I was interviewed on Aye Right Radio regarding my article For the sake of Scotland on the matter of the AUOB assembly this Saturday (14 November) with a follow-up meeting next Sunday (22 November). How many more opportunities will we allow to pass us by? Can we all agree that we must #DissolveTheUnion? What can we do to force the SNP to adopt a Manifesto for Independence? This should be the focus of the entire Yes movement.
Aye Right Radio videocast 197 podcast 257
Peter A Bell 
“Can we all agree that we must #DissolveTheUnion?”
I like the hashtag, but no, we can’t agree! And at the end of this, is why, To summarise – it would pre-empt negotiations and possibly give us a far worse deal than we could achieve otherwise. Here we go, here’s the boring bit.
(Scottish Affairs Committee Written evidence submitted by Aidan O’Neill QC)
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmscotaf/1608/1608we16.htm
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“5.2 They note that there are at least three different possibilities under international law:
(i) Scotland is to be regarded as a wholly new State, with the remaining Union of England Wales and Northern Ireland (EWNI) being treated in international law as a (territorially decreased) continuation of the UK. The authors cite the precedents of the 1947 partition of India and the creation of Pakistan, and of the 1962 translation of Algeria from a series of départements integrated into metropolitan France to an independent State. [Contunuation and secession]
(ii) Scotland and EWNI are each to be regarded as successor States to the divided UK. The authors refer in this context to the de-merger of the short-lived United Arab Republic (1958–1961) back into its original constituent States of Syria and Egypt. [Separation]
(iii) neither Scotland or EWNI are to be regarded as successor States to the dissolved UK. The authors here allude to the birth, in 1993, of two wholly new States, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, from the territory of the former Czechoslovakia.” [Dissolution
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Option 3 WAS a bad one for 2014, since it would have meant us leaving the EU anyway, same as the rUK whatever it called itself, so from that point of view, Dissolution does seem desirable now we’re leaving the EU anway (apparently). After all, the “Velvet Divorce” of Slovakia and the Czech Republic seems to have worked out well and quickly for both of them, and they went for dissolution..
But we’re small and the rUK would be large, so I would say that for them option 1 is way better. So why would I agree with them? Because it will cost them, in terms of the negotiations, deep in the purse, to be the continuing UK. As long as we have hard hat negotiators. Only with 1 do they keep so many things important to them, even including the name “UK”. And we can pick and choose and get elements of the equal separation, where both would be successors.
Going for #dissolvetheunion could prejudice negotiations, if it became official for the SNP. No problem though, at the YES activist level.
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Idiot.
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Don’t be so hard on yourself, silly boy! Aidan O’Neill is a QC after all.
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