THE final day of the indyref showdown wrapped up earlier than expected after heated arguments between the UK and Scottish Government’s top lawyers, with Supreme Court justices now adjourned to decide on whether or not Holyrood can legislate for a referendum.
It was a relatively quiet start to the day and it turned out the security guards recognised me from the day before due to my insistence on bringing Irn-Bru in - which they make you taste test.
As I was putting my bag through security, with the BBC’s James Cook in the queue behind me, one joked that I was a bit late - only because I’d been in bang on at 9.30am on Tuesday.
Once in the court we had to listen to Sir James Eadie KC argue that the Supreme Court didn’t have jurisdiction to hear the case due to the bill being in draft form, so it was no surprise when he refused to engage with any substance of the arguments, or even to address the SNP’s written submission which argued the point of self-determination.
RECAP: All the updates and breaking news from day two of the Supreme Court indyref showdown
Two Scottish Tory MSPs, Douglas Ross and Donald Cameron, were spotted sitting at the back of the court in the morning, with Ross slinking out after an hour to go to the House of Commons.
Eadie finished up his submissions early, but would be grilled by justices after lunch on numerous points, with the Lord Advocate then asking to break up for lunch early due to new submissions from the Attorney General’s team which she hadn’t had a chance to review.
This gave me some time to grab something to eat and I caught up with Douglas Chapman, SNP MP, who was in there too. I also got chatting to one of the court’s staff members who told me to my surprise that she thinks if Scotland does get to hold a referendum then Yes will win - she put it down to Brexit.
I took 10 minutes to sit outside of the court, overhearing the Imperial March from Star Wars being played from a protest outside of Westminster.
I even ran into Scottish LibDem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton who, when I asked what he was doing in London and if he was down for the case, told me he had watched some of it before getting bored, adding: “You’re going to lose.”
I laughed and started to walk away when he tried to argue Nicola Sturgeon had rolled back on her commitment to a de-facto referendum at the next General Election. That might work with other journalists, but I had listened to what the FM had actually said, and that was not it. I told him I couldn’t wait for the referendum campaign to kick off and he was going to see a lot more of me.
READ MORE: The key arguments in the Supreme Court on day one of the indyref case
At this point I was expecting Scottish Labour’s Anas Sarwar to appear from somewhere to mark a trifecta of opposition politicians I’ve heckled in the past 48 hours, after Ross refused to come on our live stream on Tuesday morning.
After Eadie had been grilled by the justices over his arguments, which he admitted twice were “convoluted”, Bain gave her rebuttal, becoming emotive at the end as she criticised the Attorney General for Scotland’s approach to spend most of their time arguing that the reference should be thrown out.
She was visibly annoyed at the end when she accused Eadie of trying to make a “crystalised issue” an academic one, underscoring the seriousness of the issue at hand.
Eadie refused to speak to my colleague Hamish Morrison while he was leaving the court, or shake his hand. So now, we wait.
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