Band of Brexiteers
- Seasons greetings and thanks to all our viewers and listeners, wherever you are.
- It was the last FMQs at Holyrood before Xmas but apart from the obligatory thanks and best wishes there was little to cheer. Covid infections are still around 1000 a day. Care homes are still a ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’ issue and Willie Rennie almost starred in a low firmament.
- Norrie and Stewart have another ‘debate’ about making progress towards an iScotland in the face of an anticipated refusal to negotiate from London.
- Fresh light on the new Covid variant comes from a New York Times article.. Who knew?
Aye Right Radio 
Hi lads, good stuff again today. So many different points of view from the different bloggers. If the FM were to put her main policy – you are right, Norrie, it cannot be the only one, as independence, with the proviso that a majority of seats won (not votes, because a majority of votes has never been the basis for a party’s policy implementation in the UK) would lead to an invitation to the UKG to negotiate our withdrawal from the UK, then that is not UDI in the accepted sense. If the UKG refuses to negotiate, and we use the Treaty route (and the Treaty has been breached unilaterally by England, never Scotland, in its history, so many times as to make it a unilateral declaration of independence by England rather than Scotland, that is not UDI either because we have a legal right in international law to have the Treaty ‘sound’ in law (firstly, in the Scottish courts), then at international level, and we also have the right of withdrawal if the Treaty is breached to our detriment. All this would be intimated to the UN, with a supporting legal case and with evidence that Westminster has left us no escape route by refusing a S30 Order. All of that is perfectly legal in international law – moreover, the international law to which the UKG is a signatory. Anyone bothering to look will discover that a PRE independence referendum is totally unnecessary for independence in international law, and none has been won in the past 50 years and more.
That the UKG might, indeed, send in the tanks against us is a risk we would have to take – but it is also a risk they would have to take in the eyes of the world. I would not put it past them, quite honestly, but there is no way out of this Union but by risking invasion, in the end and that is why we need our voice heard in the UN. A S30 Order is not going to come. Johnson might shift a fraction for the EU and vice versa, but we have no real clout, so there is no way we can ‘persuade’ him to grant one. Ergo, we give up on independence or we go soon by the risky route. To do nothing or delaying will lead to a complete regionalization of Scotland under a colonial administration at Lizzie House because, from the moment Brexit was mooted, that was to be our fate. So many tell us what we can’t do – that’s all we ever hear – but it takes guts to tell us what we can do. That, and a thorough understanding of international law, Treaty law and the UN. We have people with experience in those disciplines. The questions, as with so many other SNP actions, is: why is this being done and why is this not being done? It is hard not to see the SNP actions on independence as the option that has no chance of actually working or the one that is, ‘let’s wait and see until it’s all too late’ .
I don’t disagree with any of what you said here, but it’s the time-consuming step-by-step approach proving we’ve tried to be reasonable that needs to be gone through. I’m afraid I’m in the camp of no clear solution only questions and what ifs. As to the breaking of treaties it has gotten so bad over the years it seems to fall into the category of accepted practice
Thanks Lorna, You are helping to illuminate our debate. I don’t want to agree with your final sentence but it becomes harder not to as the clock runs down. I can’t get the vision of a frog in a pan of water out of my head.