Ban referendums
The present outrage at the Brexit imbroglio at Westminster teaches the separatists of Scotland a lesson they shouldn’t ignore: a secessionist party can’t afford to win a referendum.
Since the question put is binary, with no attempt to seek a consensus, the process and the outcome of a referendum is necessarily divisive.
The complex outcome of a decision to secede is unknowable at the time of voting, and not all that is claimed and promised during the campaign turns out to be deliverable. However, there is no mechanism for rendering invalid the whole, or part, or an interpretation of the simple decision.
The SNP refuses to make clear on what basis it determines that Referendum X is an opinion poll and Referendum Y is decisive, binding and final. This makes a referendum – an exercise in direct democracy – an ad hoc device of highly questionable status, an ill fit in our established representative democracy.
If the SNP wants to separate Scotland from the UK, the route should be an undertaking in its election manifesto to make a unilateral declaration of independence from Holyrood. If achieved, this would produce a fine clash between its electoral mandate and constitutional law.
That’s democracy in action, the whole process contained within established institutions.
A referendum is an open door to undue influence from non-parliamentary sources, a recipe for trouble, and certain to leave almost half of the population alienated. Referendums no more.
TIM BELL Madeira Place, Edinburgh
It is a sad reflection on Scottish politics that, when expressing her never-ending grievances against Westminster, Nicola Sturgeon can only resort to hurling childish insults at the British Prime Minister (and Scotland is still a part of Britain), the latest being to call him a “tin pot dictator”, an epithet which would apply more aptly to herself.
DAVID HOLLINGDALE Easter Park Drive, Edinburgh
Prime Minister David Cameron miscalculated. Prime Minister May mismanaged, Prime Minister do-or-die charlatan Johnson embarrasses, and now Scottish First Minister Sturgeon opines that Scottish independence is inevitable.
Who could have imagined that the Conservative and Unionist Party, the one-time guardian of our institutions, conventions and traditions, would be that which would take the Great out of Great Britain?
GRAHAM DUNCAN St Lawrence House, Haddington