Scotland not an ‘oppressed colony’: Court

Britain’s leading judges have ‘‘demolished’’ the notion that Scots are an ‘‘oppressed’’ people or that Scotland is comparable to a ‘‘colony’’ being subjected to British rule against its will. The claims – often deployed by more extreme factions within the independence movement – were given legitimacy by the SNP’s submission to the Supreme Court which sought to invoke international rights to self-determination. But the arguments were decisively dismissed along with the claim that Holyrood could legally hold its own ‘‘advisory’’ referendum.