WHEN MYTHOLOGY BECOMES POLITICS 

A guest article from regular guest columnist Mia.

WHEN MYTHOLOGY BECOMES POLITICS

The day Scotland sent 56 Scottish nationalist MPs to Westminster should have marked the beginning of negotiations to end the treaty of union.

The UK is a parliamentary democracy relying on consent.  Sending three unionist MPs out of 59 is no consent from Scotland for this union to continue.  It is a mandate to end it.  Even Thatcher and Major accepted that.

What approved the articles of union on 3 October 1706 was not a referendum, a section 30 or a gold standard of anything. It was a majority of Scottish MPs voting for the union.

If a simple majority of Scottish MPs was enough to start this union, then a simple majority of Scottish MPs voting for it to end it must be enough to stop it.  The door through which Scotland was pushed in, can also be the door Scotland uses to walk out.

2015 was not a one off either.  Scotland sent majorities of nationalist MPs in 2017 and 2019.

So why is this union still in existence?

I can think in two reasons:• As designated driver we have a designer PR product with no interest in independence and who, for six years, has kept the wheels of our indy-bus either spinning off the ground or turning backwards.• We have a majority of nationalist MPs whose commitment to independence appears to have succumbed to the charms and perks of the green seats, have given up on their now meaningless “here to settle up not to settle down”, and seemingly have become immune at being used to undermine Scotland’s sovereignty, by continuing to sit in that parliament and legitimising both that parliament and the idea that only England can end the treaty.

Forcing Scotland to remain in this union when there is no longer consent for it is not innocuous.  It is causing Scotland harm. Brexit induced empty shelves in our supermarket and sky rocketing prices are example of that harm, as it is the theft of our powers.

Scotland refused consent for Brexit 5 years ago. So why is this union still in existence?

6 years of nationalist majorities and yet, our young people still has to pack their bags and go down south to find opportunities because, with the excuse of having a much larger population, our partner has continued for those 6 years to drain Scotland of revenues.

So why is this union still in existence?

The horrific number of COVID deaths in Scotland is another example of the harm that delaying the end of this union is inflicting on Scotland.  Despite leading a majority of pro indyMSPs and MPs and having the power to end this toxic union at any time in the last 6 years, the designer PR product and the person the SNP designated as driver of our indy bus, instead of locking the borders chose to play the 4-nations’ game to keep the illusion of a happy clappy union.  As a consequence, we ended up with well over 9,000 people dying of COVID in Scotland instead of just 28 like in New Zealand.

So why is this union still in existence?

Political obstinacy can never justify that harm on Scotland, nor the responsibility for it can be passed on to London.  Johnson has a mandate to govern England, sure, but not Scotland.  If Johnson is governing Scotland is because our driver has decided to hand over to him her own mandate on a silver plate, perhaps so she does not have to use it and can hide behind the tories to escape accountability for what she is not prepared to do to prevent harm on Scotland.

Scotland did not give the Tories democratic consent to govern us nor gave the SNP consent to undermine our Claim of Right by handing our mandate out to the tories.

So why is this union still in existence?

So far, this reluctant driver has missed the stop at the Article50 vote crossroads; the emergency exit in the power grab tunnel; the end of the road warning sign at the January 2020transition bypass; the blaring siren on Northern Ireland protocol Lane; quite a few stops in Treaty of Union Breach Gate; the stop at the 56% pro-indy Avenue and unbelievably,she does not appear to be doing much progress at capitalising on the COP26 dual carriageway despite driving in circles around the area trying to look relevant.

So why are all the SNP MPs letting this reluctant driver to remain at the wheel and missing our main stops?

Even when the Withdrawal bill, the UK-EU TCA and the Australia-UK FTA sinking hole warnings were in the rear mirror for ages, this driver continued to stand on the gas driving us backwards and right in to them.

Now this driver appears to have set the indy bus is on course to go over the Cassandra bridge of democracy and, if we survive it as a nation, towards the sinister cliff edge where autonomy meets the motorway of absolute rule.

Where are the SNP MPs letting this reluctant driver take us?

