IT is simply not possible for the desire for independence to be credibly accepted either nationally or internationally as the voice of the Scottish electorate if the majority of said electorate continue to vote for Unionist parties with a clear intent to remain in the Union.

In an ideal world this desire of the electorate would be proven via a referendum, but the mechanism is less important than what you are trying to prove unambiguously; namely, that Scots voters actually want this level of independence ... not Scots MPs, MSPs or activists.

The Supreme Court judgment could not be avoided en route to the electoral event required to test the wish of the voters, so it was wise to get it out of the way a few weeks ago to clear the decks for the necessary campaign to fit the event into the current parliamentary period as promised. The judgment simply settles the immediate legal issue, NOT the political one, and as we know politics trumps legal in the long term as it is politics which changes the legal position.

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Anyone educated in law who had read the Scotland Act always knew that constitutional powers were reserved to Westminster. The First Minister has the required legal training and we can assume that she might have read the Scotland Act ... maybe more than once. So the outcome was never in any doubt.

So there was no point in continuing to waste time arguing for a referendum which was either never going to be granted or worse, granted but gerrymandered to ensure its defeat. So we have used the Supreme Court ruling to draw a line under the notion that a referendum AS DEFINED BY WESTMINSTER will EVER be the route to independence.

As a Holyrood election has a legally defined purpose to deliver the governance of those powers devolved to Holyrood and the election winners have a clear executive function, a Holyrood election can never become a single-issue election.

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As we will never be able to use a referendum to test the voter desire for independence, we are left with the only remaining choice of using EVERY GENERAL ELECTION as a de facto referendum until successful. This rather neatly gets round the “once in a generation” malarky.

Now let’s remember ... it’s the majority of votes that a referendum and therefore a de facto referendum requires to prove the will of the Scots, without which progress is impossible. This is challenging, but since 1979 we have faced first Thatcherism, then Thatcherism Lite uder Blair/Brown; then Thatcherism bloody awful multiplied by incompetence and infected by corruption since 2010. If we cannot convince the Scots that managing their own affairs is a better route to prosperity after this 43-year period, maybe we don’t deserve to win. So time to stop whingeing and get campaigning.

Gus McSkimming
North Ayrshire

THE long letter in Wednesday’s National by Andy Anderson of Ardrossan has all the logic, and dare I say it, the apparent legality of a route that the Scottish Government could/should follow. His proposal serves the dual purpose of getting the issue brought to the attention of the International Court and putting the Treaty of Union to the fore: enabling the so-called Supreme Court decision and numerous contraventions of that Treaty by the English Government at Westminster to be explored and publicised. It also has the benefit of placing Scotland in a much stronger position and returning full independence to the Scottish courts – a position which they have been steadily losing over the years since 1707.

Could this letter be an example of one man’s logical approach to the problem overcoming that of many lawyers?

Paul Gillon
Leven, Fife