Trying to figure out WTF is going on In a letter to The National, Stan Grodynski complains of being unable to find "positive words about the SNP, the Scottish Government or self-determination and the cause of Scotland’s independence" in John Baird’s Long Letter of July 1. Might I suggest that this is because there is little positive to be said on these subjects and a much greater need to identify the 'negatives' which have left Scotland's cause in the Doldrums for a decade. Only when the problems have been adequately described can we begin to find solutions. Not all messages are intended for the purpose of 'persuading the undecideds' or combatting British propaganda. Some are more like internal communications within the independence movement. They seek to highlight the things that are wrong as the essential first step towards putting them right. Tacking on a bit of 2014-style happy-clappy messaging wouldn't be appropriate. Stan himself identifies a couple of issues that need to be addressed if the independence campaign is to get rolling again. He writes of the need for a charismatic leader to revitalise the independence movement and, perhaps, pull it together so that its potential strength can be realised and directed to a common purpose. I tend to agree. Unfortunately, there are no candidates for this role to be found at the moment. Ask the question about who might be this new inspirational leader of the independence movement and you're more likely to get a list of no-hopers than hopefuls. Everybody knows who shouldn't be leading the independence campaign. Nobody knows who should. It might help if there was a campaign to lead. But although lots of people are doing work on a plethora of different initiatives and projects, there is no single campaign. If the leader is to be the point of the campaign spear, there must first be a spear. It's a chicken/egg situation. Without a specific purpose, there is no campaign to be led and so no leader. But a leader is needed in order to bring the independence movement together behind this clearly stated purpose. In the campaign for the 2014 referendum the purpose was to secure a Yes vote and the leader was Alex Salmond. Now, there is no such specific purpose and no leader. These two facts are not unrelated. But which comes first - the motivating leader or the motivating purpose. Stan Grodynski comes tantalisingly close to a possible answer when he writes:
He almost hits on the nub of the matter but is prevented from doing so by the fact that he persists in deferring to the British state. He is correct in saying that the constitutional issue needs to be reframed as a human rights matter focusing on access to the exercise of our right of self-determination with the independence campaign being reconfigured accordingly. But he goes way off course when he writes of first seeking UK endorsement of a "popular mandate". He needs to recognise that the UK government and parliament has no role in the exercise of our right of self-determination. He needs to wake up to the fact that anything the UK might "endorse" would not be the proper constitutional referendum that we require. Like many others, Stan recognises the need to reframe the constitutional issue, but he fails to accomplish the necessary reframing because he keeps the British state in the frame. If only he could imagine a 'solution' that was entirely and exclusively Scottish, he'd get there. Stan rightly identifies the "first objective" - or purpose - of this reconfigured campaign as "winning the Scottish Parliament the right to hold a referendum". Where he goes wrong is when he talks of "winning" the "right" to hold a referendum. When he says "winning" he presumably means from the British state. Because his reframing is incomplete, he persist in deferring to Westminster. His reframing will be complete when he is able to exclude Westminster altogether. The reframing is not complete until it recognises that the "right" to which he refers is already ours and that it has to be taken and not 'won'. As the democratically elected national parliament, the Scottish Parliament 'naturally' has the right to hold a proper constitutional referendum. If you doubt this, then try to imagine that right being removed from any national parliament you might think of. The Scottish Parliament already has the democratic legitimacy required of a full national parliament. Vastly more so than Westminster, whose democratic legitimacy is questionable even at UK level. The problem is that Westminster asserts the authority to withhold from the Scottish Parliament certain powers that would otherwise accrue by default to a national parliament. And the Scottish Government concedes this asserted authority. Our own parliament concedes to what is effectively a foreign parliament the authority to veto our human right of self determination. That, in a nutshell, is the the thing that is preventing Scotland's cause making any progress. The obstacle can only be removed by a practical reframing of the issue that excludes Westminster's asserted veto. The reframing of the constitutional issue cannot be complete unless and until the external interference - and internal deference - is completely removed. Some - such as Ash Regan and Tommy Sheppard - have suggested that the problem could be resolved by the transfer of powers from Westminster to Holyrood. This is nonsense. Westminster not only won't transfer the legislative competence for a proper constitutional referendum, it can't. It can't because to do so would fatally undermine the doctrine of parliamentary (Westminster) sovereignty. A parliament which claims to be sovereign cannot give some other body the power to overrule it or act without its consent and/or against its interests. To do so would be to deny the very sovereignty the parliament claims. In the same way as the Scottish Government denies the sovereignty of Scotland's people every time it asks Westminster's permission to exercise our human right of self-determination. There is only one way out of this bind. Which is good, because it provides the clear purpose and objective that the independence movement requires. The way out is to use the 2026 election to create a mandate for the Scottish Parliament to assert its legislative competence in matters relating to the Union (all constitutional matters) - this being the only way that the people of Scotland can be provided with an opportunity to exercise their right of self-determination. People complain that this is too complicated. My response is that it is no more complicated than it needs to be and only appears complicated when compared with the simplistic electioneering rhetoric of the (nominally) pro-independence parties. Stan Grodynski's letter may be promising in that it shows the extent to which the concept of reframing has entered mainstream discourse on the constitutional issue. It is only disappointing in that the colonised mind prevents him for taking the British state out of the equation altogether. You're currently a free subscriber to Peter A Bell. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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Thursday, 3 July 2025
Almost reframing
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