the Union’s two sovereign parents.
Also preserved is Scotland’s constitution as cited by Scotland’s 1689 Claim of Right Act, its permanence being guaranteed by a formal obligation on the Union as a direct condition of ratification, and inserted into the Treaty at the end of Article XXV. The acceptance of that condition and thus of the obligation it imposes, also effectively acknowledges the actuality of Scotland’s sovereignty and of its constitution.
As I have set out before, given the sovereignties of the two kingdoms, then by default neither Scotland nor her MPs are under any obligation to subordinate themselves to English MP majorities in the new Union parliament. For the Union parliament to legally assert and enforce such an obligation requires a clear statement to that effect formally agreed by both Treaty Principals in the Treaty or Acts of Union, without which it can have no constitutional or legal standing, nor any democratic standing.
No such statement exists in any of the founding documents of the Union. It was the essence of my challenge to find it.
You asked me, do I think “Scottish MP’s and rUK MP’s are functionally in any way distinct”? No, they aren’t. Functionally, they are identical in that they each formally represent a sovereign nation in a union of two such nations. But who and what they represent certainly are not identical, and that makes all the difference!
Those two nations were not identical in 1706, and their differences were not wiped out by the Treaty. Those differences were important to both nations, and those differences are still important to both nations, and both nations are fully entitled to maintain and defend those differences.
The Scots didn’t stop being Scots in 1707, they didn’t stop owning their own territory, they didn’t stop owning the right to their own religious beliefs, they didn’t stop having their own laws, they didn’t stop having their own constitution, they didn’t stop owning Scotland’s sovereignty, they didn’t stop having their own monarchs, they didn’t lose their constitutional right to hold their monarchs to account, they didn’t lose their constitutional right to hold their parliaments to account, they didn’t stop having their own traditions, they didn’t stop having their own culture, they didn’t stop having their own history, and they didn’t even stop having their own formal representation in any parliament that purports to govern them.
The UK does not belong to England, or her MPs, and neither does Scotland or her MPs.
@Xaracen – in context of over 300 years of union governance, I think we have to see the fundamental principles I describe as reflected both the legitimacy and the efficacy of the U.K. constitutional system. If the system of government we have is accepted by the courts, the institutions and the people for a very long period of time, i don’t think we can doubt that legitimacy by reference to a particular interpretation of a very old (but undoubtedly important) statute, even if that interpretation might have had some weight at the time.
Secondly, we then should look at the interpretation of the Treaty of Union. Unless you can point me to it, I cannot see anything which would suggest that the treaty intended to retain two separate sovereign states which their respective MP’s holding reserved constitutional power. On the contrary, Section 1 is explicit that England and Scotland shall cease to exist as separate states, and become a single state called the U.K. with a single parliament sitting in London. If it was agreed or intended within that structure that Scottish and English MP’s should have functionally separate roles or require agreement across a majority from both geographies, then why did nobody write this down or make provision for it? The de facto position in a parliamentary system both now and at the time is/was one member one vote and simple (but sometimes super) majority voting, so a variation of this to introduce a geographic requirement would be expected to be done explicitly. Finally, the implication from the inclusion of the claim of right cannot be sustained when the opposite (the merging of two states) is provided for explicitly, as I have set out above.
Lastly, it’s entirely possible for countries to have separate cultural identity and legal identity, as is the case here.
Aidan said:
“in context of over 300 years of union governance, I think we have to see the fundamental principles I describe as reflected (in) both the legitimacy and the efficacy of the U.K. constitutional system.”
Do we? And what fundamental principles are those? The UK does not have one constitutional system, it has at least two, and arguably three; England’s constitution, Scotland’s constitution, and the UK’s constitution. Scotland’s has a formal guarantee of permanence under the Treaty itself. Does England’s? If so, where is it? The UK’s constitution, which looks suspiciously identical to England’s, requires formal support from the Treaty, and it doesn’t get it. And even if it did, it doesn’t get to set aside Scotland’s because the Treaty doesn’t say it can.
“If the system of government we have is accepted by the courts, the institutions and the people for a very long period of time, I don’t think we can doubt that legitimacy by reference to a particular interpretation of a very old (but undoubtedly important) statute, even if that interpretation might have had some weight at the time.”
That doesn’t even make sense. Its age is irrelevant; if it was important and it had weight then that interpretation has legitimacy. In fact it was legitimate enough to eject King James VII from Scotland’s throne. Much more importantly, it’s no mere statute, it is a formal part of the Treaty, attached to Article XXV, and formally ratified by both parliaments. That makes it a permanent part not just of Scotland’s constitution, it makes it a permanent part of the UK’s constitution.
And what on earth makes you think that the people of Scotland and her institutions ‘accepted’ the UK’s system of government? We had riots in the streets in 1707, we had two rebellions, we had the military occupation of Scotland for literally several decades, we had the violently enforced suppression of Scotland’s tartan and associated clothing, its culture, and even of its very language! We still haven’t recovered from that. You cannot claim that intimidation, suppression and impotence are equivalent to acceptance.
“Secondly, we then should look at the interpretation of the Treaty of Union. Unless you can point me to it, I cannot see anything which would suggest that the treaty intended to retain two separate sovereign states with their respective MP’s holding reserved constitutional power.”
Oh, really, Aidan? If the Treaty wants to retain something that already exists it doesn’t have to say so, it only needs to say if something existing is to be abolished or amended, or if something new is to be created. I cannot see anything which would suggest that the Treaty intended to strip Scotland’s kingdom of its sovereignty while preserving England’s sovereignty and extending it over Scotland.
Those two sovereignties pre-existed the Treaty by many centuries, and something as important as an entire nation’s sovereignty cannot be assumed to just vanish by default! If either or both of those sovereignties were to be abolished or even just demoted in the new Union then the Treaty absolutely needed to spell that out. If you can’t point to anything in the Treaty that actually does those things, then by default those sovereignties are fully extant and equal today, and therefore always have been!
Article XXII specifically says Scotland’s 45 MPs are ‘to represent Scotland in the parliament’. Therefore Scotland didn’t disappear. And we can legitimately infer that England’s (513) MPs were to represent England in the parliament, so England didn’t vanish either. To be a formal representative of a sovereign nation means to act as that nation would if it was physically present and able to speak for itself.
Westminster’s sovereignty isn’t embedded in its bricks and mortar. It is an institution built with people. There is only one way under the Treaty for the two kingdoms’ sovereignties to make their way into the new kingdom’s parliament, and that is in the form of their two bodies of MPs. They wield the sovereign authorities of their respective parent kingdoms on their behalf as their formal legal representatives under the Treaty. And I remind you that this was exactly what both bodies did in their own separate former parliaments!
I might also point out that I cannot see anything which provides for the formal subordination of Scotland to England. Literally, the only thing you could point to (and did, as I anticipated) are Scotland’s MP numbers compared with England’s. But even that only works if it was intended that the new parliament (which didn’t exist before, and thus its rules and procedures would need to be spelled out in the Treaty) would adopt a flat vote of all its MPs without distinction. While that was almost certainly a presumption at the time, its use in conjunction with those hugely asymmetric numbers cuts directly across Scotland’s sovereignty as formally represented by her MPs and her MPs alone. That presumption was never written into the Treaty.
