qwertyfan – Aye We Can

The Cardiff Agreement marks a new chapter in the path to independence

qwertyfan — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 18:06:47 +0000

On Monday there was a historic meeting in Cardiff, the first time ever that pro-independence First Ministers from Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland met and agreed a common framework for the pursuit of self-determination for their respective nations. The meeting was a sharp rebuke to UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham, telling him that self-determination can never be “off the table” that the constitutional futures of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland will not be held hostage to the political whims of a British Prime Minister and will certainly not be vetoed by a man whose political mandate derives from a victory in an English Westminster by-election.

Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill and Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald appeared alongside John Swinney and Rhun ap Iowerth at a press conference in Cardiff on Monday, where they jointly declared that “Westminster’s time is coming to an end.”

The British state now faces a three pronged concerted push for clarity on the path to independence or reunification referendums from Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast, making it much more difficult for Burnham to continue to pretend that there’s no issue around exactly how the Celtic nations exercise their right to self-determination in this supposedly United Kingdom. However the Agreement goes beyond this and also sets out plans for Scotland and Wales to reject what it calls Whitehall’s broken economic model and to share ideas on economic growth and the expansion of energy resources.

The three first ministers are not wrong, Westminster has indulged conservative fiscal policy to the point of self-sabotage and has forced Brexit on Scotland and Northern Ireland even though both voted against it. Unlike the case with Northern Ireland, Scotland was given no Brexit concessions at all, despite over 62% voting against it in Scotland and with a pro-remain majority in every Scottish local authority area. The refusal of Westminster to concede any Brexit concessions to Scotland was all the more galling as the promise that a No vote in the 2014 independence referendum was the only way to guarantee Scotland’s membership of the EU was a key part of Better Together’s pitch to the electorate.

Westminster then rubbed salt in the wound by using the Brexit Scotland voted against as an excuse to break another of Better Together’s promises and to sideline and by-pass Holyrood by intervening directly in Scotland on devolved matters.

All this was politically easier for Westminster as it was able to pick off an isolated Holyrood and attack it in isolation. Now with the three devolved governments all in agreement that they want more powers are are all dissatisfied with the Westminster model, any attack by Westminster on the powers of one devolved parliament will provoke a united response from all three.

Northern Ireland already has a route to a unification referendum specified in the Good Friday Agreement, the Six Counties also have a power sharing arrangement which ensures that if there is a Republican first minister there must be a Loyalist deputy first minister. There is also recognition that the three are at different stages in their political struggles for self-determination. Sinn Féin seeks a unification referendum for Northern Ireland by 2030. Scotland, where recent polling suggests that there is already a majority in favour of independence, would like an independence referendum as soon as possible and certainly before the next Holyrood elections in 2031. Meanwhile Plaid Cymru does not currently seek a definitive timetable for an independence referendum as the party is cognisant that there is still much work to be done to build the case for Welsh independence, with public opinion on independence in Wales being approximately at the level of support for independence in Scotland some 15 to twenty years ago.

With these differences in mind, although all three first ministers have pledged to cooperate and work towards their common goals, the formal agreement has been signed only by John Swinney on behalf of the Scottish Government and Rhun ap Iorwerth on behalf of the Welsh Government.

The meeting and subsequent Cardiff Agreement represent an important milestone on the path to the end of Westminster rule in the three Celtic nations of the UK and heralds the beginning of a new era of cooperation between the three.

A lot of politics is about theatre and the creation of narratives, what the three first ministers achieved today was a powerful statement of intent and an open challenge to Andy Burnham who will meet with all three in a few weeks time, they have collectively informed him in no uncertain terms that he does not get to decide what is “off the table” when it comes to the right of the peoples of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland to decide their constitutional futures for themselves.

You can tell that the usual anti-independence suspects are rattled by the meeting. The deeply unpleasant Alan Cochrane, who is apparently still a thing, fulminated in The Telegraph that in Cardiff “a sinister cabal is plotting nothing less than the end of the United Kingdom.” He’s unwittingly created a great name for a band: “Welcome to the stage, Sinister Cabal, performing their hit single The end of the United Kingdom.” ,

With much hand-wringing, Cochrane blames devolution for fostering what he insists in his Westminster-centric way on calling “separatism.” What Cochrane does not and cannot address is why so many people in the non-English parts of the UK are so scunnered with the Westminster system that they’d prefer independence or union with the rest of the island of Ireland. People like Cochrane are incapable of formulating an intellectually coherent answer to that question because to do so means admitting to the deceit and failures of successive Westminster governments, above all the corrupt and chaotic Conservative governments of which Cochrane has been such an enthusiastic advocate.

We are in new territory now. Independence for Scotland and Wales and the unification of Ireland are firmly on the political agenda. Westminster’s stalling tactic of refusing to engage with the issue has run out of road.

You can read the full text of the Cardiff Agreement here:
https://www.gov.scot/publications/cardiff-agreement-cytundeb-caerdydd-agreement-between-welsh-and-scottish-government/

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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The annual blog fundraiser has reached its initial target but will keep running for a few weeks more. The initial target represented the bare minimum necessary to keep the blog going. Many thanks to everyone who has contributed. There are a number of ways to donate. You can contribute to my fundraiser on GoFundMe, the link is here.

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The positive case for the Union will be along shortly, this time they mean it.

qwertyfan — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 13:49:50 +0000

The flag waving We’re not nationalists we’re British brigade are seriously rattled by the Celtic Alliance, although of course they’d never admit to it, they’re currently doing their best impression of the Catherine Tate character Lauren, screaming, “Lookit my face am I bovvered?” as they go red white blue and puce in their ostensibly unbovvered faces. Eight elected members of the DUP are travelling to Edinburgh to set out a “positive case for the Union” on Thursday at a Shared Heritage, Shared Future Summit with the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland.

