Deviousness and hypocrisy

There are two things you need to know about the independence referendum that was supposedly going to take place today. The first is that it was never going to happen. The second is that it was never going to be an independence referendum even if it had happened.

We know that the phantom referendum conjured by Sturgeon was not an independence referendum because she told us so when she made the proclamation. She made a very strong point of the fact that the referendum she had in mind would have absolutely no effect. She stressed that it would be “consultative and non-self-executing”. Therefore, not the formal exercise of our right of self-determination such as would deserve to be called an independence referendum.

Sturgeon was confident – rightly, as it turned out – that her personal fans and the party loyalists would ignore the small print and skip over the big words and make it an independence referendum in their heads despite being told that it was NOT an independence referendum.

If Sturgeon’s pretendy independence referendum had happened, she would have been found out. Even those who had never bothered to read the draft Referendum Bill would realise they’d been duped when a Yes majority led not to independence, but to yet another ‘demand’ for a Section 30 order so as to hold another independence referendum which would not be and independence referendum because a Section 30 referendum can only ever be “consultative and non-self-executing”.

Having got her standing ovation for announcing the referendum on whether to ask for another referendum that would have no constitutional effect, Sturgeon had to ensure that the first of these pointless referendums didn’t happen. But she couldn’t call it off because to do so would have risked exposing the feet of clay inside those tartan shoes. Which is why she arranged to have the draft Referendum Bill referred to the UK Supreme Court (UKSC). She calculated – correctly, as it transpired – that the UKSC would be bound to sink the referendum before it had even set sail.

It must be clearly understood that prior to referring the draft Referendum Bill to the UKSC, Nicola Sturgeon could quite easily have steered that Bill through the Scottish Parliament, only to have it blocked at the Royal Assent stage. Had she done so, the anger that met the UKSC ruling would have been directed instead at the British state. This was surely the best way to go. But Sturgeon could not afford to have her draft Referendum Bill subjected to the kind of scrutiny that would inevitably accompany its passage through Holyrood. Such scrutiny would be bound to expose the fact that the independence referendum being proposed was not an independence referendum at all but merely the precursor to another Section 30 request.

The draft Referendum Bill had to be killed. Sturgeon couldn’t have its blood on her hands. So, she arranged for a British court to do the deed for her. Lady Macbeth would be jealous of such deviousness.

Please don’t imagine Alex Salmond is any better than his protege. It is rank hypocrisy for him to slate the SNP’s attempt to conceal its intention to beg permission for a referendum under the “democratic effect” euphemism when his own party is doing precisely the same thing. Both parties present ‘strategies’ for independence which cannot be strategies for independence because both parties defer to Westminster. Both parties propose ‘plans’ which do not take us to independence but stop dead at “negotiations” with the UK government.

The Yes movement needs to wake up to the fact that it has been abandoned by all Scotland’s politicians.