Not being in the Treaty means that it was not signed off by Scotland’s commissioners, it was not signed off by England’s commissioners, it was not signed off by Queen Anne as the English monarch, it was not signed off by Queen Anne as the Scottish monarch, it was not signed off by ratification in Scotland’s parliament, and it was not signed off by ratification in England’s parliament. All of those sign-offs were necessary to give that flat vote the formal standing it needed to give it legal effect in the new parliament.
As none of these things happened, Scotland’s MPs cannot legally or constitutionally be obliged to submit or defer to England’s MP majorities on any matter of Union governance.
“On the contrary, Section 1 is explicit that England and Scotland shall cease to exist as separate states, and become a single state called the U.K. with a single parliament sitting in London. If it was agreed or intended within that structure that Scottish and English MP’s should have functionally separate roles or require agreement across a majority from both geographies, then why did nobody write this down or make provision for it?”
If Scotland agreed for its MPs to be overruled by England’s MPs through simple majority of MP numbers then why did nobody write this down or make provision for it in the Treaty?
The UK is single state, but it is not the unitary one you and WM aver. It is a single state in terms of overall governance and clearly in its dealings with the rest of the world, but internally? That ‘unitary state’ simply does not exist; the two sovereignties and the two constitutions drop that notion straight into the toilet. The UK is unremittingly binary in all sorts of ways, and I have spelled out how that manifests many times already.
“The de facto position in a parliamentary system both now and at the time is/was one member one vote and simple (but sometimes super) majority voting, so a variation of this to introduce a geographic requirement would be expected to be done explicitly. Finally, the implication from the inclusion of the Claim of Right cannot be sustained when the opposite (the merging of two states) is provided for explicitly, as I have set out above.”
It’s not a geographic requirement, it’s a sovereign obligation.
‘One member one vote’ can only apply to a parliament that serves a single sovereignty. Pre-1707, that applied in both former parliaments. But the Union parliament serves two separate and distinct sovereignties. For a two-sovereignty state, that phrase must become one sovereignty one vote! The UK is only a single sovereign state viewed externally; internally there two sovereignties, and both are entitled to full formal recognition in their shared parliament.
As for the Claim of Right, your dismissal is perverse, because it was formally ratified by both parliaments in 1707. Westminster was given no option to ignore it. The two states did not merge, and neither replaced the other despite the English establishment’s attempts to pretend otherwise! Only the parliaments merged, and that was a clear stitch-up, as I have set out above.
“Lastly, it’s entirely possible for countries to have separate cultural identity and legal identity, as is the case here.”
True, but irrelevant; what is relevant is that England and Scotland also have sovereign and constitutional identities, because the Treaty couldn’t and didn’t erase them.
The absolute bottom line is simple, Aidan;
Scotland’s people, legally and constitutionally, own the sovereignty and territory of Scotland. The Treaty didn’t take either of these away from them, because no-one involved in the negotiations had the legal authority to do so, including even their own parliament and monarch. Clearly no-one outside Scotland could possibly do so. And because of the doubly-ratified Claim of Right, Westminster can’t pretend to any legitimate authority to ignore or set aside Scotland’s constitution on any basis, legal, constitutional, or democratic. Scotland’s sovereignty is as absolute as England’s, and is not remotely subordinate to it.
Just like the Union’s parliament at Westminster, Aidan, you presume too much!
“I cannot see anything which would suggest that the treaty intended to retain two separate sovereign states with their respective MP’s holding reserved constitutional power”
With the greatest respect, Aidan, if you do not see it, it can only be because you have chosen to keep your eyes closed whilst reading the document.
The permanence of the two sovereign states as parents of the Treaty of union and hence the “United Kingdom of Great Britain” is implicit in the existence of fundamental clauses in the treaty that are valid and enforceable for the whole existence of the treaty.
Because who would be tasked with checking that those fundamental principles are fulfilled or not? That would be the representatives of the sovereign states of Scotland and England.
Who would be tasked with terminating the treaty should those fundamental principles be violated as they have been, repeatedly, violated already? Again, that would be the representatives of the sovereign states of Scotland and England.
The representatives of the sovereign state of Scotland only actively denounced the violation of those principles during the first decades of the treaty. But they rapidly went silent after being bathed in bribes and baubles.
Since then, Scotland’s MPs have chosen to ignore the violations, even at times making excuses pretending they were not violations, to sit on their hands, to look the other way whilst ironing the green seats with their useless arses so they can keep their salaries rather than doing their fckng job, which is to ensure every single one of those conditions was upheld or ending it if they were not.
The most infamous example of this was in 2016, when despite Scotland having sent 56 anti-union MPs, the useless cowards looked the other way when the biggest assault on the Claim of Right in the last 300 years took place.
I am referring to the maintaining of this union and the treaty by forcing Scotland out of the EU despite Scotland having voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU. That the SNP MPs looked the other way and did SFA to end that treaty was absolutely disgraceful. The treaty should have been declared null and void right then. So, if that treaty still exists, despite having more holes than a sieve, it is only because the SNP MPs since 2015 have done everything in their hands to maintain it instead of ending it.
Those fundamental principles were not included in the treaty for decoration, Aidan. They were included there to be fulfilled AT ALL TIMES. Therefore stands to the obvious that this new so called “United Kingdom of Great Britain” was not given the sovereignty of the estates of Scotland and England in full.
In fact, the existence of those fundamental principles clearly indicates that the sovereignty is retained by the parents of the treaty, which are the states of Scotland and England, for the duration of the treaty.
And it had to be that way because Scotland’s parliamentarians did not enjoy “parliamentary sovereignty”. Therefore, they could not have possibly transferred it to the new parliament.
For the last 300 years, England MPs have been acting ultravires by assuming a sovereignty of Scotland they were never given. But they are not the only ones to blame. The ones to blame are each and every single one of the Scotland’s MPs who have allowed England MPs to continue to get away with it.
We are where we are because successive rounds of “Scotland’s” MPs have been only worried about their own financial and career interests rather than those of their country.
We have had over 300 years of the same nonsense.
And THAT is why there is absolutely no point whatsoever for Scotland to elect MPs to be sent to Westminster so they can swear allegiance to a foreign crown, be lavished in bribes and then turn a blind eye to the abuses Scotland is being subjected so they can keep their recently acquired privilege.
The situation of the courts is not clear. That English court otherwise known as “supreme court” whose legitimacy in the context of the Treaty of Union is, to say the least, dubious, will follow anything that is passed by the “England as the UK” parliament. And that will be because that court is not independent from that parliament. That court is a product of that parliament.
The situation of the Scottish courts is different. There is a very good reason why the betraying Sturgeon and the crown stooge Lord Advocate took the referendum bill to the English court where the English only principle of parliamentary sovereignty could be applied in full and where only the laws produced by Westminster applied.
The reality is that the so called “United Kingdom” of Great Britain has been a fudge from day one. That continues today. It is my own opinion that the only reason why this “union” continues is because the English crown insists on it and because it sees Scotland as its “property” rather than its partner.