This is rather like the ebola virus leading a Travel to Congo campaign for the Kinshasa tourist board, or Countess Elizabeth Báthory – who infamously slaughtered local virginal peasant girls so she could bathe in their blood in an attempt to restore the lost beauty of her youth – advertising a health spa where you can bathe up to your knees in Fenian blood. I have very little in the way of shared heritage with members of the Orange Order, and I am quite sure a very large majority of 21st century Scots feel the same. Scotland shouldn’t become independent because of the shared heritage of drunken brawls in Duke Street outside the Bristol Bar is certainly a novel argument. The Orange Order represents the ugly sectarian disease of Anglo-British nationalism which most people in Scotland find viscerally repugnant. Sectarianism is not culture, it’s just hate.

Not even the Tory and Reform supporting commentators in the Der Stürmer that is The Herald’s comment section were impressed with this idea, even though some of them with a staggering lack of logic still managed to blame John Swinney and the SNP for it. What was also lacking in The Herald’s comment section was any attempt by the paper’s frothing Unionists to formulate a non Orange positive case for the Union of their own.

Long term readers of this blog may recall the fruitless wait for the positive case for the Union which was always just about to be published during the 2014 independence referendum campaign. Assorted Better Together supporters frequently announced that they would shortly set out a positive case for the Union, yet that positive case for the union proved to be more elusive than Nessie, at least some people claim to have photographed Nessie and there’s a clear public idea about what she looks like. The few attempts to formulate a so-called positive case for the Union quickly descended into scaremongering about how Scotland needs Westminster to do all the things that normal independent countries do but which Scotland would be incapable of doing, because, reasons, or they became appeals to irrelevancies which would remain unaffected by Scottish independence. In the end the referendum came and went and with the No vote in the bag the Westminster parties got right back to their traditional habits of lies and deceit and any thought of a positive case for the Union went the same way as Magrit Curran’s seat in the House of Commons.

These irrelevancies typically included as part of a supposed positive case for the Union comprised such things as a shared history and culture, we’d still have a shared history, with history the clue is in the name, it’s in the past. The past remains unaffected by the future. Scotland also has shared history with Norway and Ireland, this however does not constitute an argument that we should be governed from the Dáil or the Storting. There are undoubtedly shared cultural and historic links between the nations of the British and Irish archipelago, the problem about using these as an argument against Scottish independence is that Scotland shares these links with Ireland as much as with England and Wales, and in any event these links will remain unaffected by Scottish independence. Like many Scots, especially those of us from the West of Scotland, I feel a much stronger cultural tie with Ireland than I do with England. British nationalists might like us to forget the fact but Ireland, or at least twenty six counties of it, is very much independent and still a part of the European Union. There is a distinct lack of appetite in Ireland to come back under Westminster rule, despite the occasional musings of some of the more delusional British nationalists.

Another perennial favourite was an appeal to cross border family ties, as though in the event of Scottish independence you’d no longer have a cousin in Bolton. Family ties are unaffected by international borders, especially by passport free international borders such as those within the Common Travel Area of Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands which an independent Scotland would most assuredly remain a part of.

The case for the Union is based squarely on scaremongering, threats, and unremitting negativity about Scotland and its potential. That’s how it was in 2014 and it’s even more so now post-Brexit and with twelve years of broken Better Together promises.

The fundamental issue facing the DUP, the Orange Order, or anyone else seeking to formulate a positive case for the Union is that if such a compelling case existed, we’d have learned all about it years ago. It would have been trumpeted ad nauseam in Scotland’s overwhelmingly anti-independence media. BBC Scotland would actually have spent money on home produced Scottish programming and years ago would have commissioned a six part series all about it fronted by Susan Calman and John Barrowman. The mere fact that anyone in 2026 is still promising that they are going to announce a positive case for the Union, all by itself tells us that no such case exists.

Others have responded to the Celtic Alliance by throwing their dummies out of the pram. Rupert Lowe of the neo-fascist Restore Britain party blames the devolution settlement for creating a demand for self-determination in the Celtic nations and has announced that a Restore government would “roll back” devolution. Lowe has the cart before the horse as usual. Devolution was an attempt to prevent the demand for independence, not the cause of it. Admittedly rolling back devolution would be amongst the least of our worries with a Restore Britain government which would also roll back on common decency, humanity, and fundamental human rights, deporting millions of legally settled people and imposing a Christian fascist regime. Lowe would then find that the clamour for Celtic self-determination would be deafening.

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Labour’s lying reply to Believe in Scotland’s petition

qwertyfan — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 13:57:06 +0000

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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Burnham’s expected reverse ferret

qwertyfan — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 18:23:03 +0000

Andy Burnham has replied to John Swinney after the latter wrote to him asking for a meeting to put the process for triggering a Scottish independence referendum on a legal basis after Burnham replied to a question from SNP MP Chris Law at PMQs on Wednesday asking him about that process detailed in the Good Friday Agreement for triggering a border poll in Northern Ireland and pointing out the lack of fairness that there is no equivalent process for Scotland. Burnham had previously asserted that a unification referendum for Northern Ireland was off the table, a line he has also used with respect to a Scottish independence referendum.

Burnham’s reply went as follows: “He mentions the Good Friday Agreement, and I will stick to it 100%. And I would also remind him on that question of a border poll, it is to be considered by the Northern Ireland Secretary when there is a clear consensus in the country, when public opinion has changed to the point where the call has to be considered. I would say exactly the same situation in Scotland.”

Burnham added: “I am not aware that there is a majority of public support for another referendum, and until that changes, Mr Speaker, there won’t be one.”

In his reply to John Swinney the screeching of a Westminster U-turn can be heard all the way from London. Burnham replaced Starmer but is more than happy to continue with Starmer’s intelligence insulting practice of pretending that he did not say what we all heard him say and that if he did say it, it did not mean what the words he uttered normally mean.

