ON Tuesday the UK Supreme Court started its two-day hearing on the question of whether it is lawful for the Scottish Parliament to proceed with an independence referendum without the consent of the British Government in the form of a Section 30 order.

The current Scottish Parliament was elected with its largest-ever pro-independence majority in an election in which the issue of whether Scotland should have another independence referendum was front and foremost in the campaign. The electorate knew what it was voting for when it chose to give parties in favour of another referendum a significant majority in Holyrood. The only reason that this court case is currently taking place is due to the undemocratic intransigence of the parties which lost that election.

In a properly functioning democracy there would be no question about the right of the Scottish Parliament to do what it was elected to do and hold another independence referendum, particularly not in a UK where for generations British politicians have assured Scotland that the UK is a voluntary partnership of nations which only continues to exist as long as that is the will of its constituent parts.

The mere fact that this case is now before the Supreme Court is testament to the decades-long duplicity of British politicians. It now appears that what those politicians meant when they said that the UK was a voluntary union and they accepted that the people of Scotland have the absolute sovereign right to decide for themselves whether Scotland should continue to be a part of the UK is that they only accepted that right when they believed that there was little serious prospect of the people of Scotland choosing to exercise it.

What the UK Supreme Court is now deciding is whether a law drafted in London some twenty years ago can prevent the Scottish people from making a democratic decision on whether they still want to be a part of this - what we are for now still calling a Union. In effect, whether Scotland's future is to be held hostage to the electoral choices of England.

It is no exaggeration to say that this may be the most important case to have ever come before the UK Supreme Court as it goes to the very heart of the nature of the United Kingdom, is it, as traditional Scottish Unionism has always maintained, a voluntary union which Scotland chose to enter into and which Scotland can choose to leave, or is it a state in which the democratic decisions of the people of Scotland are subordinated to the decisions of the government elected by the largest country in the UK and Scotland requires the permission of the Prime Minister in order to exercise a Scottish sovereignty which would exist in name only.

The reality is that if the British Prime Minister is allowed a veto on Scottish democracy then not only will there be no independence referendum until Westminster is certain that it would win - rendering the question of Scottish self-determination meaningless, but democracy itself is rendered meaningless in Scotland as it will always be subject to being potentially overridden by a hostile Prime Minister from a party Scotland has rejected at the ballot box, not just on the issue of another independence vote but any policy of the Scottish Government which Downing Street takes exception to.

The five judges hearing the case will spend two days listening to oral submissions and then will have to go through many thousands of words of written submissions. It is thought that no decision will be reached for several months, but really, the question before the court is a simple one, is the United Kingdom a voluntary union of nations as successive British governments have always insisted, or is it not?

And if the court rules that it is not it will merely prove that for generations British governments have deceived the people of Scotland in an attempt to assure their loyalty and that the much-vaunted “voluntary Union” is just another of Perfidious Albion's many lies. The Union will be dead, there will only be a unitary British state which is indistinguishable from Greater England.

However, should the Supreme Court rule against the Scottish Government, as many expect to be the most likely outcome, that will not be the end of the matter, it will merely trigger the conversion of a future election in Scotland into a de facto vote on independence, an election in which those parties which have hitherto posed as Unionist will be exposed as parties advocating Anglo-British nationalist supremacy over Scotland.

This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.

To receive our full newsletter including this analysis straight to your email inbox, click here and tick the box for the REAL Scottish Politics