It would be most interesting to find out who really controls the figures of “Lord Advocate” and the so called “Crown Agent” and, of course, that “crown office” that is suffocating the prosecution service by using it as a political tool. I guess the clue is in the name?
Boo hoo, Mia gurnin aboot being “forced oot o the EU agin oor will” again.
Hindsight is, of course, a wonderful thing, but didn’t we dodge a bullet there!
BTW, no way did the people of Scotland “overwhelmingly” vote to stay in. We voted Remain by 62% on a turnout of 67.2%. By the inexorable laws of maths, we can all see that means that less than 42% of Scots wanted the UK to stay in the EU.
The UK, mind you. The question was “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”
I’m defo not ruling out the existence of planks who truly believed they were being asked if Scotland should remain or leave. But read the question over and over until the penny drops – that’s not what was being asked.
But heyho, Mia being Mia, accuracy is once again sacrificed to prolixity.
And once again, the over and done with, dead battles of the past are churned in the forlorn hope that maybe just this once, the outcome might be different.
Hatey said;
“We voted Remain by 62% on a turnout of 67.2%. By the inexorable laws of maths, we can all see that means that less than 42% of Scots wanted the UK to stay in the EU.”
The inexorable laws of maths say no such thing, Hatey. You and we know only how the voters voted, so you can only speculate on what the non-voting electorate had in mind. You also know perfectly well how elections and referendums work, so your claims are both utterly irrelevant and utterly meaningless.
As for the question as asked, the answer was that UK didn’t vote for Leave or Remain; the UK’s vote was ambiguous because the sovereign Scottish Kingdom’s part of the Union voted Remain, while the sovereign English Kingdom’s part voted Leave, so it was a straight tie with nobody having a casting vote.
That means that either the status quo should have been retained, or the Union ended so that England could Leave while Scotland Remained.
Your interpretation does not mesh with reality, Xaracen.
In reality, if the vote was intended to separately determine the fates of Scotland and England (not to mention the other bits), we would have had different referendum questions in each home nation.
But we didn’t.
I fully understand it’s fluffier and warmer in your fantasy land, but ultimately Indy must deal with the world as it is.
Or get nowhere.
Well done you for dodging the question many are asking right now: Did we dodge a bullet by leaving the EU when we did?
I bet you want to answer “Yes”, eh? But you can’t.
@Xaracen – again the problem is that your reasoning is largely circular, in that you use the conclusion as justifying the reasoning, which you turn use to justify your conclusion.
Secondly, you appear to make an absolutely fundamental error which is to treat older laws as taking priority over newer laws, when the exactly opposite is true. When addressing conflicts between two competing laws or judgements, it is the latter in time that prevails except in certain notable exceptions (Factortame shipping being an example). I think there is an unfortunate tendency of some to see law as a spell book, when remedies and processes are unlocked by certain words or combinations therefore, rather than what law actually is, which is an ordered means of managing rights and obligations within a society. Within that context, it’s obviously absurd to treat documents written 300+ years ago for a very different society, with different governance arrangements, commercial structures, technology and international relationships as having superiority over laws and judgements passed specifically to address the circumstances we are in now. Not just is it objectively wrong in a fundamental way, it is a repudiation of law even as a legitimate concept. I think this is probably the most fatal part of your argument, because if 300 years of constitutional development is not relevant, then your argument must be that we don’t have a modern legal, system, we are left to do our best with what was written 3/4/500 years ago, and ideas that could not have been anticipated at that time (such as air travel) are not capable of being regulated however overwhelming the public policy considerations might favour doing so.
Secondly, you argue that the ToU did not expressly abolish Scottish and English sovereign states, but in fact that’s precisely what it did in its first paragraph. The effect of the explicit terms of this first section is to create a new or successor state to the previously distinct states of England and Scotland. It is simply not possible to read the treaty as intending to preserve two separate states and not create a new one because of this Section 1. What this would have meant at the time in 1707 for sovereignty in the U.K. would not be certain, but we know now that the English concept of parliamentary sovereignty did indeed prevail over the Scottish concept of popular sovereignty. I’m not saying that is a preferred option, but it is what happened. Again, that constitutional development was not provided for in the treaty, but neither was it prevented which is how it has been allowed to evolve, and after a certain period of time de facto developments become de jure.
Finally, I think you have admitted a big flaw in your own reasoning which is that a flat vote was what was anticipated at the time. If that was what was anticipated at the time, and no provisions were established to the contrary, and that is what we have now, it’s hard to argue any legitimacy for the ‘one sovereignty one vote’ idea. It simply doesn’t feature as a relevant concept.
“We voted Remain by 62% on a turnout of 67.2%. By the inexorable laws of maths, we can all see that means that less than 42% of Scots wanted the UK to stay in the EU”
Your premise above is false because it rests on a false assumption. It assumes that the entire 38% of the electorate in Scotland who chose not to vote on the EU referendum did not want Scotland to remain in the EU. That is a false assumption, therefore your entire argument falls flat on its face.
But hey, that is the game you want to play? Then let’s play it, but let’s play it in full then.
England voted to exit the EU by 53.4% on a turnout of 73% (info obtained from the BBC). What this means, according to your reasoning above, is that only (53.4 x 73/100) 38.98% of the English electorate wanted England to exit the EU. That percentage for exiting the EU is even lower than the percentage in Scotland you claim above that wanted Scotland to remain in the EU.
Wales voted to exit the EU by 52.5% on a turnout of 71.7% (BBC data). What that means, according to your logic, is that only (52.5 x 71.7/100) 37.64% of the electorate in Wales wanted to exit the EU. That percentage is even lower than that in England, never mind the percentage of people in Scotland that wanted to remain in the EU.
So, if neither England nor Wales actually voted to exit the EU, WHO actually forced their electorates, together with the electorates of Scotland and NI, to exit the EU? Who used this referendum as an undemocratic excuse to dupe the Kingdoms of Scotland and England, forcing them out of the EU against their will?
That will be Britain’s malign and profoundly undemocratic deep state.
You said in your comment “Hindsight is, of course, a wonderful thing, but didn’t we dodge a bullet there!”
Well, it does not matter an iota if we dodged a bullet or were fired with one hundred. What matters here is that forcing Scotland out of the EU against its will was a direct imposition of absolute rule on Scotland, and therefore a direct violation of the Claim of Right. What matters here is that such violation of the Claim of Right is a violation of one of the fundamental clauses of the Treaty of Union, therefore it should have rendered that treaty null and that treaty should have been terminated because of that. The majority of the people who cast a vote in Scotland did so to remain in the EU. Neither the English MPs nor indeed the useless Scotland’s MPs or useless Scotland’s FM of the day had any democratic right to overrule the will of the people of Scotland. That was akin to imposing on Scotland absolute rule.
You say ‘The question was “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?’. Sure. but the answer from Scotland was still a big, fat ‘REMAIN’. The kingdom of England does not own “the United Kingdom of Great Britain”. It is co-owned by the Kingdoms of Scotland and England. England does not have the right to unilaterally decide where the UK goes or where it does not. England does not have the right to overrule Scotland and force the UK to go in the direction only the Kingdom of England wants.