In his letter of reply to the First Minister Burnham is now claiming that he was only highlighting “there is no consensus for an independence referendum in Scotland”

It’s one thing for a politician to admit to a misstep, it’s something else entirely to be gaslighted so blatantly. In his letter to the First Minister there was also another example of the rewriting of history to suit the Westminster agenda. Burnham wrote:

“Unlike the situation today, ahead of 2014 such a consensus did exist across both the Scottish Parliament and the UK Parliament, across all political parties and across civic society. In that referendum the people of Scotland made clear their continued commitment to Scotland remaining part of the UK.”

This is a flat out lie.

There was no consensus in Scotland about an independence referendum prior to the 2014 referendum and to assert there was is disingenuous nonsense. Support for independence was running at about 30% at the time while the Labour and Conservative parties, both in Scotland and in Westminster were vehement in their opposition to an independence referendum. The referendum only took place, not because of a consensus “across all political parties and across civic society” but because the then Prime Minister David Cameron was persuaded that supporters for independence would win only around 30% or less in a Scottish independence referendum and such a result would effectively kill off Scottish independence as a political force and neuter Alex Salmond and the SNP.

A consensus had bugger all to do with it. The only consensus which existed at the time was the widespread belief that if the independence parties secured a majority in Holyrood that would constitute a mandate for an independence referendum. The SNP won that majority in 2011, much to the shock and horror of the Labour and Conservative parties. The Westminster parties did not believe it was possible for the SNP to win a majority when the devolved parliament was established. That consensus has since broken down purely because of the refusal of the Westminster parties to accept the outcome of Holyrood elections.

It’s worth pointing out that the SNP won its 2011 majority with 45.4% of the constituency vote and 44.0% of the list vote. Turn out was only 50.5%. The SNP did not win a majority of votes cast and did not come close to securing the backing of a majority of the electorate. In fact less than a quarter of the electorate voted SNP in the Scottish election which led to an independence referendum. But at the time all this – correctly – was not held to matter as the 2011 vote was a parliamentary election not a referendum and in a parliamentary election the only criterion for assessing victory or whether a party has won a mandate is by the number of seats won.

It’s only since 2011 that the Westminster parties have started to apply the rules of referendums to the very different democratic exercise that is a parliamentary election. You don’t need to be a genius to work out that this is because the Westminster parties have not been able to win a Scottish Parliament election since 2011 and are shifting the goalposts in a desperate attempt to fend off a second independence referendum, a referendum which they know as we do that they would lose.

Burnham’s letter represents another attempt to shift the goalposts with its talk of a consensus which never existed.

What’s really going on here is that Burnham did not appreciate the significance of what he said at PMQs and is now performing a desperate reverse ferret in an attempt to get himself out of a political difficulty of his own making. His problem is that we all heard him say what he said, the meaning of the words he uttered was perfectly clear and he cannot take them back now if he hopes to retain an iota of credibility. He’s just told us that he is as slippery and dishonest as the man he replaced because he was slippery and dishonest and in the process has signed the death warrant for the Labour party in Scotland and with it any longer to medium term hopes of keeping the United Kingdom together.

Whether Burnham likes it or not – spoiler alert he hates it – Burnham’s political naivety has unleashed the independence genie from the bottle and it cannot be put back in. If majority support is sufficient to trigger a border poll in Northern Ireland then it must also be enough to trigger independence referendums in Scotland or Wales. If a border poll in Northern Ireland cannot be held within seven years of the last poll, as specified in the Good Friday Agreement, then the necessary time since the 2014 referendum has already passed and arguments about a “generation” are irrelevant. Burnham has unleashed all this and proven himself to be an untrustworthy liar like Starmer before him, all in his first week in office since the Commons returned after the summer recess.

After all this blogging – two posts in one day – I’m taking a couple of days off as it’s my birthday. Back next week.

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The independence cat is out of the bag

qwertyfan — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 13:43:55 +0000

Speaking to The National this week after Andy Burnham – perhaps inadvertently – set out the conditions for Scotland to hold an independence referendum, polling expert Professor John Curtice acknowledged that if an independence referendum were to be held tomorrow, Scotland would most likely vote Yes. He stated that a vote is going to be difficult to avoid, although avoiding another referendum has been the tactic of the anti-independence parties for the past decade. Burnham’s admission at PMQs signalled that the previous stance of refusing to acknowledge there is a demand for a referendum is now unsustainable. Curtice also noted that we are in the current position because the referendum of 2014 failed to settle the issue of Scotland’s constitutional status.

This raises the question that the anti-independence parties and their allies in the media can never ask. Why did 2014’s referendum fail to definitively settle the matter of Scotland’s constitutional status? After all, on the morning after the referendum, did the BBC not tell us that the 55.3% No vote was decisive?

The vote in 2014 was clearly neither definitive nor decisive, yet the parties opposed to independence are vehement in their refusal to concede that there should be another independence referendum, although they are incapable of giving a coherent answer to the question of why the issue of independence is still the single most important topic in Scottish politics twelve years on from that supposedly definitive referendum which the heirs to Better Together continue to insist, in the face of all the evidence, settled the matter for a generation.

Independence remains the defining fault line in Scottish politics, all other issues are refracted through it, whether parties support it or oppose it. Scotland has voted for Scottish Parliaments with a majority in favour of independence at every Holyrood election since the referendum. The SNP is now in its fifth term as the Scottish Government while the Scottish Greens are the third largest party in Holyrood, outnumbering the Tories. For any politician or pundit to continue to insist that the independence issue was settled in 2014 is frankly delusional.

