Scotland’s right to decide

I work full time, enjoy it very much, and being self-employed sometimes have the chance to dip in and out of broadcasts between interviews, legal aid applications, billing and mopping up tears of frustration, desperation and hopelessness. There’s usually a wee bit of time for young students keen to learn the law, volunteers seeking advice on how best to assist those seeking support and the occasional passerby who desires a debate on the pros and cons of independence and feels the need to correct my disloyalty to the party of government.

Today though was an education.

I watched and listened as a series of newbies outlined the case for independence; couldn’t avoid concluding that there was collusion in their speeches, was heartened to hear views that we are not too wee, poor or stupid to be a successful independent country but was saddened by the obvious choreography. The speakers for independence were crystal clear in their views but also lacking in imagination and guile as to how we can achieve that precious status without delay. Not a one departed from the party line that it’s just not fair, not cricket, for Westminster to refuse another independence referendum.

There’s the rub; it will remain so for as long as our Scottish leaders deny the sovereignty of the Scottish people and consider that the only route to independence is via the consent given by a parliament of a foreign country.

Scotland no longer needs to hear why independence is a worthwhile, honourable and ultimately productive necessary cause. Losses and austerity since at least 2014 have proven that the cost of the Union is far too high. I don’t need to quote to you statistics on losses through unnecessary poverty, addictions, hopelessness, ill health, reducing healthy life expectancy – most of us know in stark personal terms what that means. Scotland requires a credible roadmap to independence. It is only with independence that we will raise the expectations of the people of Scotland to realistic and fair levels and, importantly, realise those aspirations. We need to vote for it using Scotland’s rules, Scotland’s boundaries, Scotland’s values and not a framework granted by Westminster as if we were a subservient, subordinate, devoid of power, control or sovereignty.

We have the Declaration of Arbroath; we hold onto the Claim of Right; we have the Scotland Act; all that we now require and demand is that our FM, because it is in his gift, today and every day of this 5 year term, is that he grants what it has been within the power of our devolved Assembly to grant for more than a decade – a single issue election, a de facto referendum, where we elect a pro independence majority for #IndependenceNothingLess.  Whilst we are an ancient nation we must not become the only country in modern times to discover oil and become a desert. Collapse Holyrood John, forthwith, and enable our people to vote for Independence. Westminster can’t fail to respect the outcome; the international community will and you’ll have your place in history – the man who built upon the legacies of Robert McIntyre, Winnie Ewing, Jim Sillars, Margo MacDonald and Alex Salmond. #AllianceToLiberateScotland. #MakeIndyHappen. #IndependenceNothingLess.