Trying to figure out WTF is going on Laura Maxwell is to be congratulated. At last, we have someone in the media asking the pertinent, probing question. How does the SNP / Scottish government "plan to achieve" independence? Maxwell obviously asked the question, not in a spirit of genuine inquiry, but for the purpose of embarrassing Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy, Gillian Martin. All the more reason to congratulate the BBC presenter. SNP loyalists will naturally see the question as the problem. Less intellectually crippled individuals, however, will correctly identify the problem as being the fact that Gillian Martin could be so easily embarrassed by a simple, open question about the SNP's plan for restoring Scotland's independence. The problem is not that somebody from the 'evil Yoon media' is asking about this plan. The problem is that the SNP has no answer. Because the SNP has no plan. It must be said at this point that none of the other nominally pro-independence parties has a plan either. Had Laura Maxwell put that question to a representative of any of the supposed 'alternatives' to the SNP, they would have been just as embarrassed as Gillian Martin. The fact is that none of them has a plan. People tend to assume they have a plan because their rhetoric on the constitutional issue is designed to exude the confidence of someone who knows exactly what they are doing. As is so often the case, the electioneering rhetoric aims to deceive. Gillian Martin's response to being quizzed on how the SNP proposes to deal with the practicalities of restoring Scotland's independence is informative in another way. Not only does she reveal that she has no idea about the 'how' of restoring independence because the SNP leadership has long been averse to even discussing the matter, but she also demonstrates vividly how the 'party of independence' defers to Westminster. For Martin and her colleagues in the Scottish Government, Westminster sits at the centre of the constitutional issue. This is the old thinking. The thinking of the colonised mind. The new thinking returns the people of Scotland to the centre on the constitutional issue where only we belong! Listen to Gillian Martin:
She doesn't say denial of democracy will not be accepted by the Scottish Government. She says only that it is indefensible. She says that if the people of Scotland "vote for independence-promoting parties" then there "has to be a rethink" by the UK Government. That is the old thinking of the colonised mind. The new thing is that the people of Scotland express their will then that is the end of the matter because the people of Scotland are sovereign. The new thinking returns the people of Scotland to the centre on the constitutional issue where only we belong! I don't doubt that Gillian Martin would heartily agree with the contention that the people of Scotland are sovereign. Which means we are the ultimate political authority. But she casually awards higher authority to Westminster as if it were perfectly natural that the supposedly sovereign people of Scotland can be overruled by the parliament of England-as-Britain. This is what is meant by the colonised mind. The thoroughly colonised mind isn't consciously aware that it is colonised and so it cannot occur to the colonised mind to question the dogma of parliamentary sovereignty inculcated by the coloniser over more than three centuries. It doesn't even occur to Gillian Martin to question her assumptions and preconceptions when this leads her to the glaring, grating contradiction between popular and parliamentary sovereignty. Look at the above quote. See the doublethink of simultaneously saying the choice of the people of Scotland must be honoured and that it is up to Westminster whether it is honoured. Once again, thanks go to Laura Maxwell for broaching the crucial topic of the 'how' of restoring Scotland's independence. Hopefully, she will persist with this line of questioning. Hopefully, other interviewers will follow her lead. It is good that people learn how woefully inadequate the nominally pro-independence parties are. There may yet be time to rectify their inadequacy. You're currently a free subscriber to Peter A Bell. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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