On the rare occasions when opponents of independence are pressed to explain why independence remains very much a live political issue in Scotland, they resort to simplistic and facile attempts to blame the SNP for refusing to accept the result of the 2014 referendum or for “grievance mongering”. With global experience of Trump’s election denialism we all know now what refusing to accept the result of a democratic vote looks like. Trumpian denial of the validity of the 2014 vote is categorically not what the SNP, the Scottish Greens, and the other mainstream independence parties have been doing since 2014. All mainstream independence parties accept the outcome of the 2014 referendum.

As for “grievance mongering”, it is an objective fact that the promises made to the people of Scotland by the Better Together campaign in 2014 have not been kept. Scotland is not securely a part of the European Union, the UK is not a federal or even quasi federal state, the powers of the Scottish Parliament have not been legally enshrined in a way which prevents a Westminster government from changing them without the consent of Holyrood, devolution has not proven to be a continuing process.

Successive Westminster governments have used the Brexit which Scotland rejected by a large margin as an excuse to sideline the Scottish Parliament and to give Westminster the power to intervene in devolved matters. Westminster used a unilateral veto by the then Scotland Secretary to override Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform bill despite it being a bill within the competence of Holyrood which was passed with cross party support in the Scottish Parliament. Even opponents of the bill like Joanna Cherry accepted that this was an instance of Westminster overreach and acting like a colonial power.

The continuing refusal of Westminster to devolve energy policy means that energy rich Scotland continues to have some of the highest fuel bills in Europe even as the electricity produced by Scotland’s vast renewable energy resources is siphoned off to keep energy prices lower elsewhere in the UK. If Scotland had control of its own energy production and resources it would be truly transformative for the Scottish economy and domestic energy bills.

For all these reasons and many more, independence remains very much a live issue in Scotland. Had the Better Together parties kept all the promises they made to the people of Scotland in 2014, support for Scottish independence would most likely have returned to the levels it was at in opinion polling prior to the 2014 independence referendum campaign.

For the Better Together parties facing up to the question of why independence remains very much a live issue in Scotland means acknowledging that they have – to put it mildly – fallen very far short of fulfilling the promises and commitments which they made in 2014 in order to secure the No vote they so craved. That in turn means acknowledging there is a moral and political justification for a second referendum. That’s something they have tried to sidestep by dint of pretending that independence is not really a live issue after all. After yet another Scottish election which returned a record pro-independence majority to Holyrood and a Labour party in Scotland which looks moribund, simple denialism is no longer a viable political strategy. Andy Burnham let the independence cat out of the bag at PMQs this week, even though he may not have truly appreciated the significance of his admission. Simply denying or ignoring the demand for independence is no longer an option, the UK Government and the anti-independence parties must now be hounded until a mechanism for triggering a referendum has been agreed.

First Minister John Swinney has now written to Burnham asking for a meeting to discuss how to put the principle which the Prime Minister conceded to at PMQs onto a firm legal footing. In his letter, the First Minister said Burnham’s admission the same rules should apply to Scotland as they do to Northern Ireland is “a long-overdue acceptance of the reality that the people of Scotland will decide their own future, not the UK Government”, adding that it is “a clear endorsement of the fact that the UK must be a voluntary Union”.

Plaid Cymru’s Westminster leader Liz Saville Roberts has said that the same principles must also apply to Wales. A special event organised by the campaign group Yes for EU which will look at how the Celtic Alliance can help boost Scottish and Welsh independence efforts is due to take place this weekend in Edinburgh. The event will explore the impact of the Celtic Alliance on aspirations for Scottish and Welsh independence, Irish unification, and EU membership.

Details of the event are here: Will the Celtic Alliance help Scottish independence & EU membership?

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Burnham’s crack in the constitutional dam

qwertyfan — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 14:17:33 +0000

In PMQs on Wednesday, Andy Burnham was asked by SNP MP Chris Law about the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) and the trigger for an Irish unification referendum, and after Burnham stated that he was aware of every word in the Good Friday Agreement, Law asked: “So he [Burnham] will therefore know that the Northern Ireland Act contains a provision for a referendum on leaving the United Kingdom, but no equivalent provision exists within the law for Scotland, ” continuing, “Does the Prime Minister recognise the people of Scotland have the same right, the equal right to choose their own future, and that the conditions for a second independence referendum should be set out in law?”

When Starmer was asked similar questions his typical response was to ignore the question entirely then to launch into an unrelated attack on the Scottish Government. Burnham’s reaction was interestingly different.

Burnham replied: “He mentions the Good Friday Agreement, and I will stick to it 100%.

“And I would also remind him on that question of a border poll, it is to be considered by the Northern Ireland Secretary when there is a clear consensus in the country, when public opinion has changed to the point where the call has to be considered.

“I would say exactly the same situation in Scotland.”

Burnham added: “I am not aware that there is a majority of public support for another referendum, and until that changes, Mr Speaker, there won’t be one.”

Despite what Burnham claimed about being aware of “every word” in the GFA, the treaty does not actually make any mention of a clear consensus being necessary in order to trigger a referendum on Irish reunification. In the context of Northern Ireland it is vanishingly unlikely that there will ever be a consensus on a reunification referendum, the word consensus implies that the nationalist and loyalist communities will both agree on the need for a referendum, that’s never going to happen. What the GFA actually says is that the secretary of state for Northern Ireland must hold a border poll if it appears likely to them that a majority of people in Northern Ireland would vote for Irish unification. That’s a very different proposition from a consensus.

We must not and cannot allow Burnham or any other anti-independence politician to shift the goalposts by insisting on a “consensus” instead of a majority. Despite recent attempts by some in the Labour party in Scotland to rewrite history there was no consensus in Scotland in 2012 in favour of an independence referendum, indeed support for independence in Scotland now is around 20% higher than it was in 2012. Those who oppose an independence referendum now were equally vehement in their opposition in 2012.

