‘Velvet Divorce’ unlikely in Indyref2 battle

Sir, – Now Boris Johnson has formally rejected the Scottish Government’s request for a Section 30 order (Johnson puts brakes on FM’s referendum plans, Courier, January 15) to facilitate Indyref2 it is time to look more closely at our present constitutional settlement to make sure we know where we stand.

Scotland and England are in a de jure union.

But what sort of union is it in which one partner cannot leave without permission from the other?

Married couples can divorce even if one spouse does not want to.

Nations too can separate, as was shown by the “Velvet Divorce” that brought Czechoslovakia to an end.

Some who are proindependence take comfort by looking to Section 63A of the Scotland Act, which states “the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government are not to be abolished except on the basis of a decision of the people of Scotland voting in a referendum”.

They would be wrong to find comfort there. The Scotland Act is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and the United Kingdom is dominated by English

MPs because England is more populous than Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales together.

The Act can be amended, or even repealed, by Westminster.

Scotland’s devolution is a chimera.

The brutal truth is that Scotland is de facto a partially self-governing colony of England.

Those parties in Scotland that support the Union thereby support the subjugation of the people who vote for them to the will of a government elected by voters in England by an undemocratic system (the Conservative Party have 56% of the seats in Westminster but only won 44% of votes across the UK as a whole).

Despite trying to give the appearance that they exist to promote the interests of people in Scotland, the “branch offices” of unionist parties in Scotland are treating the Scottish electorate as cannon fodder to increase their firepower in Westminster.

It is high time those who vote for them opened their eyes to this truth.

Peter Martin. Sruth Ruadh, Milton, Strathconon, Muir of Ord.