Nicola Sturgeon says Scotland can’t be imprisoned in the UK, but clearly it can. By committing to the Section 30 process she has acknowledged that Boris Johnston has the power to effectively veto Scotland’s right of self-determination. It may be a “perversion” of democracy. But he can still do it. And, I dare say, without losing a moment’s sleep over having perverted democracy.
Nicola Sturgeon says it’s for the Scottish people to decide. She says this even as she puts the decision in the hands of the British Prime Minister. The British political elite should have no say in the process of Scotland’s people deciding the future of their nation. It is Nicola Sturgeon who is giving them a say. More than that, she is giving them a greater says than the people of Scotland. By committing to the Section 30 process she is allowing the British political elite to overrule Scotland’s people.
Does anybody think that this is acceptable?
If Boris Johnson is guilty of perverting democracy, Nicola Sturgeon is an accessory. Democracy demands that Westminster have absolutely no part in Scotland’s exercise of its democratic right of self-determination. That is SELF-determination. Meaning only us, the people of Scotland. No external interference!
But Nicola Sturgeon not only allows external interference, she invites it! She insists on it!
Does anybody consider this acceptable?
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Peter A Bell 
Oh dear, you’re like a broken record. You expend vast acres of verbiage in blog after blog saying the same damn thing over and over again. It’s as if Nicola Sturgeon has had no success whatever of late and she’s your own worst enemy. (Methinks thou protesteth too much, so one is led to suspect that she actually is, in some niggly little bubble of your own.)
Why don’t you just haud yer wheesht for aince on your obsession, think positive thoughts about something else, and wait a week or so to see what develops? That would be the grown-up response. If something effective doesn’t transpire soon – as it now certainly must – then you can always say you tellt us when. (As if we would forget.)
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Try to get my attention should you ever develop the intellectual wherewithal to say something meaningful. The incessant infantile whining is just too tedious.
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Bit tetchy, Peter.
My inclination is also to give her time to submit her request and have it denied, then hold her to account if she doesn’t deliver an alternative means of progressing our independence cause
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I weary of that fool’s constant whining. I can’t recall the last time he/she actually addressed a point. I’m not sure he/she ever did. They’re only still here because I am not as “tetchy” as you suppose.
You fail to recognise that even asking for a Section 30 order is problematic, regardless of what happens subsequently. https://www.iscot.scot/article/news/section-30-is-not-scotlands-salvation/
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The thing is grizebard, that if Peter A Bell didn’t keep the pressure on the SNP and Sturgeon, someone else would have to, possibly even you. Or me. Or they might indeed just sit on theior backsides and do nothing but weigh the votes. And if you check carefully he DID say that everyone should vote SNP – same as I’ve been doing, and most other critics.
As it is he makes the points and we can argue against them. Vigorously if we like 🙂
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I would hope it is fast becoming clear to everyone now that there will not be a Referendum in 2020.
Perhaps we will all soon realise that the whole point of this ridiculous Section 30 charade is to ensure there never could be a Referendum before 2021.
Leaders who call Referendums then lose have to resign. Once you’ve resigned, you can’t be re-elected FM.
Did nobody notice that when she was recently asked about her future all Nicola Sturgeon could say was she wanted to fight the 2021 election as leader and serve five more years as FM? Why on earth did she not say she wanted to lead the SNP into the first elections to an Independent Scottish Parliament and become its first Prime/First Minister? What people don’t say is often more important than what they do say.
AND SHE HAS NEVER ONCE SAID “THERE WILL BE A REFERENDUM IN 2020.”
And the only thing stopping her is that she doesn’t want one this side of the 2021 election and never has. Our prize might be Independence but that prize is clearly not the priority for Nicola Sturgeon.
The Yes movement is being played like a banjo. But I’m not sure the strings are going to last another 18 months.
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Watch the hand, not the tricksters deflection technique. 🙂
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Peter the horse has already bolted. The British Elite already have more say over Scotland than the people of Scotland. It’s why we have nuclear weapons next to Glasgow. Why we have to pay twice for the bedroom tax (once to enact & once to mitigate). It’s why there’s a power grab and how our EU citizenship is being stripped. The fact Scotland routinely has policies and governments imposed on it is one of the fundamental reasons for independence.
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My apologies, Ashley, for the delay in publishing your comment. My fault entirely.
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Peter, you are right when you say, “… even asking for a Section 30 order is problematic, regardless of what happens subsequently.” It’s to give Westminster an authority they ought not to have.
