You’ve probably never heard of Elaine Stewart. She’s my local MP, one of the least distinguished Labour MPs out of the undistinguished bunch of careerists and lobby fodder elected to Westminster in July 2024, supposedly to represent Scottish constituencies. Stewart features amongst the six Labour MPs representing Scottish constituencies who appear in list compiled by PoliMonitor UK of the ten MPs who have spoken the least in the Commons and have submitted the fewest written questions since January 1 to December 31 2025.
Stewart was silent on Starmer’s proposal to slash benefits for disabled people, she said nothing when the universal winter fuel payment for pensioners was abolished, she sat on her hands as the Grangemouth workers and the Waspi women were betrayed. Since being elected she has been an obedient nodding donkey for the leadership of the Labour party, a political void with no apparent thoughts or opinions of her own. The only positive thing you can say about Elaine Stewart is that at least her husband hasn’t been arrested on suspicion of spying for China and she has never been reported as getting very drunk and trying to seduce a submarine commander, so there’s that.
The reason I bring up my local political nonentity is that I recently signed Believe in Scotland’s petition calling on Andy Burnham to respect Scotland’s right to decide its own future. On signing the petition an email will be sent in your name to your local MP and list MSP, demanding that they support a second independence referendum. Before hastily performing a screeching U-turn, Burnham had said there should be another independence referendum when there was majority support for independence. Most opinion polls over the past year have shown a majority in favour of independence. The majority Burnham spoke of already exists. Additionally, in May this year, Scotland elected a Scottish Parliament with a record majority of pro-independence MSPs in favour of holding an independence referendum, a Scottish Parliament with a majority of pro-independence MSPs was the accepted benchmark for triggering an independence referendum right up until the anti-independence parties unilaterally changed their minds and shifted the goalposts, effectively declaring that on the topic of another referendum they would anoint themselves the victors in Scottish parliament elections which they had lost.
You can sign the petition here:
https://www.believeinscotland.org/indyref_petition
To my surprise, Elaine Stewart replied within a couple of days of the petition being sent, well maybe it’s not such a surprise seeing as how she doesn’t have much else to do other than relentless self-promotion on Facebook.
Also unsurprising was the content of her reply, which can briefly be summarised as follows: I was elected on a manifesto to oppose another referendum, so suck it up. Funny how she was rather less concerned about Labour’s promises to the Grangemouth workers, the Waspi women or the GB Energy jobs supposedly coming to Aberdeen.
In this context it’s worth noting that Stewart was elected on 36.5% of votes cast. This is rather less than the 38.2% of the constituency vote which the SNP won across Scotland in the more recent Holyrood election held in May. The mandate of which she’s so proud is rather weaker than the mandate won by the SNP and the Scottish Greens in May.
I do not believe for one second that Stewart or her staff drafted this reply themselves, decisions on Scotland’s constitutional future are far above the pay grade of a lobby fodder backbench MP. The skeleton of the reply was presumably drafted by Labour HQ and tweaked to suit the needs of individual MPs.
Stewart’s reply contained a number of outright lies. It’s important to highlight these as they tell us the new line of defence to which Labour has shifted the constitutional goalposts following Burnham’s inadvertent admission that the trigger for a referendum in Scotland should be the same as that specified in the Good Friday Agreement for Northern Ireland. She wrote:
“As we all recognise, Northern Ireland and Scotland have different historical experience and therefore distinct constitutional arrangements. In the Prime Minister’s remarks in the House of Commons, specifically in answer to a question by Chris Law MP, he was simply highlighting that there is no consensus for an independence referendum in Scotland and nor is there a clear basis to suggest that a majority of people in Northern Ireland presently wish to separate from the United Kingdom.”
This is gaslighting pure and simple. We all heard exactly what Burnham said and his words were crystal clear. He agreed that the trigger for a referendum in Scotland should be the same as that in Northern Ireland, he categorically was not “highlighting that there is no consensus for an independence referendum in Scotland.” That’s retrospective back pedalling by a party which realised its new golden boy had just uttered a gaffe and undone a decade of stonewalling on a crucial issue.
This “consensus” line is the British nationalists’ new bulwark. Stewart continues with another barefaced rewriting of Scottish political history, saying:
“Unlike the situation today, ahead of 2014 a consensus did exist across both the Scottish Parliament and the U.K. Parliament, across all political parties and across civic society. No such consensus exists today.”
The first sentence in that statement is an out and out lie, pure and simple. Some of us were paying close attention to the referendum debate between the 2011 Holyrood election and the signing of the Edinburgh Agreement. Labour’s new line that there was some cosy consensus in favour of an independence referendum across Holyrood, Westminster, all political parties and Scottish civic society is risible self-serving bollocks.
In 2011, the SNP won 45.4% of the constituency vote on a turnout of 50.5%. There was no cross-party consensus on an independence referendum and it is frankly insulting for Stewart and the Labour party to lie so blatantly about events we all remember. Then as now, Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems were vehement in their opposition to an independence referendum and furiously opposed moves by the Scottish Government to hold one.
The only existing consensus was the widespread and as then untested belief that the election of a pro-independence majority to the Scottish Parliament would be a democratic mandate which would trigger an independence referendum. The anti-independence parties were content to concede this only because they believed it was impossible for the pro-independence parties to win a majority, at that time the Scottish Greens were not as definitively pro-independence as they are now.
There was also no UK Supreme Court ruling that the Scottish Parliament did not have the legal right to hold a referendum, reeling from their defeat in the 2011 election and out of power in Westminster, Labour was not politically confident enough to challenge any attempt by the Scottish Government to test the legalities of a referendum without Westminster’s consent.
Ultimately the Prime Minister David Cameron conceded as he was convinced that the No campaign would secure an easy victory well in excess of 66%, putting the issue to rest and politically de-fanging the new SNP majority in Holyrood. There was no more a cross party consensus across Holyrood and Westminster then than there is now. To state that there was and that such a consensus is a prerequisite for another referendum is a bare faced lie designed to act as a cover for a unilateral veto by the anti-independence parties.
As noted above, the only consensus was the widespread understanding that the election of a pro-independence majority to Holyrood would trigger a referendum. Labour and its anti-independence fellow-travellers have since reneged on that understanding and are now citing their own refusal as evidence for the lack of a cross-party consensus on a referendum even though no such consensus existed in 2011-2012 nor was it deemed necessary.
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After wrestling for hours with PayPal, I have finally compiled a list of the emails of almost everyone who makes a regular monthly donation to the blog and will soon launch the weekly bonus premium email article for those who make a monthly contribution to the blog. I had hoped to launch this in June but unfortunately it will be delayed for a while. There are a number of people whose emails I am unable to find. Some people donate monthly by Ko-Fi, one makes a monthly donation to last year’s GoFundMe fundraiser, a few people make monthly payments directly by bank transfer. I cannot access the email addresses of any of these people and so cannot add them to the new mailing list. If you are one of these folk, please email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com and I’ll add you to the mailing list.
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