I don’t know. But at present, it feels like she is driving our indy-bus towards the Marianas Trench of autonomy rather than to independence.

How have the powers that be managed to keep us quiet for six years in this bus with such reluctant driver in charge?

By getting her to continue promising us a gold standard unicorn: a referendum breed that is so rare, so unique and so genetically impossible that will never be found.

We have been led to believe that every stop this driver misses and the bit of pain that comes with her loss of each opportunity would bring us nearer to that myth, the “gold standard” and to a yes vote.

But plenty of stops have come and gone, plenty of pain and regret for our many lost opportunities are haunting us and yet, the gold standard referendum stop never arrives.  What we are arriving  at instead is an increasingly unpleasant smell of betrayal and dereliction of duty.

For six years we have been told “it will be the next one … or the one after that”.  But whenever we think we are anywhere near “the one” chance, this driver floors the gas and flies past it.  

If what you are after is an adrenaline rush, welcome aboardNicola’s bus – nothing beats the gravity defying speed at which she drove past the May 2021 Supermajority stop.  She was in such a hurry to miss it that the indy-bus almost took off the ground at that point.  But if what you are after is independence, then this driver is not the one that will get it.  Six wasted years and a hell of a lot of powers down the union drain are more than enough proof of that.

This driver has been in control of the indy bus for seven long years, and yet, what powers exactly did she brought back to Scotland?

I cannot recall a single one.  But I can recite a long list of all the powers she has lost us.

When you compare this driver’s performance with her predecessor, the difference is abysmal.  Her predecessor would have never ever missed an opportunity to bring powers back home and will never allow an inconvenience to be used to lose them. I may be unfair here, but I do not remember even one instance when this current driver actually capitalised on any of the many opportunities we have had to secure any real benefit for Scotland.

Was that due to incompetence or unwillingness?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that lately I am so bored and fed up with her repetitive and meaningless platitudes that I am finding some sort of amusement in attempting to catch a glimpse of the ventriloquist’s hand through her back.

The driver and the ventriloquists’ club down in London have kept us and the SNP MPs and MSPs compliant through 7 years of crushing disappointment under this reluctant driver.  To distract us they have used the promise of a referendum unicorn they never intend to deliver.  But what have they used to silence and tie the hands of our MSPs and MPs Holyrood and Westminster? A bit of cheese and a mouse trap?  Or something far more sinister?

There was a time when the SNP accepted a majority of SNP MPs as a mandate to end the union.  Now that we have delivered that majority 3 times, the allergic to independence mandarins of the SNP have the brass neck to tell us it is not enough

But who gets to decide what enough is? Shouldn’t that be the passengers in the bus rather than a rogue driver?

How can we ever feel we have exercised our self-determination if we are constantly told it must be somebody else with vested interests in preserving the union who gets to decide how and when we can exercise that self-determination?

How about we decide it ourselves?  After 6 years of worthless wait, isn’t it about time?

I don’t see why we should give more credibility to opinions of England MPs with no democratic mandate over Scotland, or biased views of political rejects parachuted undemocratically to a free seat in that huge boil in democracy’s face that is the“House of Lords”, or the unionist propaganda churned by attention-seeking hasbeens forever peddling that other myth of a federalism utopia even themselves don’t believe in, than to the opinions of the average Scottish voter.

We will never exercise self-determination until we can do it freely, without constraints. And by freely I mean until the people of Scotland, and not somebody else, sets up the rules. Not the EU.  No the USA.  Not “the UK”. Not England. Not the crown. Just us.

As it is, in practical terms, the obstinacy in continuing to deny democracy by this rogue driver has already lost us 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021 elections as great independence plebiscites opportunities.  We could be independent by now.  Looking at the supermarket empty shelves and those 9,000 COVID deaths comparing them with the 28 in New Zealand, should we thank this driver for her six years-long obstinacy and lack of vision?  I think not.