Although it makes no mention of a consensus being necessary, there’s a great deal of wriggle room in the GFA for the British Government. It does not specify whether this majority must be in excess of 55% or more or if 50% plus one would suffice, neither does it set out how the existence of this majority is to be determined, whether it’s by opinion polling or by election results. It is silent on how long the majority must have existed prior to a referendum being held. Crucially the GFA does not specify any means by which the Secretary of State can be compelled to hold a referendum if their opinion is at variance with that of the majority of Northern Ireland’s opinion poll findings, elected representatives, and civic bodies.

It is however progress for a British Prime Minister to concede that the conditions for Scotland holding an independence referendum are the same as those for Northern Ireland to hold a referendum on reunification. However what it means is that an independence referendum can only be held when in the subjective opinion of the Secretary of State for Scotland there should be one, although that Secretary of State has a very powerful political motivation for refusing to acknowledge that there’s a majority for independence and there is no Scottish mechanism for overriding their veto. This issue needs to be addressed. The democratic right of the people of Scotland to determine the future of Scotland cannot be subject to a veto from a single individual whether that is the Prime Minister or the Scotland Secretary. If we’re waiting for wee Dougie Alexander to become aware of a majority for independence we’re going to be in for a very long wait. Recent polling already points to the existence of a majority for independence in Scotland. YouGov polls and Scotland in Union’s diddy polls are the only polls which now regularly report a majority against independence.

Note that again, as I pointed out in a previous post, the opponents of independence are conflating two very different things, the wish for independence and the wish for an independence referendum.

The next step for the Scottish Government – and presumably the Welsh Government as well – should be to pin Burnham down on the specifics of how this majority is to be determined and to separate the issue of support for a referendum from support for independence. If this majority is to be decided by opinion polls then these must be polls using the agreed question from 2014, not biased questioning like that employed in Scotland in Union’s dummy spitting polls. There should also be agreement on the methodology of the polling to avoid statistical trickery that can shift the reported result in one direction or another. Above all that means addressing the issue of polling companies continuing to use weighting by the result of the 2014 referendum, a practice which artificially inflates the apparent No response at the expense of Yes. If polls are to play a critical constitutional role then it is imperative that there must be public confidence in their accuracy.

If election results are to be the defining factor then we risk finding ourselves locked into the current position where the electorate keeps electing a Scottish Parliament with a majority for an independence referendum only for that majority to be repeatedly dismissed. The alternative, for Westminster to insist that an absolute majority of the electorate must vote for pro-independence parties effectively sets up a two tier parliamentary mandate which demands that Scotland is held to a much higher standard than Westminster sets for itself.

Note that Burham sidestepped the part of Law’s question about putting the trigger for an independence referendum on a legal footing. Until we have legal clarity all we have are the usual goalposts on wheels which can be shifted again when it is politically expedient.

However what we have had from Burnham is a tacit admission that Westminster’s tactic of refusing to acknowledge the issue of Scottish independence cannot be maintained indefinitely, and that is progress of sorts. He has opened the constitutional door a crack, now the SNP, the Scottish Greens and Plaid Cymru must get into that crack with a crowbar.

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BBC Scotland’s educational F grade

qwertyfan — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 19:28:26 +0000

BBC Scotland’s latest ‘Scotland is shite’ story is to tell us that Scottish educational performance has fallen behind that of England. This finding is based on Pisa rankings. However BBC Scotland, ahem, ‘forgot’ to mention a critical piece of information in its rush to let viewers know how terrible Scottish education is. That information is that Pisa rankings for English schools are based upon a self-selecting sample of the best performing schools whereas the Scottish rankings are based upon a much more representative sample.

However the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which compiles the Pisa figures cautions against compiling direct league tables of very different educational systems because structural, cultural, and curricular variations make simple international comparisons misleading. That caveat was blithely ignored by BBC Scotland as was another critical difference which makes the Pisa figures all but useless as a comparator for educational performance between Scotland and England.

To quote Professor John Robertson of Talking Up Scotland: “In Scotland 117 schools participated [in the Pisa rankings] (out of a sampled pool, with 96.4% school response rate—exceeding the 85% OECD standard). 3,257 students participated (79.4% weighted student response rate—slightly below the 80% standard). With ten times the population, to meet the same percentage standards. England would have needed around 1 170 schools and 32 570 pupils. Yet it had only 165 (14%) schools and 4 763 (15%) pupils, making its sample then utterly unreliable, meaningless and not comparable with Scotland’s.”

The official report from the PISA 2022 cycle indicates selective participation in England, with higher-performing (or more advantaged) schools and students more likely to respond. This contributed to an upward bias in England’s scores. This pattern of the self-selection of better performing schools or schools in better off areas in England continues and is sufficient to render the English Pisa results meaningless as a measure of educational performance in England and invalid as a yardstick for comparing educational attainment in England with pupil attainment in different educational systems, which is the supposed purpose of the Pisa figures. It’s an exam in which the English educational authorities are cheating.

A study of the Pisa figures by University College London found that England’s real average scores would be 10 to 15 percentage points lower if the samples were perfectly representative. see:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2021/apr/governments-education-statistics-seriously-flawed

A fundamental rule in any scientific or statistical endeavour is that you have to compare like with like in order to make a meaningful comparison from which significant and consequential conclusions can be drawn. This is particularly the case when the conclusions in question are expected to inform and shape government policy, especially with something as important as children’s education.

This is categorically not what has happened here. Effectively what the Pisa figures have done is to compare all Scottish runners, junior clubs, fun runners, and folk who’ve just taken up running in an effort to lose some weight, with athletes selected to represent England at the Commonwealth Games, and based upon these two wildly different sample groups has proclaimed that the English athletes outperform the Scottish ones. BBC Scotland has then presented these figures at face value and told its viewers and listeners that England’s runners are better than the Scottish ones and that this is due to policy choices of the Scottish Government. Infact the policy choice is the choice of the English educational authorities to permit unrepresentative sampling for the Pisa figures.

