BBC distract us with football as Scottish democracy at stake

The strategy states that page one line one of the party's manifesto for that election will declare: "A vote for the SNP is a vote for Scotland to become an independent country."

The delegates have adopted a strategy which says that if the SNP win a majority of Scottish Westminster seats at the next general election this will give the Scottish Government a mandate to commence independence negotiations with the Westminster Government.

The strategy also foresees the establishment of a constitutional convention consisting of representatives from civic Scotland, most likely trade union leaders and religious figures, as well as MPs and MSPs.

This means that if the SNP win 29 seats at the next election, it will be taken as a mandate to open independence negotiations immediately.

The SNP are also demanding the permanent transfer to the Scottish Parliament of the power to hold an independence referendum.

This strategy has been criticised by some who say that it remains vague on what will happen if the Westminster Government simply refuses to recognise that a pro-independence mandate has been won at the ballot box.

Indeed both a Labour or a Conservative Government would be highly likely to do so, just as these parties refused to accept, and still refuse to accept that the current Scottish Parliament was elected with a cast iron and incontrovertible mandate for another independence referendum.

Democracy is at stake

However there is a bigger question here, one which goes to the very heart of democracy in Scotland.

If the SNP do indeed win a majority of Scottish seats at the next Westminster General Election, there can be no dispute that the SNP will have won that election in Scotland by the exact same standards that Labour and the Conservatives apply to determining the winner of the election at a UK level.

READ MORE: Jamie Hepburn says majority of votes 'not necessary' for independence talks

If they continue to deny that the SNP have won a mandate from the people of Scotland then the question becomes, does democracy continue to exist in Scotland?

Such a denial will mean that not once but twice, the parties of British nationalism will have refused to accept the democratic will of the people of Scotland as expressed through the ballot box simply because they do not like what the people have said.

The constitutional question in Scotland then becomes, not a question about whether Scotland is better served by independence or by the continuation of Westminster rule, but an existential question about the continuing existence in Scotland of democracy itself.

If the Westminster government refuses to recognise that the SNP have won a mandate by winning a majority of Scottish Westminster seats, as they are very likely to do, then this will signal the death knell of Scottish democracy as long as Scotland remains a part of this so-called Union.

It will demonstrate conclusively that voting in Scotland has been rendered meaningless, all that Westminster gives to Scotland is the performance of democracy without any of its substance.

In this crucial respect, it's not the SNP which will be tested by the next Westminster General Election, but the Labour and Conservative parties and their willingness to respect the democratic choices of the Scottish electorate.

Infantilising media 

There's no denying that the SNP has an uphill struggle. The British media is ranged against not only the SNP as a party, but the very idea of Scotland's right to self-determination.

This crucial party conference, the conference of the third largest party in the House of Commons, has been all but ignored by the British media.

It was not mentioned at all during the UK wide edition of the BBC lunchtime news on Monday.

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon gives SNP strategy 'full support' after de facto referendum binned

On BBC's News on Sunday and again on Monday morning the presenter stated that the conference had passed a resolution saying that if the SNP wins a majority of seats in Scotland at the next general election then it will ask the Westminster government for another independence referendum. Someone hasn't been paying attention.

BBC Scotland's "news where you are " led with a story about the rejection by Unison members of the latest pay offer from the local government umbrella body Cosla.

Then it was on to the predictable story about the fitba, because in the infantilisation style of news favoured by the BBC, 22 men kicking a ball about a lawn is of far greater importance than the constitutional future of Scotland or indeed whether Scotland can continue to call itself a democracy.

Then it was a story about a new HIV awareness campaign followed by a brief report about the inquiry into the Stonehaven train crash, then it was back to the fitba again, and then the weather.

The continuing party conference of the largest political party in Scotland did not even rate a mention.

Since according to the BBC there is no "news where you are" on a Sunday, there has been very little coverage on BBC Scotland of the SNP's newly adopted independence strategy.

It's not just democracy which is at serious risk in Scotland, it's also the existence of a media which actually informs the people of Scotland about what is going on in their country in an even handed, unbiased and grown-up fashion.

What we have just now is a ridiculously biased media which does its utmost to marginalise and ignore the independence issue despite – or more likely because of – the fact that it is the preferred constitutional option of half of the Scottish population.

A media which treats it as a party political issue and is obsessed with throwing dirt at the SNP and distracting us with football.