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You might be interested in this:
https://electricscotland.com/independence/scotlandun.htm
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Why? Do you imagine I’ve never heard of the Scotland-UN Committee? If it was relevant in any way, I might have mentioned it.
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Well I always thought she was playing politics by insisting on a Section 30. I surmised her plan was to ask for it, be refused, build up resentment for it being refused, and then do something else. She was also testing the waters. If Johnson was smart he would call her bluff. If he did, she would add the addendum if it is not already there, ‘at a time of our choosing’. Don’t know what the something else might be, beyond building a clear majority in Holyrood in 2021, but possibly it might include appeal to UN/ICJ on the grounds that she’d tried everything else and there was now overwhelming support for independence and UK were damaging Scotland. My guess her appeal to UN would consist of getting their acknowledgement that Scotland can resile from the Treaty of Union and getting a majority of states to support Scotland resiling unilaterally.
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What is the procedure for this “appeal to UN/ICJ”?
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You keep asking this. A representative body would make the approach. Craig Murray has suggested a plan. In his plan the body which would approach the UN would be a broader body than just the Scottish Government, one consisting of all political representatives, a new national committee which the SG would call or if the SG refused to call it, Murray suggests that a citizen body that had established legitimacy could do the same. I don’t think it really matters what the body is as long as the UN accepts it, the Chagos islanders formed a representative body to make their approach which the UN was prepared to hear and they don’t even have a government anywhere as ordered or as resourced as the Scottish Government. There may actually be some merit in this body not being the SG as the SG could be attacked by Westminster for doing so. It is after all a subordinate jurisdiction but a citizens body would be outside existing power structures so not impeded in the same way. There was an earlier Scottish UN committee in the 1980s and 1990s which I know little about and have only read about on blogs.
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So, to summarise, there is no set procedure. But it might be possible to cobble something together which might, or might not, have some connection with the Scottish Government – the only body authorised to speak and act for Scotland – and might, or might not, be considered representative of Scotland as a whole.
For what purpose? Apparently, to ask the UN to ask the ICJ to provide an advisory opinion on whether Scotland can become an independent nation again. Of course, only a complete idiot would ask that question at all. And only something worse than a complete idiot would ask that question of the ICJ without being absolutely certain they’d get the answer they wanted.
Suppose it happened. Suppose this unrepresentative group with no official standing succeeded in its aim. Suppose it got an opinion from the ICJ. What would that mean? What would be the implications for the independence cause?
If the opinion went in Scotland’s favour, it would change absolutely nothing. It would tell us only what we already know. It wouldn’t affect opposition to independence in the slightest.
If the opinion went against Scotland, the independence movement would be beaten mercilessly with this cudgel on a daily basis for all eternity.
Nothing to gain if we ‘win’. Some significant cost if we lose. And anything between a year and a decade of wasted effort and pointless distraction.
Scotland doesn’t have a fairy godmother! There is no such thing as magic and no external agency is going to do the job for us.
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Well over to you then Peter. What are your big ideas? An uprising like the Irish in 1918? You’re not winning any converts to Scottish independence. According to you, we’re doomed. I say we just have to keep attacking and pressing on all fronts. The key thing is to build a movement, create excitement, raise aspirations. We need to build confidence and we’re not going to do that by shooting down every single idea. There is a legal angle in there somewhere, I’m sure of it. I’m not a lawyer, are you? But I scent that there are possibilities somewhere if we keep burrowing away at it. The most crucial thing is to create mass support but I’m afraid you won’t win a war on constant negativity. I’m not saying there is a fairy godmother. Not sure I would want one. Freedom is not something handed to you on a plate. Freedom is that which men and women take for themselves, what’s handed to you on a plate is generally not freedom but some other kind of bondage, like devolution. We need to convince people to rise. Unlike you I’m not convinced the legal routes are dead ends so I will keep chipping away at it, but thanks for your critiques, I’ll bear them in mind. When I was at art school and got stuck with a painting, they would say, ‘Scumble a bit! Scumble a bit!’ which I took to mean, fire off in as many directions at once as possible really speedily and intuitively with intense vigour, until something starts to emerge, and generally that worked. And usually quite soon. Quite soon, something would take shape and click. What definitely didn’t work was sitting there going oh dear. Yes, great to have a plan, but as the man said, the best laid schemes gang aft agley and personally I feel there are plural routes. As the Viking laws used to say, ‘Use varying methods of attack’.
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Why is your first thought violence? I have never said we’re doomed. So that’s a lie. Stopped reading before I came across any more.
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