Back in reality, none of this means that Scottish runners are doing badly or that there is a structural or governmental problem with Scottish running, the blame for which can be laid at the door of the Scottish Government. It means we are comparing apples with tennis balls.

Basic journalistic integrity means that at the very least BBC Scotland should have highlighted to its viewers that the respective Scottish and English figures upon which it was basing its story are not directly comparable. It did not do so. You don’t have to be a genius to work out that it did not do so because admitting that the Scottish and English figures are not directly comparable would have pulled the rug out from underneath a juicy SNP bad, England’s doing better story with its subtext that this implies that Scotland would be better off under Westminster rule after all. It’s probably a safe bet that if Scotland apparently out-performed England on the basis of statistics which were not directly comparable, BBC Scotland would have been sure to point that out in order to cast doubt on what could have been perceived as a Scottish success.

In its rush to present an SNPbad, Scotland rubbish story about Scottish education, BBC Scotland has failed a basic educational test of its own and gets an F in O grade irony.

To be perfectly clear here, it is entirely possible that with a properly representative sample of English schools in the Pisa rankings, England is still out-performing Scotland. The crucial point however is that this is not a conclusion which it is possible to arrive at on the figures as they have been presented, because these figures do not compare like with like, yet this is the conclusion which BBC Scotland has so loudly trumpeted precisely because it’s a conclusion which suits the political interests of the Labour party in Scotland and its allies in Pacific Quay. Indeed it’s worth pointing out that in Scotland the pass rate for this year’s exams increased whereas in England it dropped. The attainment gap between pupils from poorer versus better off backgrounds continues to narrow in Scotland, particularly in primary education.

The failure of BBC Scotland to tell its viewers the whole story,especially as far as the differences in Pisa sampling between Scotland and England are concerned marks the difference between public service broadcasting and politically motivated propaganda. The contents of this blog are politically motivated but this blog’s political bias is loudly and proudly announced, allowing readers to adjust their expectations accordingly. BBC Scotland however cloaks its pro-unionist bias in a claim to be impartial and politically neutral and moreover demands that we all pay for it under threat of prosecution if we don’t.

BBC Scotland will be dining out on this story for the rest of the week, performing its job of giving anti-independence politicians ammunition with which to attack the Scottish Government at FMQs and giving the anti-independence press the fix of SNPbad/Scotland is shite headlines it needs in order to keep independence at bay.

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The smokiest of smoking guns

qwertyfan — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 15:36:46 +0000

If there are smoking guns, Channel 4 and Verbatim’s undercover sting on Reform UK is a slow motion video of the bullet exiting the barrel and hitting its target. If you haven’t seen the report it’s available on catch up or YouTube. It is very, very bad for Farage who was already in deep trouble due to the on-going Commons investigations into his undeclared donations/bungs/ backhanders. His problems have just got exponentially worse. Perhaps the most shocking part of this video was that Farage was actually in Clacton (it seems to have been filmed in part during his recent vanity by-election) but he’ll only meet up with members of the public if there’s the prospect of a six figure sum in it for him. Nigel doesn’t like foreigners, but he loves their money.

The video details how Reform took money from a foreign, inadmissible, donor then used the cash to pay for opinion polls from a polling company set up by former Conservative advisors to Theresa May.

The full 40 minutes long video from Verbatim is here

These polls were then duly splashed on the front pages of The Telegraph and The Times without Reform’s involvement being disclosed. When the fake donor told Farage he’d picked up the tab for the polls, Farage said: “That was great… It worked. Boom.” Today Farage is insisting he knew nothing about something he was caught on video clearly knowing all about. Boom, Nigel.

The video also details a sting operation in which one of Verbatim’s activists poses as a potential Reform donor who proposes to the party to have his wealthy American father – an impermissible donor – transfer money to him with the express purpose of donating it to Reform. This is illegal. Nigel Farage is shown in the video apparently having full knowledge of this illegal scheme and having no problem with it. Throughout the video Reform activists express contempt for the rules and for the Electoral Commission. It’s damning stuff.

Reform UK has insisted that they have done nothing wrong. It’s all an unfortunate misunderstanding. Nigel Farage didn’t know what was being discussed at the lunch where he was filmed discussing it. A spokesgoon for Reform rushed out a statement insisting that no laws were broken, but if any laws were broken Nigel knew nothing about it, and if he did know about it it was only because his very top lawyers had told him it was all above board and if it wasn’t above board it was only forgetting to sign a form, and anyway it’s all an establishment plot to stop Nigel enjoying oysters and champagne in an exclusive and expensive gentleman’s club that proves he’s a man of the people. And did you know this was all a hoax perpetrated by woke Marxist green haired transgender climate activists who are part of this establishment plot.

The Lib Dems, the Labour party and the Electoral Commission have all now called for a police investigation into the allegations against Reform UK contained in the video broadcast last night by Channel 4 News, allegations which directly implicate Nigel Farage in an apparent plot to break the law. The party is so convinced it has done nothing wrong it has announced that the two officials heavily featured in the video, hard right Christian nationalist Cambridge professor James Orr, Reform UK’s Head of Policy, and Farage’s right hand man Dan Jukes, have stepped down from the party pending an internal investigation. Nothing says innocent like swiftly booting out the two guys who were central to the scandal, but during the video the pair make clear their closeness to Farage and heavily imply that they are operating with his knowledge and consent.

