Ian Blackford is entitled to state how important it is that the SNP stays in power; if only because the alternative would be one or more of the British parties seizing control - with all the horrors that would entail. What irks is that when it comes to being held accountable for three or four or five or six years (depending on your preference) of inaction on the constitutional issue all of a sudden,
Why would we empower their deviousness? Why would we pander to their lack of principle? Why would we facilitate interference in our constitutional referendum by what, if we heed Joanna Charry's advice, we must regard as an unfriendly foreign power? Am I missing some impenetrably cryptic irony here?
"Onward and onward! Then onward some more!"
Given that no credible process for a free and fair referendum exists within the legal and constitutional framework developed by the British state for the purpose of preserving the Union at any cost to the people of Scotland, the party must commit to creating such a process immediately upon being elected to govern. Only be having a commitment to the Manifesto for Independence well in advance of the election can the Scottish Government have an unassailable mandate to take the action which will be required when the inevitable confrontation with the British state happens.
The closest thing to information Keith Brown might impart to these eager new arrivals on the Yes side is that it depends. Whether and when there is a referendum depends. What form the referendum takes depends.
To be scrupulously fair, it isn't easy trying to find new ways of saying the same thing over and over week after week. I could almost sympathise. I have to try and find new ways of responding to this vacuous drivel. I know what a grinding, joyless, soul-sucking chore it can be. But any fellow-feeling I might have quickly evaporates in the heat of my anger at being taken for a fool. Angry, too, on behalf of all the others who are being treated so shabbily by the SNP's chief enthuser.
The issue to be decided in our new constitutional referendum is not what Scotland will be like for future generations of the people who live here, but whether those future generations will be able to decide for themselves what kind of Scotland they want. Or whether those decisions will be made for them by a government they didn't elect in a parliament where they are effectively unrepresented.
We shouldn't get hooked on the the past. It's not a trusted source of news. It is a questionable reference. We cannot replicate the past. History does not so much repeat itself as do impersonations which are often only convincing to those who want to be convinced. But there are lessons we can learn. We can find some guidance in the past. Memory is one of the inputs to the process of creating the mental maps by which we navigate from the present to the future. History may provide clues to the best route. It may also offer hints about paths we definitely should not follow.
From the moment the EU referendum was called I tried to persuade people that they should be at least as concerned about the constitutional implications of what would come to be called 'Brexit' as with the economic consequences.
As ever, I take issue with the identification of British Nationalism exclusively with the Tories. As if British Labour and the token third party in British politics were any less insistent on the divinely ordained supremacy of the English parliament.
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A blog by Iain Lawson
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