There has been much, appropriate, furore over the consequences of the UK Internal Markets Bill for Northern Ireland. There should be at least as much for the consequences for Wales and Scotland. Section 46 of the bill reads as follows:
Note that the bill applies to all parts of the UK, without exception.
And note too that the Bill extends to almost all devolved powers, including health, education, culture, justice, housing and provision of utilities, all of which have distinct and crucial devolved aspects to them.
This Bill is not just an act of international aggression, although it is most certainly that. It is also an action deliberately designed to undermine the devolution and to recreate the UK in the form in which it has not existed for decades.
The external provocation within this Bill is astonishing, but no less important is the internal conflict that it will create.
Cummings is going for broke, and it could be very ugly.
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So is all the fuss about breaching international law just cover for rolling back devolution?
That’s one of the many things it is doing
These measures attack much of the institutional and cultural fabric of Scotland which have nothing to do with devolution, some of which were guaranteed by the Acts of Union and others that long predate devolution. Under the Union and below the level of parliament Scottish civic society operated quite independently of the UK. Devolution itself is now very well established but these measures are going very much deeper and they will provoke a much deeper response. The Tories for example will have real trouble if they try to interfere with education. You can only assume that they have a very superficial understanding of Scotland.
Yes, these measures (if passed) will certainly increase the strength of Plaid and the SNP.
I referred to this critical issue in a comment on a previous thread (September 12th). The ‘United Kingdom Internal Market Bill’, pp.33-35, Sections 42, 43 and 44 (on export declarations, exit procedures and on Arcticle 10 and state aid related to the NI Protocol, and Section 45 with further provisions related to sections 42 and 43); give powers to Ministers of the Crown to vary regulations, notwithstanding any relevant international or domestic law which may be incompatible or inconsistent with the regulations in Sections 42 and 43.
The design of this is quite clearly calculated to destroy devolution without actually closing the parliamentary building, perhaps in the hope nobody notices in all the other controversies. It is NI that currently takes the international attention for obvious reasons, but the power is constructed to allow Ministers to overrule Scottish domestic law , with impunity; this goes to the heart of the Treaty of Union, 1707 that guarantees the independence of Scottish law.
We are now reaching the end of the line, acceptable intrusion of the British state into the Scottish polity, and the end of the Union. Indeed we are moving into territory that we have not seen since the Union was saved only by a narrow majority through proxy votes in Westminster following the Patronage Act of 1712, and the Malt Tax fiasco (broadly the same constitutional assumptions underpin the Internal Market Bill). This time I am sceptical the Union will survive; Westminster has gone too far.
I detest the way Scotland has been treated in my ten years of living here which has got worse year on year. I do hope that our government can see a way forward more quickly towards independence than recently stated, as I am concerned about the lack of information emanating from it.
It’s not just the devolved nations that need to worry, everyone should be worried, as you pointed out earlier on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/JMPSimor/status/1305445453723508736?s=19
She is brilliant
Ruth Wishart outlines the way ahead for Scotland in today’s National.
YOU may not have caught the movie Network. Let me summarise. A TV journalist finally cracks, throws open the studio window and hollers: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more.” Reader, this morning I am with him. In spades.
Let’s be clear; this is not an invitation to “sow division”, or an injunction to “lose the heid”. This is a wake-up call to all independence supporters of any persuasion to recognise the scale of the new threats we face, and the absolute urgency of combatting them.
Many people of my generation argued long and hard even for the shilpit assembly on offer in 1979. We rejoiced at the arrival of a proper parliament in 1999, albeit with restricted powers. What is now coming down the track like a runaway train is a naked attempt to turn that parliament into the parish council many would always have preferred it to be.
Next May, and the Scottish elections are eight months distant. The Internal Market Bill — a catch-all for over-riding Holyrood’s existing competencies whilst threatening peace in Ireland and, at no extra charge, tearing up a treaty signed in our name — will come back to Westminster today. The wolves are not at the door, they’re in the kitchen.