Serious questions remain for Cambridge University, where Orr remains an Associate Professor. Byline Times revealed serious concerns about his activities there months ago. A six-month investigation by Byline Times revealed that with the support of Palantir’s openly fascist Peter Thiel, Reform’s policy chief James Orr has used the University of Cambridge as a student recruitment ground for a hard-right, theocratic political project aimed at infiltrating Reform and transforming it into an overtly far right Christian nationalist party. There have also been allegations about bullying. However we all know there won’t now be hundreds of attack articles in the press about Orr and his life don’t we. Kevin McKenna won’t publish a snide wee piece in the Herald about Orr as his contribution to the dog pile. His next article for The Herald will be about how Orr’s sacking proves Christians are being demonised.

According to the BBC this story matters because it distracts from the Reform party conference. Eh no, it matters because it is important that the leaders of political parties, especially parties which hope to form the next government, are not involved in a conspiracy to break the law and are not seen to be treating the funding rules which all parties must adhere to with such flagrant contempt. The thing is, if this is how Reform’s senior figures behave behind closed doors with people they barely know then just what do they get up to with those they know and trust.

And while we’re on the topic of Reform and its money. Why has no one (we’re looking at you, BBC) thought to ask Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice why he feels the need to head a company – Britain Means Business – although it has no employees, produces and sells nothing, and its business appears to consist solely of receiving large amounts of money which it then swiftly transfers to the accounts of Reform Ltd.

It should be clear to everyone by now that Reform is not even a real political party, it’s a front for millionaires to buy political representation in parliament.

Reform lurches from one scandal to another, each worse than the one before. It is a truly damning indictment of the media in the UK that it has taken this long for the truth about Reform’s finances to come out and that even yesterday the BBC was broadcasting a softball interview with Farage in which the whiniest complainer in the UK was allowed to whine about the complaint culture of the UK and paint himself as the victim of an establishment stitch up.

For all the expected bluster, Farage knows he’s in trouble. He knows this is landing with the public. On top of the other allegations already hanging over him, it represents an existential threat to him and his party. He harrumph in denial all he wants, but he was in that meeting and he’s not stupid. This will drag on, and it has already completely overshadowed Reform’s party conference. The self-proclaimed party of law and order puts itself above the law. This is definitely not the last story on Reform’s rampant corruption. It stinks, and for years Farage has been preferentially platformed by the BBC. We don’t just need an investigation into Reform’s finances, we need an investigation into how the BBC has normalised and promoted the far right.

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Pros and cons of a defacto indyref, and the SNP conference

qwertyfan — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 15:09:59 +0000

As ever, when I take a few days off from the blog, there’s a lot to catch up on. There was the Survation poll on independence published on Thursday which reported a 52% result for Yes (with don’t knows removed). It’s worth pointing out that Survation is one of those polling companies which uses weighting by the outcome of the 2014 referendum as part of its methodology. As I’ve written on this blog a few times before, twelve years on from the referendum this methodological practice has the effect of artificially boosting the reported No result while reducing the Yes result. With more up to date weighting which accurately reflects the demographic realities of Scotland in 2026, the true Yes result from this poll would be a couple of percentage points higher. However it’s certainly note worthy that support for independence has now reached such a level that even traditionally “No-friendly” polling companies like Survation are now publishing polls with a headline figure that shows a majority for independence.

That just leaves YouGov as an outlier, the only remaining polling company whose polls on Scottish independence still report headline figures with a majority opposed to independence. Not only does YouGov still employ the increasingly discredited weighting by the outcome of the 2014 referendum, the company’s other methodological practices on this question raise serious questions about whether YouGov is really engaged in attempting to discern a true picture on the state of public support for Scottish independence or whether it is more interested in providing comforting headlines for the overwhelmingly anti-independence newspapers which commission its polls.

In other news, the SNP has come in for a fair bit of criticism for apparently closing down attempts by members and branches to have a debate on independence strategy at the upcoming SNP conference in Aberdeen in October. According to a leaked version of the draft agenda for the conference, which has been seen by The National, none of the many submissions on independence strategy which have been submitted by various branches have made it onto the draft agenda.

I’m not an SNP member and make no pretence of being familiar with internal SNP procedure, but it appears that what has been leaked is a draft agenda, not a finalised agenda. To an outsider that suggests that the final agenda for the conference could be different from a leaked early draft for a conference which is still a month and a half away.

That said, in my opinion as an independence supporter who has remained supportive of the SNP throughout an exceptionally difficult few years, the party must allow its members to discuss and debate independence strategy at the party conference, after all, what else is the party for? Being perceived to close down debate on this key issue could do huge damage to trust in the party at a time when supporters are slowly healing from an incredibly difficult few years and could risk alienating supporters who kept faith with the SNP as the only credible political vehicle for delivering Scottish independence during a time when loud siren voices from other parts of the independence movement strongly criticised them for doing so.

The SNP leadership cannot make the mistake of retreating into its comfort zone and ceasing to aggressive push the issue of independence now that the election is safely out of the way.

There are advantages and disadvantages to using an election as a de-facto referendum, the main advantage is that it wrests the initiative away from Westminster and neuters its veto on an independence referendum. That’s an immense political advantage particularly if the pro-independence parties could agree to contest that de-facto referendum as a pan-Yes coalition encompassing all the pro-independence parties plus representatives from civic Scotland. Even the plausible threat of using the next Westminster general election as a de-facto referendum could help to create pressure on the UK Government to come to the table and agree a definitive route to independence referendums for Scotland and Wales as well as a unification referendum for Northern Ireland.

There are however also huge risks and disadvantages with a de-facto referendum strategy and we need to be honest about these. The first is the difficulty in securing agreement between the pro-independence parties. In the absence of such an electoral pact that would mean contesting the de-facto referendum on a party political basis. As a result, the estimated one quarter to one third of Labour voters in Scotland who support independence, the quarter of Reform UK voters in Scotland who support independence and the one sixth of Lib Dem voters in Scotland who support independence would most likely continue to vote for their party of preference, depriving Yes of the overall majority of votes cast which it needs in order to declare victory and deprive the anti-independence parties of the wriggle room and goalpost shifting which they have used to their advantage so far.