The treaty of union should have been declared null and void in 2016, at which point it was crystal clear that it was impossible for the union to continue by respecting the will of both, the kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England. The only way to preserve the union was by brute force, by deliberately overruling the will of one of the two and, in doing so, violating their own fundamental constitutions. That was completely unacceptable. In other words, the only way to preserve the union was by imposing absolute rule on one of the two kingdoms, which is undemocratic, unconstitutional and a direct violation of the very treaty that underpins that union the deep state is so determined to preserve.
So, if the only way to preserve this union from 2016 was by systematically suppressing the will of one of the kingdoms and by violating the treaty that underpins that union, does this union actually remain legitimate at all?
The UK of Great Britain is in borrowed time and it has been in borrowed time since the first violation of the fundamental principles of the treaty took place back in the 18th century and since the first time the useless Scotland’s MPs chose to look the other way to preserve their own personal privilege.
So, if 300 years have demonstrated us time and time again that Scotland’s MPs are completely useless because they are only concerned in their own personal gain, what is the point in continuing playing this rigged game and what is the point in continuing sending useless MPs down south when the only thing they are doing is to legitimise the abuse of Scotland by the English crown?
“Your interpretation does not mesh with reality, Xaracen”
Actually, Hatey, it is YOUR interpretation the one that does not mesh with reality.
You say: “if the vote was intended to separately determine the fates of Scotland and England (not to mention the other bits), we would have had different referendum questions in each home nation”
That is a false assertion because it rests on TWO false assumptions:
1. you are assuming that each country in the UK is governed as a separate entity, which they are not. Scotland, Wales and NI are being governed as colonies by the kingdom of England with is acting by itself as “the UK”.
2. You are also assuming that the representatives of the kingdom of England, who have controlled the UK of Great Britain parliament since its inception in 1707 due to their numbers, are so democratic that would open the door for Scotland to end the UK by letting it to decide what questions to include in the ballot. That is never going to happen. This was amply demonstrated when England MPs, acting like imperialist colonisers, DENIED to the people of Scotland, Wales and NI the same right to veto that England has naturally due to its overrepresentation in the Uk. At that point it was crystal clear that this referendum was never about fairness, it was never about democracy, it was always about imposing England’s will on everybody else.
With regards to your assertion: “Well done you for dodging the question many are asking right now: Did we dodge a bullet by leaving the EU when we did?”, your desperate attempt at distracting by whataboutery is so, so obvious that is not even worth to laugh at your clumsiness.
You are attempting to distract from the fact that the only way the UK could exit the EU was by forcing absolute rule on Scotland, which constitutes a direct violation of the Treaty of union. But you are not succeeding on your distracting enterprise, I am afraid. As I said above, it does not matter an iota if Scotland dodged a bullet or dodged 1000. What matters is that absolute rule was deliberately imposed on Scotland the minute somebody in the UK deep state decided that Scotland had to exit the EU with England no matter what.
By the way, should the union have ended in 2016, the picture today may have been very, very different. England might no longer have a seat in NATO. England on its own might have not been able to stick its paws and help provoke the proxy war in U. It is therefore unlikely that the nordstream pipe would have been blown. And if it had not been blown, there was no reason for the EU to retaliate and for the EU to be in the dire economic situation it is now. Without England’s intervention in the conflict by sending missiles to U so it could fire them against R, R might have not retaliated by taking over U’s territory. Again, you are deliberately basing your assertion on a completely false assumption, are you not?
Don’t bother answering. With your permission, I will simply borrow your own words and throw them right back at you:
“I bet you want to answer “Yes”, eh? But you can’t.”
You could hardly be more wrong, Hatey; it is the English establishment’s interpretation that doesn’t mesh with the constitutional and legal reality of the Treaty and its terms, and their unlawful enforcing of that wrong interpretation for entirely selfish reasons via Westminster’s wholly inappropriate flat voting system is what has screwed up the Union and especially screwed Scotland for centuries.
You know the rest by now, so be a good boy and run off and play, the adults are talking.
Very informative and decisive post @7:42, Aidan.
Hopefully this will conclude and put the matter to rest (finally and long overdue).
“you appear to make an absolutely fundamental error which is to treat older laws as taking priority over newer laws, when the exactly opposite is true”
You are basing your assertion on a false assumption, Aidan: you are assuming that the entity issuing new laws is the same entity that issued the old laws it is now trying to override.
What you say above only applies when the entity issuing the laws is the exact same that the one which issued the old ones.
But the entities are not the same. The parliament of Great Britain is not the same entity that ratified the Treaty of Union and it is most definitely not the same entity that passed the Claim of Right or any of the other pieces of Scotland’s constitution.
The Parliament of Great Britain is A PRODUCT of that Treaty and its ability to re-write Scotland’s laws is completely limited by the fundamental conditions of the treaty of union.
Article XXV safeguards Scotland’s constitution in full and reserves its modification to the parliament of Scotland in exclusivity. If you read that article, it says:
“XXV. ‘That all Laws and Statutes in either Kingdom, so far as they are contrary to, or inconsistent with the Terms of these Articles, or any of them, shall, from and after the Union, cease, and become void, and shall be so declared to be, by the respective Parliaments of the said Kingdoms.’ ”
Article XXV is crystal clear. It says that the laws in Scotland (and England) which are inconsistent with the treaty should be declared void. But it does not say anywhere that the parliament of Great Britain can touch any of those laws. What it very clearly says is that those laws shall be declared to be void by the PARLIAMENT OF SCOTLAND.
But we all know that the parliament of Scotland never declared those laws void, because that was one of the first things the first parliament of Great Britain actually did.
But article XXV is telling us that when the first parliament of Great Britain declared some of Scotland’s constitutional laws void, it was acting ultravires and using a power it did not have. In other words, it was directly violating the treaty from day 1 of the union’s constitution.
But my question is, if neither the parliaments of Scotland or England actually fulfilled article XXV and neither of them actually declared void any of those laws in their respective kingdoms that would contravene the union, did the union actually came to fruition at all?
I am beginning to have my doubts. I am beginning to wonder if the whole thing fell through at some point and that part was hidden from the records.
The claim in the public domain is that the Queen terminated the parliament of Scotland, but there is no record of this in the records of the parliament of Scotland. The only information there is that the parliament was adjourned. The other thing is, did the Queen actually have the power to end the parliament of Scotland? When did she acquired that power? Ending the parliament of Scotland by a monarch is akin to impose absolute rule, hence a violation of the Claim of Right. So, when and how did the termination of Scotland’s parliament actually happen? Did it happen at all?
And did the union come to fruition at all if those constitutional laws in Scotland that directly contravene the union were never declared void by the parliament of Scotland?
The only possible way for this union to exist, for Article XXV not being violated by not making those laws void before the first parliament of Great Britain took place, and for the first parliament of Great Britain to not be breaching the treaty and declaring itself void by doing so, is if the MPs from Scotland and the MPs from England were acting as two separate blocks, each representing the respective parliaments of Scotland and England. In other words, the parliaments of Scotland and England were never terminated and remain alive within the parliament of Great Britain.
The Treaty of Utrech is as valid today as it was when it was first signed, Aidan. No subsequent law can overrule it unless there is an agreement by all the parties who signed it. The exact same applies to the Treaty of Union.
