STARTING tomorrow – and for the first time in 18 years – the Declaration of Arbroath will go on public display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

The delicate state of the 703-year-old document means it can be displayed only rarely and for short periods of time, so the exhibition will run for just one month.

I am sure as many independence supporters and readers of this newspaper as possible will want to see it. The exhibition was originally planned for the 700-year anniversary in April 2020, but the Covid pandemic put paid to that.

It remains a source of disappointment to many that the celebrations of such a significant anniversary were so muted.

The Declaration of Arbroath should be celebrated not just as an assertion of Scotland’s nationhood and our right to self-determination but also as a clear statement of the sovereignty of the Scottish people.

In 1320, that meant the right to choose our king and to dispense with his services if he proved unfit to defend our country’s independence.

At a time when monarchs were considered to be God-given, this was novel and many see it as an early expression of the notion of popular sovereignty – of government as a contract between people and king, or nowadays, parliament.

In modern Scotland, theoretically at least, it is the people who are sovereign – not the king or the parliament.

As Lord President Cooper said in the 1953 case of MacCormick v Lord Advocate (1953) SC 396, “The principle of the unlimited sovereignty of Parliament is a distinctively English principle which has no counterpart in Scottish constitutional law.”

Lord Cooper has not been the only Scottish judge to try to resist the dominance of English notions of sovereignty over the British constitution.

In 2004’s Jackson v the Attorney General, Lord Hope said: “Parliamentary sovereignty is no longer, if it ever was, absolute … Step by step, gradually but surely, the English principle of the absolute legislative sovereignty of Parliament which Dicey derived from Coke and Blackstone is being qualified … The rule of law enforced by the courts is the ultimate controlling factor on which our constitution is based.”

Sadly, notwithstanding devolution, the recent case law of the UK Supreme Court suggests that absolute parliamentary sovereignty is enjoying a bit of a renaissance.

This is most unfortunate and should be resisted.

As Lord Cooper said back in 1953, “I have difficulty in seeing why it should have been supposed that the new Parliament of Great Britain must inherit all the peculiar characteristics of the English Parliament but none of the Scottish Parliament, as if all that happened in 1707 was that Scottish representatives were admitted to the Parliament of England. That is not what was done.”

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However, for all practical purposes, the peculiarly English doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty has come to dominate the union of the Scottish and English parliaments.

This is what tends to happen when there is an unequal union. The ideas and the personality of the bigger partner dominate.

Earlier this week I was asked to give a talk to the Edinburgh branch of Pensioners for Indy.

During a lively Q&A session I was asked how the people of Scotland can assert their sovereignty in the face of Westminster’s dominance over the economy, foreign affairs, defence, energy and, it seems, the very means for us to realise our right to self-determination.

It is a hard question to answer in the wake of last year’s UK Supreme Court judgment which ruled against the Scottish Parliament having the power to hold a second independence referendum, doubted (wrongly I am sure) whether the people of Scotland even have the right to self-determination, and grounded its reasoning in old fashioned notions of a British constitution founded on the principle of parliamentary sovereignty far more firmly than I think previous courts under different presidencies might have done.

Before the 2014 independence referendum, Jim Sillars said; “On 18th September 2014, between the hours of 7am and 10pm, absolute sovereign power will lie in the hands of the Scottish people. They have to decide whether to keep it, or give it away to where their minority status makes them permanently powerless and vulnerable”.

As so often events have proved Jim correct.

Sadly, Scottish voters decided to give their sovereignty away and we all know the results.

The Brexit we didn’t vote for is damaging the Scottish economy, starving us of the immigrants we would otherwise welcome to our workforce and sending supermarket food prices rocketing while many Scots cannot afford to heat their homes despite living in one of the most energy-rich nations on earth.

It would be very depressing to reach the conclusion that with a second independence referendum looking unlikely for the time being there will not be another day like September 18, 2014, when absolute sovereign power lies with the people of Scotland as a matter of practicality.

Fortunately, I don’t think the situation is as bleak as that.

I believe the next General Election will afford that opportunity.

Accordingly, it is important that the SNP frame their manifesto offering on the issue of independence in such a way that as well as choosing members of parliament best placed to protect them from the cost of living crisis, Scottish voters get the chance to express their preference for the future government of their country.

That is why the discussions that take place at the SNP convention on June 24 and votes on any motions to follow thereon at our conference in October will be so important.

For my part, I wish that scheduling the convention on a date that clashes with the anniversary of Bannockburn and the All Under One Banner march had been avoided.

However, I would encourage as many SNP members as possible to attend the convention and take part in these important deliberations.