Killer question!

Alex Cole-Hamilton is something of a figure of fun. He invites derision. Not just because he is a Liberal Democrat, but because he is remarkably lacking in self-awareness even for a British politician. He contrives to paint himself into corners he needn’t have been in at all. You may recall him enthusing about a certain Beth Douglas despite this individual being known as a violent abuser of women. The man is a clown. But Cole-Hamilton has now demonstrated that, even if you already have a door-stop, buffoons such as him can occasionally serve a useful purpose.

It is well-known that British politicians tend to be very uncomfortable discussing the Union. They will proclaim its preciousness in general terms and make all manner of claims about how the Union benefits Scotland. But they don’t like to be pressed on detail. I suspect this is because Unionists don’t ever think about the Union. Their devotion to it is entirely unthinking. There is some irony in the fact that Scottish nationalists know more about the Union than Unionists. We certainly subject it to more critical scrutiny. We may not all be as learned on the subject as the likes of Sara Salyers. But, in general, nationalists have a good grasp of how the Union works to Scotland’s great detriment. Unionists tend to just accept the Union as a satisfactory status quo. They never question it. So, they are ill prepared for being questioned on it.

The point was made by Cole-Hamilton in the course of being interviewed by the BBC’s Martin Geissler for BBC Scotland’s Sunday Show. The fact that Cole-Hamilton didn’t want to talk about the constitutional issue was evident from his insistence that it was a subject which never came up on the proverbial doorsteps. A claim that is hardly credible given that support for independence stands at around 50%. Not that it seemed to have occurred the ‘Scottish’ Liberal Democrat leader that people might find it hard to believe nobody wanted to speak about such a major issue. Nor did it seem to occur to him that being so desperate to avoid the subject would be like chumming the water for a shark like Geissler, who inevitably pressed him on the matter.

The social media mob lapped-up Cole-Hamilton’s embarrassment, as you would expect. His humiliation made all the more delicious by the fact that it was at the hands of the BBC. Great stuff!

But there is a serious point that arises from this. A point which is of considerable importance when giving to the matter of how Scotland might escape the Union the kind of thoughtful consideration that evidently eluded Cole-Hamilton. The incident illustrates how difficult it is for Unionists to mount a rational defense of an anachronistic, anomalous, and grotesquely asymmetric political union. Which has long prompted some in the independence movement to wonder why the campaign has always been so defensive. Why, when our opponents have such an obvious weak spot, has the campaign not attacked that vulnerability?

To answer that question, we need to go back and look at another question. The one that was on the ballot paper in 2014. Should Scotland be an independent country? The question makes independence the contentious issue rather than the Union. It invites scrutiny of the Yes option while leaving the matter of the Union unaddressed. It has the effect of immediately putting the Yes campaign on the back foot. And keeping it there for the duration.

It worked! It worked largely because the Yes campaign went along with it and made no serious attempt to turn the campaign around. Attacking the Union was held to be too ‘negative’. The focus of the Yes campaign had to be on the ‘vision’ for Scotland after independence had been ‘won’. The aim was to lure voters towards this glorious vision. Little attention was paid to telling them why they should want to escape the Union.

But I have broached the subject of the Yes campaign’s failings many times. It is not my intention to do so again here. I merely wish to make the point that the ‘positive case for the Union’ is elusive for a very good reason. As far as anyone can tell, there is no such case. This is the crack in the Union’s armour that we should work on, inserting a spearpoint and levering the crack open so as to expose the ugliness within.

The question of how Scotland might leave the ‘voluntary’ Union matters because it relates to the issue of self-determination. The simple answer to this question is that we leave by exercising our right of self-determination – defined by the international community as a fundamental human right. But this answer begs another question. How do we exercise our right of self-determination? That is the question that Alex Cole-Hamilton was unable or unwilling to answer. Because the British state to which he gives his loyalty is not denying that the people of Scotland have the right of self-determination. It is denying us the exercise of this right.

Effectively, the people of Scotland are being told that we are free to leave the Union, so long as we don’t try to leave. In the minds of the coloniser and colonised alike, this makes perfect sense. To the decolonised mind, it makes no sense whatever. The #ScottishUDI process exploits this irrationality and the Unionists’ inability to resolve the conundrum. It does so by focusing, not on the ultimate goal of restoring independence, but on the intermediate process of exercising our right of self-determination. The reason is simple. Self-determination is a human right. Independence isn’t.

By making the constitutional issue a human rights issue, we exploit the fact that denying us the opportunity to exercise our right of self-determination is a breach of our human rights. A breach that the British state can only seek to justify in two ways – by arguing that the people of Scotland don’t have the right of self-determination. Or by arguing that there exists a democratic process by which we can exercise the right-of self-determination. The former is infeasible because international law holds that all nations and peoples have the right to decide the constitutional status of their country and choose the form of government which best serves their needs, priorities and aspirations. Plus, the British state has already conceded that the people of Scotland do have the right of self-determination.

If the Scottish Parliament were to assert its legislative competence in constitutional matters, primarily but not exclusively in order to facilitate the exercise by the people of Scotland of our right of self-determination – there being no other way! – the British state would have great difficulty challenging this. They would be put in the position of relying on one or both of the arguments referred to earlier. They would either have to deny that we have the right of self-determination, or they would have to present an acceptable existing democratic way of exercising this right. Cole-Hamilton showed that the British state which he represents isn’t prepared to argue that we have no right of self-determination because this would contradict the ‘voluntary Union’ position. And they can’t make the existing route argument without identifying a process that we find acceptable.

I contend that, being put in this position, the British state would not challenge the de facto unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) implicit in Holyrood asserting legislative competence in relation to constitutional matters. It is highly likely that they would prefer to negotiate. And isn’t that what John Swinney claims to want? Except, he expects these negotiations to come as if by magic. #ScottishUDI does not rely on magic.