Tomorrow, too, an amendment is to be laid by the SNP to try to prevent the second reading of this bill, which has achieved the remarkable feat of having two former prime ministers — one Tory, one Labour — jointly write to complain that “cavalier bombast” has replaced reasoned judgement. The top legal civil servant has resigned, in stark contrast to the risible Attorney General and former Vote Leave campaigner, who became a QC two minutes before her appointment.
Does anybody really believe that a government gone so rogue as to try to shut down Parliament illegally; which has cleared out the top rank of the civil service; boasted about breaking the law of the land, and harbours an 80-seat majority, is going to be freaked out by an amendment laid by a party it totally disdains? Dream on. We have to fight fire with fire. Thus far the Scottish Government has resisted calls to test its own ability to stage an independence referendum in the courts.
It has been left to the crowd-funded Martin Keating’s efforts to try to establish the necessity or otherwise of a Section 30 Order — efforts described by Scotland’s leading law officers as “premature, academic and hypothetical”. Well, they sure as hell aren’t any of the above as of now.
THIS is a moment to put all available hands to the pump. We have a wealth of legal and constitutional talent at our disposal at both Holyrood and Westminster. They need to make common cause, setting aside any perceived personal or historical rivalries, and formulating joint strategies.
This is too important for playground politics. It’s also too important for a pushback which only involves politicians — there is an army of enthusiasts out there and, trust me, some of them are beyond impatient.
I’m not talking about Headbangers United, the Amalgamated Union of Conspiracy Theorists, or the Permanently Angry Brigade. I refer to people who understand that “steady as she goes” won’t cut it when what the FM herself has described as “a bunch of incompetent chancers” are hell-bent on tearing down devolution, never mind facilitating independence. Of course it’s wonderful to have serial polls showing 55% or so favouring self-determination — but arguably less so if there is no legislature left in which to pursue it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwMVMbmQBug
Watch it!
Thanks. Watched it. If there are any TV journalists like that in the UK, please come forward.
🙂
Michael Russell, Scottish Government minister, and others, has been warning of this for weeks, if not months, ever since it was purported by the UK Govt that even more powers would be handed to Scotland after leaving the EU – only they would first of all be handed to the UK Govt to pass on. Anyone who believed that from the UK was deluded.
This bill intends to dismantle devolution, which Tories have never supported. I think it was last year that the cabal of Scottish Tory MP’s urged Westminster to bypass Holyrood and spend direct in Scotland.
This is just another instance of the F-word government confirming their F-word credentials. It’s time for the press and others to call for Johnson and his criminal cronies to go. Starmer told Johnson to “get on with it”. He needs to tell him his time is up for the sake of the country.
There are a couple of things that both of the develoved governments could do. Needs no money, no subsidies but it does require control of planning. Oh look. Both the Scots & the Welsh have control of that & it relates to community renewables – real community renewables -rather than the half-arsed stuff that has been happening so far. It will also require that both governments used whatever legal muscle they have to strong arm the network operators. Not easy with Werstern Power (own by assorted US financial parasite) easier with respect to SSE – a Scottish company. Both administrations need to do as bankers have done: work the angles.
I will send the rural renewables paper to Richard – it’s a bit complicated but it covers everything: electricity, heating and transport.
I defer to all the extensive and erudite commentary and observations made above, and simply address my self to the sense of impending constitutional crisis that all this engenders.
Basically, the pandemic has been one of Harold MacMillan’s “events”, that imposed itself on top of the Brexit process, which we all know to have been a put-up job for certain elite financial interests, wrapped up in the peculiar, misshapen and badly informed crude nationalism that is mistaken for patriotism and awareness of nationhood in England.
This has, of course, infected both of our major parties, with the Tories in the hands of wreckers who have been empowered to pursue their reckless and ultimately super destructive course, and a Labour Party trapped in the repetition of its own history, wherein the right prefer impotence rather than tolerate the possibility of an election-winning left leadership. Until attitudes change, and the Labour right decide to give more energy to the needs of the country instead of trying to rewrite recent history, we cannot expect much more from them, than Starmer’s weekly expert evisceration of our bumbling PM.
Perhaps the rising indignation of the devolved nations can wake them up to their proper responsibilities, and the fightback for honest and civilised politics can begin. Otherwise, who knows where we will end up.