THE SNP hasn’t changed its “independence strategy” in any significant way. The resolution supported by delegates to the party’s conference alters nothing. Their message is still that we must give the SNP a mandate to “demand” a Section 30 order. After that, they have no plan. They have no idea what they will do if the response is a refusal, as it is almost certain to be. We can only assume they will do what they’ve done on all previous occasions – nothing!

Even if the SNP leadership did have something in mind for when they get the anticipated knock-back from the British state, they wouldn’t be able to talk about it. Because to do so would risk being asked why they don’t just do whatever it is now. Although it must be said that this is a small risk. Such questions never seem to occur to the woefully deluded. Or to professional journalists. Or if they do, those journalists see it as being in their best interests not to ask them.

Refusal of a Section 30 order leaves Scotland’s cause exactly where it is now; nothing relevant having changed since the last such refusal. Therefore, anything that can be done to progress Scotland’s cause after a Section 30 request could be done without another Section 30 request. So, why bother with another Section 30 request? And why is the SNP never asked this question?

In the wake of another Section 30 request being refused – or ignored – the SNP would doubtless come out with the usual stuff about the UK Government’s position being “untenable”, apparently ignorant of the fact that the word means “incapable of being defended or justified”, and/or the fact that the British state is under no obligation whatsoever to defend or justify its actions. There is no such stipulation in Section 30 of the Scotland Act. The Union and the alien concept of parliamentary sovereignty that is imposed on Scotland give England-as-Britain unfettered power to do as it will with its annexed territory in the north.

Should the proposed (no matter how the proposal is disguised) request for a Section 30 order be refused, Humza Yousaf will put on his angry face and indignantly declare that this proves the UK Government is undemocratic. Just as they said this was proved the last time a Section 30 request was refused. And the time before that. And the time before that. And … you get my point.

How many times does a thing have to be proved before it is accepted as having been proved? Another question that will not be put to the SNP Scottish Government by the media.

Just as importantly, the SNP evidently either don’t know or don’t care about the implications of the British Prime Minister doing the unexpected and graciously granting consent for a referendum. Consent that won’t look nearly so gracious once the small print is magnified to a readable level.

By any reading of the UN’s definition, the UK Government – as an external power – would have no role in the exercise by the people of Scotland of our right of self-determination. If the Scottish Government grants the UK Government a role regardless, we can be absolutely sure the British establishment would use the power and influence thus afforded them to ensure that the referendum posed no threat to their “precious” Union. There are numerous ways for them to do this as Section 30 permits them to attach to a temporary transfer of legislative competence whatever conditions, caveats and provisos serve the British state’s imperative to preserve its grip on Scotland.

The SNP has never explained how a Section 30 referendum could be anything other than “consultative and non-self-executing”, to use Nicola Sturgeon’s description. They have never to my knowledge been asked to explain the purpose of a referendum which can have no legal or constitutional effect.

Nor have they ever been asked to address the point that requesting a Section 30 order is a denial of the sovereignty of Scotland’s people. It is a tacit rejection of the Claim of Right and contrary to Scotland’s constitution. It may also be a breach of the Treaty of Union.

I am not a constitutional lawyer. But even I can see that all this stores up a heap of problems for any future referral of the matter to the European Court of Human Rights and/or the International Court of Justice. Scotland’s lawyers will be put in the position of having to argue that the people of Scotland are sovereign against the background of the Scottish Government having effectively said that we are not.

They will be obliged to argue that the Claim of Right is valid and relevant when the Scottish Government has very publicly spat on it. They will be required to reference the provision of the Treaty of Union which retains Scotland’s pre-Union constitutional settlement when the Scottish Government itself has breached that very provision.

This is why a manifesto for independence has to start with repudiation of the Section 30 process. But neither the SNP nor any other Scottish party has ever produced a manifesto for independence. Have they ever been asked why they haven’t published a manifesto for independence? I think you know the answer by now.

That people have been fooled into thinking the SNP Scottish Government has proposed some shiny new strategy for restoring Scotland’s independence is explained by their failure to ask the kind of questions referred to in this article. And by the media’s failure to ask those questions on their behalf. There has been no meaningful scrutiny of the SNP Scottish Government’s approach to the constitutional issue. An approach which has not changed in the nine years that Scotland’s cause has made absolutely no progress. An approach that was not changed by anything that happened at the SNP conference.

Whatever the woefully deluded convince themselves of, all we have to look forward to is continuing failure to progress Scotland’s cause.

Peter A Bell
via email