The highest court in the United Kingdom will respond to the claim of Nicola Sturgeon to carry out a new vote for independence
The call for the referendum on the independence of Scotland, in 2014, was taken in a “quite macho” atmosphere, according to an adviser to the David Cameron Government. The prime minister and his aides “wanted to show Alex Salmond who is the leader.” Minister George Osborne said in one of the meetings: “Why don’t we do like the Spanish do with their separatists? We have the power!”
Anthony Sheldon, author of books on successive prime ministers, tells in ‘Cameron in Number 10’ that the head of government “wanted to do the right thing for democracy”, although the main objective in 2011 was “political”: “to end the campaign for independence winning a referendum. In May of that year the Scottish National Party had won a majority in Edinburgh.
Led by Salmond, the SNP had promised in its program to call a referendum. The head of the Scottish Government wanted to include “maximum autonomy” as one of the three possible options, but his interlocutor in London planned victory with a quick consultation and a “yes or no” question to independence. But in October 2012, he agreed with Salmond that the vote would take place in the fall of 2014. Osborne and other Conservatives were not happy with that transfer and Cameron was relieved with a closer victory than expected, 55% to 45%. He had not closed the Scottish question. Since then, the SNP, led by Nicola Sturgeon, has won majorities in favor of independence, sometimes allied with the Greens, in all three elections to the autonomous Parliament.
With Scotland pushed out of the European Union by the ‘brexiters’, Sturgeon has drawn up a bill to call a new consultation in 2023. And his Lord Counsel for the Government, Dorothy Bain, has asked the Supreme Court, the highest judicial body in the United Kingdom, to clarify whether the Edinburgh Parliament has the power to summon it. The supreme court will announce its verdict on Wednesday.
The Home Rule Act lists the powers ceded to Edinburgh and those reserved to the Parliament of Westminster. Annex 5.1.b says that “the affairs of the Union of the kingdoms of Scotland and England are reserved.” Bain argues that the calling of a consultative referendum whose result is not mechanically enforceable does not alter Westminster’s legal and executive competence over the Union. Bain is proposing that the court settle the “bitter” issue over competition, allowing the advisory referendum, and that Parliament in London then decide what to do. All the prime ministers since 2014, with the exception of the current one, Rishi Sunak, who has been in office for less than a month, have rejected Sturgeon’s requests to agree to a legal consultation.
inconsistencies
The Supreme Court judges, chaired by Scotsman John Reed, gave permission to the SNP to appear at the trial as an affected third party. And their arguments, articulated by lawyer Claire Mitchell, “focus on the requirement to interpret Scotland’s 1998 law (which founded home rule) in accordance with – and not against – the right of all peoples to self-determination” . Mitchell quotes the representative of the United Kingdom before the International Court of Justice during the deliberations on the unilateral declaration by Kosovo of its independence from Serbia. She also represented the UN representative defending in 1983 the “inalienable right to self-determination” of the inhabitants of the Falklands Islands. Hundreds of identical official expressions could be quoted about Gibraltar.
The introduction to the Smith Commission report, which drew up a plan for more transfers after the 2014 referendum, affirmed “the sovereign right of the people of Scotland to determine the form of government that suits their needs.” Labor minister Donald Deware confirmed to Salmond in Parliament in 1998 that his Home Rule White Paper did not interfere “in any way with the sovereign right of the people of Scotland to determine their constitutional future”.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was established in 1800 and lasted until 1922, when the island was divided. In 1973, London called a referendum in British Northern Ireland to confirm that the population accepted the border. The 1998 Belfast Agreement gives London the power to call a referendum if it believes that the majority of the population wants to join the Republic of Ireland. And to convene it every seven years.
If the Kosovars and the British in the Falklands or Northern Ireland have the right to stay together or separate, why has Scotland lost it? The judicial case has come when the majority in favor of calling a referendum is slim and the desire for independence is tied in the polls with the vote for permanence.
#Supreme #Court #rules #Wednesday #Scotland #call #referendum