Treachery abounds

No part of the British establishment can be trusted. The imperative to preserve their ‘precious’ Union overrides all considerations of ethics, morality, decency and democratic principle. They will, quite literally, do anything to ensure that Scotland remains locked in a political union which denies the sovereignty of Scotland’s people and leaves the nation at the mercy of a disreputable and dysfunctional British political elite.

Or so we must assume. With so much at stake, we simply cannot afford to trust the British government or any of its agencies. We would be foolishly irresponsible to place any faith in the British political parties, wherein devotion to the Union and vaunting British exceptionalism combine with partisan loyalty and naked self-interest to create a noisome medium for breeding treachery.

Until the day that Scotland’s independence is restored we must proceed on the assumption that the entire apparatus of the British state is set on preventing this ever happening. Given that this is so, it was only to be expected that British Labour in Scotland (BLiS) would try and throw a big British Nationalist spanner in the machinery of the Referendums Bill. A Unionist boycott of a new independence referendum was always a strong possibility. James Kelly’s amendment is a totally transparent attempt to facilitate and encourage such a boycott and to increase the chances of it successfully wrecking the referendum.

It is somehow fitting that it should be Kelly who is introducing the amendment. Perhaps more than any other BLiS politician, he personifies the intellect-crippling hatred of the SNP and ingrained sense of entitlement which has so comprehensively alienated voters. But if it hadn’t been him, there are plenty of others among the British Nationalists squatting in the Scottish Parliament who would have relished the opportunity to help diminish and destroy Scotland’s democracy.

And if it hadn’t happened now, it would surely happen at some other time. Probably on many occasions. We can expect repeated attempts to prevent a new independence referendum completely or, failing that, to put ever greater obstacles in the way of a Yes vote. We can anticipate that, should a Section 30 order ever be granted, it will come so bound up and weighed down with conditions as to render a fair plebiscite impossible. The British establishment will only enable a new referendum on the strict condition that it does not pose a threat to their precious Union.

Many people are asking whether, as an agency of the British state, the Electoral Commission can be relied upon to be completely fair and impartial. This is not to suggest that there would be any deliberate attempt to favour the Union. But the entire British establishment is steeped in British Nationalist ideology. It must have some effect. So it is somewhat worrying to find Mike Russell pandering to the British Electoral Commission’s insistence that it must have a role in Scotland’s referendum.

The compromise that Mr Russell is offering may seem reasonable to some. But no compromise is acceptable to those of us who have learned not to trust any part of the British establishment. To those of us who maintain that, to counter the inevitable treachery, the new independence referendum must be entirely made and managed in Scotland, no level or form of British state involvement is acceptable.

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