@Mia – we’ve also gone around the houses on this, we get to the point where you say that every normal authoritative source of legal authority (especially the courts) is wrong, but that you uniquely are right. I admire the sheer hubris of asserting your own private opinion as legal authority, but just as before, your views hold no more weight than any other opinion. Your analysis is objectively wrong, and will not provide an inch of progress towards independence.
@ Aidan;
Bullshit, Aidan!
My initial premise has always been that the sovereignty of Scotland was just as unequivocally real in 1706 as England’s, and that neither of those sovereignties ended in 1707.
Everything else follows directly from that premise in line with the terms of the Treaty and Acts of Union. Scotland’s sovereignty was owned by its people, and no-one involved in the Treaty negotiations had the authority to take that sovereignty from them, or demote its authority below England’s, so they still own their sovereignty today.
Given that England’s sovereignty was officially owned by its parliament, and that certainly ceased to exist as such in 1707, that sovereignty can seriously be considered gone, if there was no formal transfer of sovereignty from the former English parliament to the Union’s parliament. But that transfer could be considered to be its MPs who now sit in the new parliament alongside their Scottish colleagues.
In addition, Scotland’s constitution was guaranteed its permanence by the Treaty, so it could not be amended by anyone except by a majority of the sovereign Scots themselves. They have never been asked to change any part of it, and even if they wanted to do so, in say, and independence referendum, WM has illegally denied them their sovereign right to ask themselves any damn question they want to.
I do not treat older laws as taking priority over newer ones, I treat constitutional laws as superior to domestic laws, and that domestic laws can only be replaced if the newer ones are properly passed by the relevant legitimate processes. Westminster does not use processes that are legitimately in line with the constitutional reality as set out in the Treaty and Acts of Union, as I have explained more than once.
As for my so-called ‘fatal flaw’ re flat votes, I did consider that you would take it as you did, but what you ignored was that I also made it perfectly clear why that flat vote, whether it was intended or not, could have no legitimate formal standing in the new parliament. Scotland’s sovereign authority is formally represented and exerted in the UK parliament exclusively by its MPs, all of whom are elected to that parliament directly by those sovereign Scots, and they and Scotland’s sovereignty are not subject to any English authority at all, because nothing in the Treaty can require them to.
That’s what sovereignty means, Aidan! Deal with it!
Correction to an unnoticed error; “They have never been asked to change any part of it, and even if they wanted to do so, in say, a referendum, as WM has illegally denied them their sovereign right to ask themselves any damn question they want to.”
(Typing too fast!)
@Mia – the effect of Clause XXV is a requirement that both parliaments of England and Scotland shall void any laws that are incompatible with the terms of the treaty prior to the treaty being implemented, so that the new legal order created by the treaty was not marred with conflicts with pre-existing law. It does not mean that the terms of the treaty are unchangeable. Nor does it mean that the new parliament of the U.K. could not change pre-existing laws.
You fundamentally misunderstand the basis for the U.K. constitution. The treaty of union created a new legal reality, but the U.K. parliamentary system does not derive its authority from that treaty. In the same way that for example, the European communities act or the human rights act changed the constitutional landscape, but do not provide a fundamental source of authority.
“your views hold no more weight than any other opinion”
The text of Article XXV of the treaty of union is not “my opinion”, Aidan. It is the actual text in the Treaty. And what it says is very clear. It says that only the Parliament of Scotland can declare Scotland’s constitutional laws void and only the Parliament of England can declare England’s constitutional laws void.
Attempting to distract from reality by calling the contents of the article “my opinion” will not make the article disappear.
The rest of the comment is not “my opinion” either. It is the logical conclusion from the facts. If Article XXV clearly states that only Scotland’s Parliament can void those constitutional laws and those constitutional laws were never declared void by said parliament before the union started, then the options that explain the situation are obvious:
Option 1. If those laws were never formally and legally declared void by the Scottish parliament, the question if the union actually ever came to fruition immediately arises. If the union never came to fruition, then this entity, so called UK of Great Britain, is illegal.
Options 2 and 3 – We are told that the parliament of Scotland was abolished by Queen Ann. I have found no record of this other than hearsay, but I continue to research. If anybody can point me towards a reliable historical record of this, I would appreciate it. As a monarch, she did not have the power in Scotland to terminate the parliament. Any laws that she approved were always “by advise of Scotland’s parliament”. For her then to go and abolish the institution of Scotland’s parliament would be akin to imposing absolute rule in Scotland and therefore rip right though the Claim of Right, she swore to upheld and which is a fundamental part of Scotland’s constitution and a fundamental condition of the Treaty she was so desperate to achieve. So either that parliament was never abolished by that queen or, if it was abolished as we are told, Queen Ann immediately made the Treaty of Union void by violating Article XXV. I would actually argue that, if she actively violated that Claim of Right, she was actually reneging of her right to be called Queen of Scots.
Option 4. Article XXV denies to the new Parliament of Great Britain the power to declare void any of Scotland’s constitutional laws that contravened the Treaty of Union. This clearly indicates that the parliament of Great Britain WAS NOT given “parliamentary sovereignty” by the Parliament of Scotland. If it was not given “parliamentary sovereignty”, then it could not proceed by itself and on its own name to void those laws legally in the context of the Treaty. We know that the parliament of Great Britain declared those laws void on its first day. By doing so, it actually violated article XXV of the Treaty.
Option 5. The only logical circumstance for the parliament of Great Britain to have never breached Article XXV when it made those laws void on its first day is if both, the parliaments of Scotland and England were continuing to act, within the parliament of Great Britain, as two separate blocks, in effect, as separated Scotland and England’s parliaments.
Option 6 – The only logical circumstance for Queen Ann to not have breached the Claim of Right, compromising her right to the Scottish throne, is if she never abolished the parliament of Scotland in the first place.
You say: “Your analysis is objectively wrong, and will not provide an inch of progress towards independence”
First of all, my analysis is not “objectively wrong”. It is the logical conclusion from the facts that I can currently access. As I said above, I am still continuing my research for evidence that Queen Ann actually abolished Scotland’s parliament. I will now search for evidence that the treaty of union was abandoned before the parliament of Great Britain actually started.
Secondly, your comment “will not provide an inch of progress towards independence” is purely subjective and I will interpret it as your poor attempt at emotional blackmailing. Sorry, that strategy does not work for me. The facts in front of me tell me that the most direct route for Scotland to become independence is by terminating this treaty. But for that to happen we need to be sure first that the union actually came to fruition and that the treaty was never abandoned before the so called “union” actually even started. Because if the treaty was abandoned and the union was forced by Queen Ann terminating Scotland’s parliament, then the union was never legal in the first place, and what we have here is an imperial take over of Scotland by the crown of England. That scenario would open and fully justify the decolonisation route that Liberation of Scotland and Salvo are currently pursuing.