After being led into a constitutional cul-de-sack, we have to start asking ourselves how long someone can claim credibly that a referendum is the only acceptable democratic route when those same people who make such claim have handed England’s government a veto with the power to stop it indefinitely or are denying it can ever happen, and when the excuse of that referendum has been used to justify putting Scotland through another six years of abuse and pain.

The continuous pretend political wrestling match between the“asking permission” camp and the teams “not allowing at all”or “maybe allowing in 50 years’ time”, has the appearance of a carefully designed multi-party collusion to and fro game whose aim is to perpetuate the promise of a referendum myth as a control tool to systematically block any other perfectly legitimate route the people of Scotland could have taken to independence already during the last six years.

Every now and then we have some unionist puppet catapulted to the propaganda front pages to tell the Administrator of England’s labour office in Scotland or some tory or another that “they must agree to the referendum”.

Is that because they had a “wake up and see the light”revelation moment?

Perhaps. At some point in the long course of evolution pigs might also grow wings and become able to fly, but that is an event not predicted to happen in the foreseeable future. Same with this.  A cynical but more likely explanation for that change of heart could be that these people are aware that for the gold standard referendum unicorn to remain useful as the handbrake of Scotland’s independence, we have to actually believe it is going to materialise at some point.  Because if we don’t, it becomes useless.  So every now and then they have to give us hope the unicorn actually exists and is within reach.  Not too close, but in reach. It looks like a game, doesn’t it?. Sadly it appears to be a game that has been played on us for six years.

We have had three consecutive absolute majorities of pro-independence MPs in Westminster, but they have not made any difference to Scotland’s constitutional situation because of complacency from our nationalist SNP MPs and because of that promise of a referendum unicorn that appears designed to remain always as a myth, never a reality.

There is nothing stopping a proper SNP leader to take over from the reluctant driver and use that majority of nationalist MPs to put to Scotland’s MPs, the end of the treaty of union to a vote.  I actually wonder why this has not been done already.

There are much less hidden corners or backdoors the British state could exploit to manipulate the result in that option.  The only thing it can do is attempt to prevent it by brute force, as in my own personal opinion it might have already been quite busy doing for a while.  For example by hijacking the SNP and dismantling its democratic structures to take its pro indywheels off, by hijacking the prosecution service and using it as a weapon to bring malicious prosecutions against potential leaders, or threatening to send juries packing so Scotland’s courts could be quickly transformed into the conveyor belt for a fast delivery service of political stitch ups.

But this kind of abuse of power can only go for so long before the electorate (and everybody else in the world) realise the UK has become a failed state that no longer has a credible status quo and can only survive by brutally suppressing democracy, justice and political opposition.

It is in the best interests of unionism to move our attention away from the advantages of ending the union with our majority of nationalist MPs, and towards something where the British state can stick both hands up to their elbows and manipulate with gusto.  So far, my hat off to them: they have managed to distract us with the referendum unicorn for six years.

For as long as Sturgeon is driving the indy bus, the referendum is as much a mythical creature as the flying pig is.  We need an honest pro-independence driver who knows how to wear a backbone to use the majority of MPs to end the union now, before the British state finds a way to stop us in 2024 getting another majority.  Which they will try.

If the SNP cannot/will not deliver independence from now to 2024, after what will be 9 years of wasted majorities, is there any point in wasting again our votes sending SNP MPs to Westminster to make absolutely no progress?

If they can unglue themselves from the comforts of the green seats, and remember the reason why they were sent to Westminster in the first place, I leave the SNP MPs the floor to answer that question.

MY COMMENTS

My thanks to Mia for another excellent article and for putting out there those difficult questions for the SNP Leadership. what have you done with the mandates? Why do they lie unused? We see no progress, we see capitulation like the agreement to remove the Saltires inside and out of Bute House. What self respecting Independence leader would have agreed to that? Even if it granted access for a few selfies with some of the important leaders at Cop26, not formal meetings but selfies or pictures from the National for the album. We lie powerless, exposed to the World while our elected leader will sacrifice anything to appear relevant. Its a tragedy and what should represent the best opportunity ever to advance Independence on the world stage.

I am, as always

Yours for Scotland

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