Referendum ruling is part of the democratic process

Sir, – Well, the bluff has not worked and the case has been lost, to no one’s great surprise. The exercise to determine whether Holyrood can hold another referendum has just been a waste of time and (our) money for all involved.

I took two things from the judgement. Firstly, it has been made clear that a referendum result would strengthen or weaken the union, depending on the result. From this it is quite clear therefore that the 2014 result strengthens the union, because that vote resulted from a legal process in which the majority of the population voted No.

The second issue that should be obvious to all watching is that the Scottish Governmentsnp case was something thrown together by their spin doctors, with little legal input, and the result was that the case they presented was rejected much sooner than expected. We should be clear on this point – the verdict was unanimous, there was no ambiguity.

Interestingly, journalists afterwards were very quick to say that this does not end the matter, but then these are the people who are intrigued by the twists and turns of the debate, and who would like to keep that going.

We should now be hearing a different argument. Democracy in this country requires checks and balances, and the most important of those checks and balances is the law. No political party should be able to put something in its manifesto which it knows to be illegal or outwith its realm of competence, and this is the argument that we must all now remember. It is the people of Scotland who have agreed what the Scottish Parliament can and cannot do. We agreed to a parliament with tax-varying powers in 1997. We rejected independence in 2014. Later that year, our representatives in the Scottish Parliament, all of them, agreed an enhanced set of devolution powers that were then enacted in full. We are therefore unanimously agreed on the powers that we do have, and we have rejected any other alternative.

The law gives people protection from the government it elects, which is fundamentally important when that government is elected by a minority of the population.

Victor Clements. Mamie’s Cottage, Aberfeldy, Perthshire.