@Xaracen – there is no distinction between constitutional law and domestic law, constitutional law is domestic law by its own definition. The problem is your view denies the fact that the treaty of union and its implementation created a new successor state to England and Scotland and in many ways a new legal order albeit one that was closer to that which existed previously in England compared to Scotland. The ideas your put forward aren’t without some historical context, but they essentially deny the reality of what has actually happened since 1707. The parliamentary governance arrangements that we live under now are the law, definitionally. The fact that they don’t accord to your personal and tenous view of the treaty is entirely and completely irrelevant as to what the law actually is. You might say the law should be X, but that doesn’t make it so, especially when X is recognised as authority by anyone, anywhere when carrying out a relevant function. I go back to my previous point, law isn’t a collection of spells from ancient times, it’s a way of managing rights and obligations in Society.
@Mia – Clause XXV does not say that at all, it says that the respective parliaments shall void incompatible laws, it doesn’t say anything which limits the future powers of the U.K. Parliament.
“Clause XXV does not say that at all, it says that the respective parliaments shall void incompatible laws, it doesn’t say anything which limits the future powers of the U.K. Parliament”
Come on, Aidan, you are much smarter than this. If article XXV says that it has to be the parliaments of Scotland and England who void those laws, it stands to the obvious that it is effectively denying the Parliament of Great Britain the power to do it by itself. Unless, of course, that Parliament of Great Britain is in effect the parliaments of Scotland and England acting as separate blocks within it. And it has to be separate blocks because England MPs cannot void Scotland’s constitutional laws and Scotland’s MPs cannot void England’s constitutional laws. But for that to be the case, the original parliament of Scotland could be prorogued, but never abolished.
Article XXV does not spell it in black and white because it does not have to. It is implicit in its wording when it says that it has to be the parliaments of Scotland and England who void those laws.
My question is why didn’t those parliaments do so, then.
You cannot have it both ways, Aidan. Either:
a. the treaty was legit and valid. But, by abolishing the Parliament of Scotland, Queen Ann reneged on her right to the Scottish throne by violating the Claim of Right through imposing absolute rule on Scotland. The first parliament of Great Britain rendered the treaty of union void on its very first day by violating article XXV, or
b. The treaty was legit. Queen Anne never violated the claim of right because she never abolished the Parliament of Scotland. The parliament of Great Britain never violated article XXV because that parliament was conceived a combination of the parliaments of Scotland and England acting as separate blocks, therefore each of them voided the laws corresponding to their respective kingdoms. Or
c. The parliaments of Scotland and England never voided those laws because the treaty never actually came to fruition and the so called “union” is in fact an illegal entity.
You can take your pick, Aidan. I prefer to conduct a bit more research to find more evidence before I decide which one of those options is the right one.
@Mia – no it doesn’t stand to reason at all, that implication would have an enormous impact on future union governance and would also require an alternative legislative structure to deal with previous legislation from England and Scotland. If the authors of the ToU intended to impose that significant restriction, they would have done so explicitly and also set out how previously passed legislation could be amended. The reason for XXV is, as I’ve said, to ensure the new Union Parliament didn’t have to manage issues around conflicting legislation on day one. It’s easier for two parliaments to dispose of inconsistent legislation rather than one due to the greater amount of parliamentary time.
It’s a common theme here, you seize on some innocuous procedural clause and claim that the implication is some huge and fundamental point of law that nobody thought was necessary to write down.
It’s easy to forget that we didn’t have spaces like this 15, 20 years ago.
We’ve all learned a lot about all sorts of things and the overall effect is that the basic methods of advertising/propaganda developed by advertising companies back in Vance Packard’s ‘Hidden Persuaders’ years are no longer good enough to dupe the majority.
Now that many are waking up to the ways they’ve been manipulated/brainwashed their entire lives, everything is up for question and the ‘conspiracy theorist’ slur has lost much of its impact.
Feels like it won’t be long before even relatively mainstream places like this are going to be addressing directly some seriously dark/disturbing material which is still emerging from virtual blackout.
And who’s to say that there won’t be a direct tie-in to the issues which have been dominating discourse here for years i.e. Branchform and the whole ‘gender’ nightmare?
Sometimes it doesn’t take much to join the dots – eventually, if there are enough of them, they join themselves.
@ Mia at 7.30 p.m. Very well explained, Mia – comprehensible to the meanest understanding, one would think.
@ Aidan
I have tried to reply to your comment several times now, but it comes back as being in moderation. I have reviewed and I do not see anything untoward. I will keep trying.
@ Aidan
you say:
It’s 180 degrees the other way”
I disagree. It is as it is.
You say:
“The treaty required the two separate parliaments each to dispose of incompatible legislation prior to the two parliaments merging into the commons and the lords”
I think what you mean is prior to merging into the parliament of Great Britain. The parliament of England already had commons and lords, but Scotland’s parliament did not “merge into” England’s parliament. England’s parliament and Scotland’s parliament merged together into a new parliament.
It is correct. The article required both parliaments of Scotland and England to repeal the legislation incompatible with the union. But the truth is that none of them did. And I wonder why.
The most plausible explanation for me at present is that the parliament of Great Britain was seen as an imperfect merge between both parliaments within which they continue to operate as separate blocks when working on matters related to each of the individual kingdoms. This is not so far fetched when we see the way England MPs currently operate: they are both acting as MPs and as members of England’s parliament. They keep both tasks separate but they are the exact same people doing both and within the same parliament.
@ Aidan
You say:
“It does not say anything about limiting the powers of the new parliament”
And it does not have to, Aidan. It is implicit in the wording of the article. Article XXV is very clear: it is tasking specifically the parliaments of Scotland and England with the repealing those laws. Nowhere in the article it says that the new parliament of great Britain can repeal those laws.
“Once again your campaign of abuse against the English language strikes at the heart of the treaty…”
I though we were having a serious discussion, Aidan. Emotional blackmailing does not have a place on this.
“You must have a very very low opinion of the people who drafted it”
I do not have great opinion of them because they were tasked with negotiating for a federal union and, instead, they succumbed like cowards and within seconds to minimum pressure from their England counterparts (I have read the minutes of the negotiations). But putting that aside, article XXV is pretty tight. It is only the parliament of Scotland who can repeal Scotland’s constitutional laws.
“given the vast swathes of information they neglected to mention and only gave us the faintest of hints”
Oh come on, Aidan. Article XXV does not give “faintest of hints”. It spells it in black and white, loud and clear: ‘That all Laws and Statutes in either Kingdom, so far as they are contrary to, or inconsistent with the Terms of these Articles, or any of them, shall, from and after the Union, cease, and become void, and shall be so declared to be, by the respective parliaments of the said kingdoms’
Let me repeat it one more time: “by the respective parliaments of the said kingdoms’
It cannot be anymore clear than that. It tasks the two parliaments of Scotland and England, and not the parliament of Great Britain, with the repealing of those laws. The parliament of Great Britain is not even mentioned in the article as a possibility to repeal those laws. Implicitly, by doing so, it is restricting the legislative power of the parliament of Great Britain and, more importantly, it is restricting its ability to repeal any of Scotland’s constitutional laws.
