This is my sketch of Nicola Sturgeon’s statement on an independence referendum.
It was when Nicola Sturgeon referred to herself as ‘the First Minister’ that I started to worry.
I’m all for formal titles but when nationalists start talking about themselves in the third person, I buy bottled water and long-life milk.
No doubt she got caught up in the moment. She was, after all, delivering a statement on independence to a packed Scottish Parliament. She does the same thing most Tuesday afternoons, but this time she really meant it.
Actually, it wasn’t strictly a packed chamber because the moment she began issuing her demands for another referendum, a section of the public gallery got up and walked out. Honestly, when will the people of Scotland stop talking down Scotland?
Here is her grand scheme to achieve independence. She wants to hold a consultative referendum. But she admits that she doesn’t know whether that’s legal or not. So she’s going to hold one anyway but — get this — she’s going to sue herself first to see what the law says. If nothing else, it’ll make one hell of an episode of Judge Judy.
The legal challenge will involve going directly to the Supreme Court, with the help of Scotland's top law officer. The First Minister recounted how, at a meeting a few weeks ago, she asked the Lord Advocate to 'consider exercising her power under paragraph 34 of schedule 6 to the Scotland Act'.
Now, as you know from the copy of the Scotland Act we all keep handy, that's the bit that gives Dorothy Bain QC the power to refer matters of competency to the Supreme Court. (Legal competency, not the other kind. It'd take more than 12 justices to handle an assessment of Lorna Slater.)
This was quite the turn of events. Not only was Nicola Sturgeon able to recall the details of a meeting without a Holyrood committee having to be set up first, the independent Lord Advocate who independently serves as one Sturgeon's ministers had independently come to the same conclusion as the First Minister on the issue of independence.
People criticise this government's attitude towards the autonomy of the legal system but they've really put the 'separation' into separation of powers.
Sturgeon had arranged for a little theatre to accompany her statement. She told Holyrood that lawyers had been dispatched around Westminster to serve paperwork on the UK Government informing them of the Supreme Court challenge. Liz Taylor broke up seven unions with half as much drama.
Incidentally, this is how you know Sturgeon's plan is a racket. Anything that puts this much money in the pockets of solicitors is to be regarded with the utmost suspicion.
Fans of Groundhog Day will be glad to know the proposed question is the same one asked in the first referendum. It’s probably in with a good shot of turning up in the third and fourth referendums, too. If you want a vision of the future, imagine a tartan heel stamping ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’ on a ballot — forever.
The date of the vote has been pencilled in for October 19, 2023. Halloween is coming early next year and Sturgeon's desperate wheeze is going out dressed as a proper referendum.
It was not a terrible speech. Sturgeon seldom gives those. It hit all the familiar notes. The Scottish Constitutional Convention. Canon Kenyon Wright. (The only context in which you’re likely to hear Sturgeon utter the phrase ‘We are the people.’) ‘Westminster governments we do not vote for.’ ‘Ripped out of the European Union against our will.’ ‘We lack the full range of levers.’ ‘A wealthier, greener, fairer nation.’ ‘Outward-looking and internationalist.’ ‘Clear democratic mandate.’ ‘Respect Scottish democracy.’
With the exception of the reference to the EU, it was the same speech Sturgeon has been giving for a decade. When she became Scotland’s longest-serving First Minister a month ago, the TV bulletins said it was ‘record-breaking’. The only broken record is her policy on the constitution.
Published in the Scottish Daily Mail on Wednesday, June 29, 2022.
Superb, Stephen. You know, I know and she knows it’s a last-ditch attempt at a referendum before she moves on to pastures new. The cult is becoming restless and she has to march them up the hill again. As for the rest of us, we watch as yet again she uses another ruse to deflect from her government’s appalling incompetence in the matters for which it does have responsibility.
Pithy and precise as always. People take Nicola too seriously - none more than herself of course! But Westminster doesn’t take her seriously enough. Continual diversion of resources to her partisan political projects ought to have resulted in surcharges by now. Why has it not? Westminster Councillors were bankrupted and their political careers ended for FAR less. (Maybe Shirley Porter should sue the Lord Advocate…?!)