{"id":37747,"date":"2017-03-20T04:00:19","date_gmt":"2017-03-20T08:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=37747"},"modified":"2017-03-19T10:41:27","modified_gmt":"2017-03-19T14:41:27","slug":"scotland-here-they-go-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/03\/20\/scotland-here-they-go-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Scotland … here they go again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is eager to get the voters back to the polls for another go-around for Scottish independence (well, not independence-independence, but separate-from-Britain-but-desperate-to-stay-in-the-EU-independence). Stephen Daisley<\/a> comments on the situation as of Saturday:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The SNP has managed to spin normally sceptical hacks the line that Downing Street was caught on the back foot by Miss Sturgeon\u2019s Monday surprise. It\u2019s true that the timing was news to Number 10 \u2014 received wisdom ran that the Nationalist leader would unveil her gambit at the SNP annual spring conference in Aberdeen this afternoon.<\/p>\n

But the UK Government has known since 2014, when Miss Sturgeon\u2019s party refused to accept their 55% to 45% defeat, that another push for separation was a matter of \u2018when\u2019, rather than \u2018if\u2019. Contingency plans have been in place for some time, both to push back a referendum do-over until after Brexit and, if need be, to fight one immediately. The Nationalists are not dealing with that nice Mr Cameron anymore.<\/p>\n

And Theresa May\u2019s response to Miss Sturgeon\u2019s demand was more cautiously-worded, better thought through, than the contributions that became common from David Cameron during the first referendum. Crucially, she did not dole out a flat No; instead, she said Not Yet.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Next week, she will ask MSPs to vote for a Section 30 request, petitioning Westminster for the power to hold a second referendum. There is no mandate for the Scottish Parliament to pursue such a policy. The constitution is reserved to the UK Parliament; a party winning a Holyrood election on a manifesto of surrendering Britain\u2019s independent nuclear deterrent or withdrawing Scottish troops from an international conflict would not be thought to have grounds for pursuing such policies.<\/p>\n

Even if this point were conceded \u2014 it is done so from first principles by the eager constitutionalists who populate the Scottish academy \u2014 there is another flaw in the Nationalists\u2019 argument. True, they came first in the May 2016 election and their manifesto envisioned \u2018Scotland being taken out of the EU against our will\u2019 as cause for a re-run of 2014\u2019s \u2018once in a generation\u2019 poll. But the Nationalists failed to secure a majority of seats at Holyrood for that proposition, winning only 63 out of 129. Fortunately for the SNP, they have six to spare in the shape of the Scottish Greens, once a conscientious party of the Left but, under Patrick Harvie, a Me-Too faction for the most triangulating government since New Labour.<\/p>\n

Every time the Nats get themselves into a jam, every time it looks like they might finally have to stop girning and start governing, up pop the six little anoraks, festooned with CND badges and brimming with good intentions, and they come to the rescue. Time after time, Mr Harvie drags the SNP out of a hole and gets nothing in return except a pat on the head. That isn\u2019t leadership; it\u2019s the political instincts of Lassie.<\/p>\n

The Greens\u2019 amening of Miss Sturgeon\u2019s gambit is different from previous acts of handmaidenry because it breaks the party\u2019s pledge to the voters. In the manifesto they were elected on last May, the Greens promised:<\/p>\n

\u2018Citizens should be able to play a direct role in the legislative process: on presenting a petition signed by an appropriate number of voters, citizens should be able to trigger a vote on important issues of devolved responsibility. As we proposed on the one year anniversary of the Independence Referendum, this is the Scottish Greens\u2019 preferred way of deciding to hold a second referendum on Independence. If a new referendum is to happen, it should come about by the will of the people, and not be driven by calculations of party political advantage. In such a referendum the Scottish Greens will campaign for independence.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

H\/T to Colby Cosh<\/a> for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is eager to get the voters back to the polls for another go-around for Scottish independence (well, not independence-independence, but separate-from-Britain-but-desperate-to-stay-in-the-EU-independence). Stephen Daisley comments on the situation as of Saturday: The SNP has managed to spin normally sceptical hacks the line that Downing Street was caught on the back foot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,62,53],"tags":[458,338,114,1069],"class_list":["post-37747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-europe","category-politics","tag-parliament","tag-scotland","tag-separatism","tag-theresamay"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9OP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37747"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37751,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37747\/revisions\/37751"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}