There is also the risk that the UK Government would simply ignore a de-facto referendum result as it has ignored the outcome of the last two Scottish Parliament elections. It would be aided and abetted in this by the BBC and the majority of the press in Scotland.

There are real pros and cons here and it’s important for the membership of the SNP to be able to discuss and debate them and to come up with a strategy which is best for Scotland.

Meanwhile, the message that the SNP, the Scottish Greens, and the rest of the independence movement need to hammer home is that constitutional matters are not some arcane distraction from bread and butter politics, the issue of independence goes to the very heart of bread and butter politics as at its core it is about where power lies, who wields it, and in whose interests the state operates. This is fundamental to bread and butter politics. A narrow focus on bread and butter politics in a state in which power and influence are heavily skewed in the interests of entrenched power and the super-rich is merely a debate about the distribution of the crumbs from the table of the wealthy.

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The Record’s proposed trigger for Indyref2 benefits Labour not Scotland

qwertyfan — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 19:06:00 +0000

The first crack has appeared in the “We’re not nationalists we’re British” dam against the rising tide of support for independence and the generational shift that puts opposition to independence in Scotland on borrowed time. The current Westminster tactic of refusing to countenance another independence referendum, maintaining that the UK is a voluntary union while avoiding the question of just how Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland can put that to the test was never a long term strategy for dealing with the thorny topic of Celtic self-determination but rather a short term stop gap to be deployed in the hope that the entire issue would just go away.

It has now become clear to many in the anti-independence camp that despite the SNPbad media feeding frenzies which accompanied the Salmond/Sturgeon/Murrell sagas and an unceasing torrent of Scotland is shite stories in the British media in Scotland, support for independence remains undented and with the rise of the far right fracturing support for the anti-independence parties in a way which gives the pro-independence parties a locked-in advantage, Westminster’s just say No stop-gap tactic has run its course.

In an editorial, the Labour supporting Daily Record has urged the UK and Scottish Governments to support a “cross-party commission to examine a trigger point” for an independence referendum.

This change of mind has little to do with a recognition of the democratic imperative to respect the will of the people of Scotland at the ballot box, The Record has been very relaxed about the denial of Scottish democracy by successive British prime ministers. The Record’s apparent change of heart has everything to do with a recognition that the Labour party in Scotland is screwed and will continue to be screwed right up until it can give a clear and straightforward answer to the question about what the democratic path to an independence referendum is exactly.

Burnham’s modest honeymoon bouncette in the polls has not translated into an increase in support for the Scottish branch office. In any event his modest polling honeymoon is over. In Scotland, the accession of either Michael Marra or the other guy to the post of branch manager is not seen, even by Labour stalwarts, as being likely to do anything to plug the holes in Labour’s sinking Scottish ship.

Naturally, The Record has proposed a trigger for a referendum which gives the Labour party the political cover it so desperately needs while putting an almost insurmountable obstacle in the way of the Yes movement and parties. The paper proposes: “A threshold for a referendum should be hard to meet – sustained support for independence of say 60 per cent.”

The Record’s proposal is made in the knowledge that support for independence has never surpassed 60% in opinion polling asking the standard question. The 60% figure was plucked out of the air for precisely that reason.

Tying important constitutional issues to opinion polling give opinion polls a key role to play in constitutional decision making. Such a role cannot be left to the whims of private companies whose business model rests upon securing contracts from overwhelmingly anti-independence newspapers like the British press in Scotland. There must also be confidence that polls used to determine a trigger for independence cannot employ methodological tweaks which skew the result in the favour of one side in the constitutional debate, as with the practice of weighting by the result of the 2014 referendum, which is still used by a number of major polling companies despite – or possibly because – this practice has the effect of artificially boosting the reported No result at the expense of Yes.

A possible solution is that a politically neutral and publicly owned polling company be established with a remit to publish a poll on the standard question on Scottish independence once every two or three months. This would establish an agreed baseline and consistent methodology which would allow the public and politicians to gauge the trajectory of support for independence over time.

What The Record is proposing is that support for independence must exceed a level which it has never hitherto reached in a Scotland whose media environment is overwhelmingly hostile to independence.

In an ideal world the agreement between the Scottish Government and Westminster should include media reform to ensure a level playing field, but since we know that Westminster is coming to this not out of a sense of fair play or concern for the integrity of democracy in Scotland, but rather as a means to continue to stave off independence, media reform and the devolution of broadcasting are never going to happen. Personally I favour a system of government subsidies for the press such as is found in certain Scandinavian countries. This would ensure that the press is broadly reflective of the range of political opinion in the country which it is supposed to serve and that there’s no chance of a media as politically out of line with the public as we suffer in Scotland, where over half the population support a constitutional status which is supported by just one newspaper out of dozens.

The Record is saying that there should only be a second independence referendum when the result is effectively a fait accompli. The Record’s proposal entails that Scotland would continue under Westminster rule indefinitely even if there is a sustained and solid majority for independence of between 51% and 59%. Meanwhile the current anti-independence media onslaught would continue. That is offensive to the principle of democracy. A No majority of 55.3% in 2014 was deemed decisive by the BBC. Since 2014 opponents of independence have continued to insist that 55.3% was sufficient to settle the matter for a generation. The anti-independence parties cannot plausibly assert that 55.3% is not enough as a trigger for another independence referendum. To do so implies that it was not after all enough to settle the question in 2014.

Fairness and logic both dictate that 55.3% support for independence sustained over at least three of the new opinion polls should be sufficient to trigger another independence referendum. What’s sauce for the Westminster goose is also sauce for the independence gander. Scotland needs an agreed trigger for another independence referendum but that must be a trigger designed and implemented in the interests of the people of Scotland, not the interests of the Labour party.

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