@Mia – again you’re (I feel deliberately now) misunderstanding Clause XXV. At the point at which the Treaty of Union was concluded, the Scottish and English parliaments still existed and therefore each state agreed, prior to the implementation of the Union, to void any legislation that would be incompatible with the Union prior to the creation of the single parliament for Great Britain. It expressly does not retain the separate parliaments and expressly does not limit the power of the future British Parliament to legislate. To do that, the treaty would need to adopt very different language. Again, I marvel at the idea that the intention was to create a totally different constitutional order from the one that was written down, and that somehow you have some unique insight into this.
Secondly, none of the examples you give below impose any limitation on the Parliament of Great Britain to legislate in any of those areas. The Union with Scotland/England Acts are amendable like other pieces of legislation. What you have there are political commitments on behalf of the English state to the Scottish state prior to the merger, but a significant weakness we are all (I thought) aware of is that the future political system of the U.K. beyond 1707 did not provide a mechanism to enforce them should the English MP’s use their superior numbers in the commons to ignore them. The Scot’s had/have to rely on the political pressure rather than any legal prohibition. There is an exception to this in the form of the concept of fundamental law, but I am reluctant to explain another concept which you can misuse.
“You’re (I feel deliberately now) misunderstanding Clause XXV”
Now you are using the strategy of dishonesty to get around this, I see. It will not work. And it is not “clause XXV”. It is Article XXV. That is the way it was named in the Treaty of Union.
I have not misunderstood article XXV at all, thank you. It is you, who are relentlessly trying to give it a meaning it does not have. Read the darn article, Aidan. It is crystal clear what it says. It instructs the parliaments of Scotland and England to revoke a series of laws in Scotland’s constitution. But, at no time, does that article nor any of the remaining articles in the treaty for that matter, give the new parliament of Great Britain the power to help itself to revoke Scotland’s constitutional laws.
The treaty sees the parliament of Great Britain is seen as a legislator for Great Britain, not for the Kingdom of Scotland. And even so, it is not given a free ride to legislate either. Its legislative power has been specifically restricted in many of those articles of the treaty, article XXV being one of them.
“At the point at which the Treaty of Union was concluded, the Scottish and English parliaments still existed and therefore each state agreed, prior to the implementation of the Union, to void any legislation that would be incompatible with the Union prior to the creation of the single parliament for Great Britain”
That is correct. But guess what? Neither the parliament of Scotland nor the parliament of England actually declared any of those laws void. And, in line with article XXV of the treaty, it could only be those two parliaments who declared void those laws in their respective kingdoms.
So, why didn’t those two parliaments declare those laws void?
Did something happened that invalidated the treaty between the moment the parliament of Scotland adjourned in April 1707 after ratifying the treaty and the moment the new parliament of Great Britain started?
Unless the parliaments of Scotland and England remained as independent blocks in that parliament of Great Britain, each legislating for their respective kingdoms, the parliament of Great Britain was not given power to touch the kingdom of Scotland’s constitutional laws.
“It expressly does not retain the separate parliaments and expressly does not limit the power of the future British Parliament to legislate”
I am sorry, Aidan, but that is complete nonsense. It does both. Article XXV specifically assigns the task to declare those laws void to the parliaments of Scotland and England. The parliament of Great Britain is not even mentioned. If you read other articles, you clearly see stated there that some legislation can be modified by the parliament of Great Britain. That is not the case for ARticle XXV, therefore it states to the obvious that the parliament of Great Britain was not given the power to revoke those laws. In other words, Article XXV is restricting the power of the parliament of Great Britain to revoke the Kingdom of Scotland’s constitutional laws.
“To do that, the treaty would need to adopt very different language”
No, it would not. The language of the article is crystal clear. It states that the laws that opposed the union were to be revoked specifically by the parliaments of Scotland and England. It never gave the parliament of Great Britain the power to do that. The Parliament of Great Britain was not the successor parliament of the parliament of Scotland, Aidan. The parliament of Great Britain is the parliament of a completely different legal entity (if it is true that is legal) and a different state, which is Great Britain.
Let’s take this situation to the present, shall we? Does the parliament of the European union have the right to modify any of the constitutional laws of the EU countries? That will be a big, fat No. Well, then. The exact same applies to the parliament of Great Britain. It is not the continuator of the parliament of Scotland. It is a completely different parliament, representing a completely different entity.
“Again, I marvel at the idea that the intention was to create a totally different constitutional order from the one that was written down, and that somehow you have some unique insight into this”
Well, Aidan, marvel away as much as you wish. It stands to the obvious that that is exactly what they did. It stands to the obvious that each and every one of those articles restricted the power of the parliament of Great Britain to legislate. And, in doing so, it stands to the obvious that the concept of “parliamentary sovereignty” for the parliament of Great Britain is nothing but complete bullshit. The insight I have comes from reading a significant number of texts contemporary to the treaty and also all the records of the parliament of Scotland. Goodness, even the crown spy Defoe indicated in his books that the parliament of Great Britain could not touch those laws and could not touch the treaty without making itself void. Where does your “insight” come from, Aidan?
“Secondly, none of the examples you give below impose any limitation on the Parliament of Great Britain to legislate in any of those areas”
Every single one of those articles limits the ability of the parliament of Great Britain to legislate. Every single one of them. In some cases the articles give some way and allow some modification of the legislation by the parliament of Scotland, but, in other cases, as it is with the Claim of Right on article XXV, the article very clearly completely denies the parliament of Great Britain the option of doing anything with that Claim of Right.
“The Union with Scotland/England Acts are amendable like other pieces of legislation”
Actually no, they are not. The articles can only be legally modified by the entities that signed the treaty, and that will be the parliaments of Scotland and England. Yours is an assumption made based on that other false assumption of the parliament of Great Britain having parliamentary sovereignty and being the successor state of Scotland’s parliament. The parliament of Scotland did not enjoy parliamentary sovereignty, therefore it could not transfer it to the parliament of great Britain. But even beyond that, it is very clear that each and every single one of those articles imposes conditions and restricts the ability of that parliament to maneuver. That successive sets of England MPs have ignored this fact and that successive rounds of Scotland’s MPs have looked the other way instead of clamping down on it, does not make their beloved parliamentary sovereignty for that parliament a reality.
“What you have there are political commitments on behalf of the English state to the Scottish state prior to the merger”
No, Aidan. That is not how an international treaty works. The clauses of an international treaty are to be fulfilled during the life of the treaty. If those conditions are breached, the affected party can declare the treaty void. Article XXV states this very clearly:
“And Lastly that after the Decease of Her Present Majesty (whom God long preserve) the Soveraign succeeding to her in the Royal Government of the Kingdom of Great Britain shall in all time comeing at his or her accession to the Crown Swear and Subscribe That they shall inviolably maintain and preserve the foresaid settlement of the True Protestant Religion with the Government Worship Discipline Right and Priviledges of this Church as above established by the Laws of this Kingdom in prosecution of the Claim of Right And it is hereby Statute and Ordained That this Act of Parliament with the Establishment therein contained shall be held and observed in all time coming as a fundamentall and essentiall Condition of any Treaty or Union to be Concluded betwixt the Two Kingdoms without any Alteration thereof or Derogation thereto in any sort for ever As also that this Act of Parliament and Settlement therein contained shall be Insert and Repeated in any Act of Parliament that shall pass for agreeing and concluding the foresaid Treaty or Union betwixt the Two Kingdoms And that the same shall be therein expressly Declared to be a fundamentall and essentiall Condition of the said Treaty or Union in all time coming”
Let me repeat the last part:
And that the same shall be therein expressly declared to be a fundamental and essential condition of the said treaty or union in all time coming.
in all time coming, Aidan – that means for as long as the union and the treaty last. That is not simply a political commitment for the parliament of England, Aidan. That is a fundamental condition that applies to each and every monarch succeeding Queen Ann and every and each parliament of Great Britain in all time coming.
