Voluntary Union and Popular Sovereignty

Scotland is a voluntary union of Scot and Gael and islanders from the northern oceans, of old, old enemies. The European Union is a voluntary union of new enemies, peoples who in living memory killed each other, who heaped up charnel houses.

The United Kingdom is too a voluntary union, trapped in the decayed shell of an obsolete constitution.

Parliamentary Sovereignty is dead, and the stürm und drang of UK politics is the consequence of that.

If it were alive then Brexit could be reversed simply: 38% of the vote in a General Election, a majority of 1 in the Commons. Parliament speaks.

All roads to the future are constitutional ones. Which to take is where we differ.

The Labour Party under Gordon Brown has recently published their own major constitutional proposal.

The analysis of the UK’s institutional failings is great, but the recommendations are wedded to parliamentary sovereignty. Gordon Brown’s proposals are a beginning not an end, because parliamentary soverignty won’t survive unscathed contact with the electorate that believes you work for us.

In 1989 the Scottish Claim of Right was proclaimed, and it was the political base on which first the Scottish Parliament and later the independence referendum were built.

We, gathered as the Scottish Constitutional Convention, do hereby acknowledge the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of Government best suited to their needs, and do hereby declare and pledge that in all our actions and deliberations their interests shall be paramount.

We further declare and pledge that our actions and deliberations shall be directed to the following ends: to agree a scheme for an Assembly or Parliament for Scotland; to mobilise Scottish opinion and ensure the approval of the Scottish people for that scheme; and to assert the right of the Scottish people to secure the implementation of that scheme.

The House of Commons librarian David Torrance made an interesting observation about the Claim of Right. The name goes back to the Claim Of Right Act of 1689 sitting alongside the English Bill of Rights. The novel element, the declaration of popular sovereignty, appeared from under a magicians hat. It had not featured before in the debates.

The reality was that the old nostrums had faded away and lost all meaning, and the right of the people to determine their form of government was the only possible, reasonable, appropriate form of words - the claim wrote itself.

Scottish politics is only different from English politics because Scotland reached this point 40 years early.