Scottish Independence The Lady with the Gioconda Smile

The Lady with the Gioconda Smile

The indications are the SNP will be the majority party from Scotland and thus under article 19 of the Treaty of Union will represent the “considered will of the people of Scotland” at Westminster, a will which on two occasions since 2010 has been tested in the UK Supreme Court and been found to be “paramount”.

All the constitutional “fudges” used in the last 300 odd years to suppress Scottish representation in the British Establishment Parliament will be up in the air. This was never meant to happen, just like an SNP majority at Holyrood was never meant to happen, and brings us to Lord Cooper’s point of Law in 1953 that Scots Law and constitutional practice does not recognise the concept of the “crown in parliament” being sovereign as this is a singularly English legal and constitutional concept, a legal point conceded on the UK Parliament’s behalf by the Lord Advocate.

Further, this legal and constitutional point made by Lord Cooper puts paid to any concept of the Scots being subsumed by England Parliamentary practice as has been long claimed and presumed. The UK Parliamentary constitution is (and always has been) a fudge which seeks to run two very different legal and constitutional systems in parallel for the mutual benefit of both parties (McCormack vs Lord Advocate 1953).

Who actually exercises control of the “considered will of the people of Scotland” in the UK Parliament,  Lord Cooper suggested, was purely theoretical and unlikely to be tested within the UK wide party system then in place (1953) across the UK, as any Scottish representation was beholden to their main UK party’s manifesto.

When you get your head around this key legal and constitutional point, you understand why Ms Sturgeon’s Gioconda smile is un-shifting in the face of all the hostility from the opposition politicians, media, commentators and their attempts to claim the SNP will be beyond the pale and isolated. This is because any Bills, Acts or Statutes effecting Scotland can not pass the UK Parliament without the agreement of the “considered will of the people of Scotland” which will, with 29+ SNP MPs, be in the SNP’s hands – even if the Tories and Labour do form a grand coalition at Westminster.

In short, 29+ SNP MPs is the equivalent of putting a SNP fox into the unwritten UK Constitutional hen coop.

Peter Thomson, “The Lady with the Gioconda Smile”, Tarff Advertiser, 28 April 2015

http://tarffadvertiser.blogspot.de/2015/04/the-lady-with-gioconda-smile.html

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