“but a significant weakness we are all (I thought) aware of is that the future political system of the U.K. beyond 1707 did not provide a mechanism to enforce them should the English MP’s use their superior numbers in the commons to ignore them”
I think this is incorrect, Aidan. The mechanism to enforce it is the Scottish/English MPs themselves, as we can read it was done in 1710 and 1713 with regards to the Hamilton affair and the Malt tax affair. In both cases, it was Scotland’s MPs and indeed the lords who stood up and complained until the matter was addressed and resolved. Actually, in both cases the union was on a shoogly peg. In the case of the Hamilton affair, MPs and lords representing Scotland were determined to recall Scotland’s parliament and effective terminating the union by breaching article III. They made such fuss that the monarch and the government actually had to give in.
“The Scot’s had/have to rely on the political pressure rather than any legal prohibition”
That is only because Scotland is represented by spineless and greedy invertebrates who are only concerned about their salaries and sinecures and cannot give a shit about Scotland or the treaty. Each and every single round of Scotland’s MPs has systematically failed to clamp down on the abuses of the treaty and has systematically failed to end that effing treaty when they should have done so. Why? Because that would mean losing their salaries and political careers, of course.
Don’t bother about explaining “fundamental law” to me. I have read what happened in 1710 and 1713 and I have learned how those MPs and lords at the time reacted and what they intended to do to bring the union to an end had the matter not resolved to “their” satisfaction. The circumstances have not changed since then. The quickest route to end the union remains the same too: to reconvene Scotland’s parliament.
@Aidan
You said:
“The treaty explicitly provides for the new parliament of Great Britain as the national legislative body”
Nope. The treaty gives only SOME legislative capacity to the parliament of Great Britain, not full capacity. This is made explicit in a lot of articles, such as articles such as
Article IV. ‘That all the Subjects of the united Kingdom of Great-Britain shall, from and after the Union, have full Freedom and Intercourse of Trade and Navigation, to and from ….; and that there be a Communication of all other Rights, Privileges, and Advantages, which do or may belong to the Subjects of either Kingdom, except where it is otherwise expresly agreed in these Articles’
Article IV is clearly limiting the ability of the parliament of Great Britain to legislate against those Rights, Privileges and Advantages.
XIV. ‘That the Kingdom of Scotland be not charged with any other Duties, laid on by the Parliament of England before the Union, except those consented to in this Treaty; in regard it is agreed, that all necessary Provision shall be made by the Parliament of Scotland, for the public Charge and Service of that Kingdom, for the Year one thousand seven hundred and seven’
Article XIV limits the ability of the Parliament of Great Britain to legislate. It is not given consent to legislate to impose any other Duties on Scotland other than the ones specified in the treaty, for example. The article also indicates that it is for the Parliament of Scotland, not for the parliament of Great Britain, to make provision for the public charge and service of the Kingdom of Scotland for the year 1707 (the union started in May 1707).
Articles X, XI, XII and XIII limit the ability of the parliament of Great Britain to legislate in terms of duties payable in Scotland, some of them until 1710.
XVIII. ‘That the Laws concerning Regulation of Trade, Customs, and such Excises, to which Scotland is, by virtue of this Treaty, to be liable, be the same in Scotland, from and after the Union, as in England”…”that the Laws which concern public Right, Polity, and Civil Government, may be made the same throughout the whole united Kingdom; but that no Alteration be made in Laws which concern private Right, except for evident Utility of the Subjects within Scotland”
Article XVIII clearly imposes conditions like that the laws this article refer to must be the same across Great Britain at all times and also that no alteration can be made to the Private Right laws in Scotland unless it can be demonstrated that it is for the benefit of the people of Scotland. Those conditions clearly limit the ability of the new parliament of Great Britain to legislate.
It can be argued that the special agreement arranged for NI after brexit is a direct breach of article XVIII.
XIX. ‘That the Court of Session, or College of Justice, do, after the Union, and notwithstanding thereof, remain, in all time coming, within Scotland, as it is now constituted by the Laws of that Kingdom, and with the same Authority and Privileges, as before the Union, subject nevertheless to such Regulations for the better Administration of Justice, as shall be made by the Parliament of Great Britain;’
Article XIX gives only limited capacity to the parliament of Great Britain to legislate with regards to the court of Session in Scotland or the College of Justice.
XX. ‘That all heritable Offices, Superiorities, heritable Jurisdictions, Offices for Life, and Jurisdictions for Life, be reserved for the Owners thereof, as Rights of Property, in the same Manner as they are now enjoyed by the Laws of Scotland, notwithstanding this Treaty’
This means the new parliament is not given consent by the treaty to legislate to change any of those or to repeal the “laws of Scotland” referring to those.
XXI. ‘That the Rights and Privileges of the Royal Boroughs in Scotland as they are, do remain entire after the Union, and notwithstanding thereof”
“do remain entire after the union and notwhithstanding thereof” – this means the new parliament cannot legislate to abolish those either.
Article XXV of the Treaty of union with England clearly limits the ability of the new Parliament of Great Britain to legislate and to repeal laws. Indeed, article XXV explicitly forbids the parliament of Great Britain to change the Church of Scotland, its government, to touch the Claim of Right or to change the oath of the monarch, which must include swearing to uphold the Claim of Right.
You said:
“It’s beyond ridiculous to suggest that restrictions were intended on that new parliament which weren’t written down anywhere”
Well, I wonder what you mean by “they weren’t written down anywhere”. I have just read the Treaty and the limitations are very clear. If, as you claim, it is ridiculous to suggest that restrictions were intended without being written down, it is far more ridiculous to suggest that the new parliament was given powers without this being explicitly written in black and white in the articles of the treaty.
You said:
“which would create a significant body of unchangeable law”
Well, it did indeed create a significant body of unchangeable law, Aidan. Unfortunately, the greed of England MPs and England’s crown and the complete lack of backbone of Scotland’s MPs colluded to let the parliament of Great Britain go ultravires and stick its nose and paws in laws it never have the power to touch in the first place.
Hat’s off, Mia. Superb game, set, and match!
Hardly, Xaracen. I can’t speak for Aidan, but for my own part I can confirm that being repeatedly bombarded with one very badly edited verbose wall of text after another – paragraph after paragraph of basically the same badly written and misconstrued “content” as per the last 5 times – and all in spite of repeated, patient, authoritative and above all intelligent and informed rebuttals – does sap one’s resolve.
That’s not victory, that’s throwing your hands up into the air in a combination of incredulity and irritation, and no doubt thinking “what’s the point, life’s too short for this nonsense”.
Bottom line: it doesn’t even matter what anyone says, no one is capable of changing – or even reaching – such utterly closed minds.