UK’s highest court will respond to Nicola Sturgeon’s demand to conduct a new independence vote
The call for Scotland’s independence referendum in 2014 was made in a “pretty macho” atmosphere, according to an adviser to David Cameron’s government. The prime minister and his aides “wanted to show Alex Salmond who the leader is.” Minister George Osborne said at one of the meetings: “Why don’t we do as the Spaniards do with their separatists? We have the power!”
Anthony Sheldon, author of books about successive prime ministers, says in ‘Cameron in Number 10’ that the head of government “wanted to do the right thing for democracy”, although the main goal in 2011 was “political”: “to end the campaign for independence winning a referendum In May of that year the Scottish National Party had won a majority in Edinburgh.
Under Salmond’s leadership, the SNP had promised in its program to hold a referendum. The head of the Scottish government wanted to include “maximum autonomy” as one of three possible options, but his interlocutor in London planned victory with quick deliberations and a “yes or no” demand for independence. But in October 2012, he agreed with Salmond that the vote would take place in the fall of 2014. Osborne and other Conservatives were not happy with that transfer and Cameron was relieved with a victory that was closer than expected, 55% to 45%. He had not closed the Scottish question. Since then, the SNP, led by Nicola Sturgeon, has won a majority in favor of independence in all three elections to the Autonomous Parliament, sometimes in tandem with the Greens.
With Scotland pushed out of the European Union by the ‘Brexiters’, Sturgeon has drafted a bill to convene a new consultation in 2023. And his government’s Lord Counsel, Dorothy Bain, has asked the Supreme Court, the UK’s highest court, to clarify whether Edinburgh Parliament has the power to subpoena it. The Supreme Court will rule on Wednesday.
The Home Rule Act lists powers devolved to Edinburgh and reserved to the Parliament of Westminster. Annex 5.1.b says that “the affairs of the Union of the Kingdoms of Scotland and England are reserved”. Bain argues that calling for a consultative referendum whose result is not mechanically enforceable does not change Westminster’s legal and executive jurisdiction over the Union. Bain proposes that the court settle the “bitter” competition issue, allow the consultative referendum, and then Parliament in London to decide what to do. All prime ministers since 2014, with the exception of the current one, Rishi Sunak, who has been in office for less than a month, have rejected Sturgeon’s requests to agree to legal consultations.
The Supreme Court judges, chaired by Scotsman John Reed, authorized the SNP to appear at the trial as a third party involved. And their arguments, articulated by barrister Claire Mitchell, “center on the demand that the 1998 Act of Scotland (which laid the foundations for self-government) be interpreted in accordance with – and not against – the right of all peoples to self-determination” . Mitchell quotes the United Kingdom’s representative to the International Court of Justice during deliberations on Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia. Also to the representative in the UN who in 1983 defended the “inalienable right to self-determination” of the inhabitants of the Falkland Islands. Hundreds of identical official statements could be quoted about Gibraltar.
The introduction to the Smith Commission report, which set out a plan for more transfers following the 2014 referendum, affirmed “the sovereign right of the people of Scotland to determine the form of government which suits their needs”. Labor Secretary Donald Deware confirmed to Salmond in Parliament in 1998 that his Home Rule White Paper did not in any way conflict with “the sovereign right of the people of Scotland to determine their constitutional future”.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was founded in 1800 and lasted until 1922 when the island was divided. In 1973, London called a referendum in British Northern Ireland to confirm that the people accepted the border. The 1998 Belfast Agreement gives London the power to call a referendum if it believes that the majority of the population wants to join the Republic of Ireland. And to convene it every seven years.
If the Kosovars and the British in the Falklands or Northern Ireland have the right to stay together or separate, why did Scotland lose it? The lawsuit has come when the majority for calling a referendum is thin and the desire for independence in the polls equates to votes for permanence.
Source: La Verdad
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