As The National newspaper in Scotland has reported:
HOLYROOD will see a huge pro-independence majority of 29 MSPs after next year's elections, according to an exclusive new poll for The National.
The survey, conducted by Find Out Now, predicted that the SNP would win 35% of the constituency share and 25% on the regional vote.
While Scottish Labour came second with 15% on both, it represents a sharp drop since the last survey by the same pollster – with Anas Sarwar's party predicted to be only the fourth biggest party by MSP share as a result, behind both the Scottish Tories and the Scottish Greens
The forecast for the 2026 Holyrood election now looks like this:
Note that there are two votes in these elections to create proportional representation.
The set outcome would be:
Note, this projection is by the well-known Prof John Curtice, who is, of course, based in Scotland.
There are 129 seats in Holyrood. Sixty-five does, then, provide a majority. The SNP would have 57. The Greens and Alba are also pro-independence. Together, they would have a majority, with 79 seats, leaving 50 for the ragged bunch of pro-Union parties, including Reform, who are hardly sweeping Scotland, even with PR to assist them.
Critically, the same poll found a 56-44 majority in favour of independence when don't knows are removed. If they are included, the majority is 52-41.
There is a UK political crisis in the making here. Scotland will not wait forever to become independent. Westminster might think it has the right to rule over Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland forever. They may be in for a rude awakening. Even in Wales, support for independence is now running at 41 per cent.
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Well said RM.
England is increasingly choosing Reform. Will Nigel Farage be the next UK PM? If yes, Scotland’s 57 Westminster seats make no difference to the 300++ English seats.
Most Scots I know understand that Holyrood, though not perfect, mitigates Westminster harms. UK figures released last week show that child poverty rates are now 35% higher in England than in Scotland. (BiS)
I’m an Englishman, married to a Scot and have in the past been heavily involved with a well known Scottish paddle steamer so I understand the differences between England and Scotland.
I might add that my mother was born in Sketty & my father lived in Cardiff and Swansea for about a decade and as a child we holidayed in West Wales so I have a feeling for the place.
My punt is and Wales ditto that they will look at the shambles that is the Westminster Government and make a decision that in their national interest they need to leave.
They would not be voting for Independence from a well run Westminster Government that understood that Scotland and Wales are different and need to be treated accordingly.
The Nationalists wont have won, the Unionists however are failing badly and deserve to lose.
When my husband retired (Professor in ex-Poly) we had financial advice from the Union. We could see that this would cost us around 20% of lump sum/pension on that advice. We decided to refuse advice, and go it alone. We may well make mistakes, we thought, but were unlikely to lose 20%. That was the buffer, which in fact wasn’t needed. Perhaps this is a useful analogy for Scotland and Wales?
🙂
Westminster need to implement the break up of the Union, not just wait for it to happen. It can be managed carefully rather than it becoming yet another crisis. All we really need is an open border and a joint military, in my opinion, and a facility for Scotland to use the pound until they sort something else. Then us English folk can look north, see things getting better for the Scots, and ask the question, “what are we doing wrong?”
I think the open border would need careful thinking.
The current Not-a-Border (courtesy of A B deP Johnson) leaves Scotland open to some 50 County Line gangs (from London, W Midlands, Bradford, Leeds, Liverpool inter al) using children and the vulnerable as mules to anywhere that can be reached by road or rail.
Maybe something along EU lines?
I have no idea what your evidence for that claim might be. It is very unlikely to be a fact. And the assumption that drugs only flow one way is unlikely to be true. I think care is need3d. I posted this with hesitation.
I actually hesitated before posting it. So please accept my apologies and if you’re not comfortable do remove it.
Police Scotland’s latest confirmed stats said about 30. Assistant Chief Constable Andy Freeburn (who is the executive lead for Organised Crime, Counter Terrorism and Intelligence) said their unit had identified about 55, which may be due to a dedicated researcher. However that was an interview with the Daily Mail.
Of course there’s more than 1 type of drug distributor. eg Being a port Aberdeen has problems with cannabis from the Balkans and there’s also organised crime gangs. However the County Lines gangs do seem to be operating in 1 direction – although I wouldn’t argue if I was told that isn’t the case.
Once again, apologies.
Noted
Thanks
If polling is a yardstick then why are you ignoring all the pro UK polling which has been far more consistent over decades. Scotland rejected leaving the UK. I couldn’t think of anything more ridiculous given Trump and the world’s new and dangerous security situation.
Let me guess, you’re an English exceptionalist…
The pro-UK polling is carried out almost totally by unionist controlled media or firms and they still use weighting from the 2014 result.
The National poll used updated weighting and included 16 and 17 year olds.
I’m surprised you haven’t used the idiotic ‘once in a generation’ spiel.
@ Nick,
Polling has been far from “consistent over decades”:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/35-years-scottish-attitudes-towards-independence&ved=2ahUKEwinkJr_xtyMAxUVnf0HHbf5HxkQFnoECC8QAQ&usg=AOvVaw1a1UQY348M4YGLSXFNlDNq
Nick,
Scotland leaving a UK kowtowing to Trump’s madness and joining a Europe actively distancing itself from said madness…
A no-brainer, surely.
Thank you, Richard.
With tension rising in the Arctic, I can’t see the UK establishment and US war machine allowing Scotland out, at least not without a fight.
Just as there are Scottish unionists who benefit from making themselves useful to the British / Westminster establishment, there are elements in the British elite who see benefit in allying with the US. A Scotland in the union serves that interest, although I can see the US ditching the UK and making a deal with Scottish nationalists.
In addition to Scottish bases, the question of the successor state to the UK and who inherits things like the seat at the UN will emerge if the union is dissolved.
I will leave the issue of Scotland’s currency to others and will only say that an independent Scotland will need its own currency and the nationalists had better come up with a convincing answer to the inevitable questions.
It will interesting to read what Scottish readers say.
I’ve often wondered if the SNP’s sudden fall from grace was somehow engineered due to Scotland’s strategic importance to the US. Just like the hatchet job done on Corbyn. Or am I reading to much into it all?
It looks to be back
Thank you, Tom.
A former CIA official was later appointed to Sturgeon’s staff. The woman makes no secret of her past.
@ Colonel Smithers.
I believe the correct expression is “continuing state”, “successor states” are new entities. Russia is the continuing state of the Soviet Union, all of the other republics became successor states. Neither Czechia nor Slovakia claimed continuing status to Czechoslovakia, so both became successor states.
Nevertheless, its a good question. As well as inheriting all of the UK’s rights and privileges, claiming continuing status means taking on the obligations as well.
England will get the UK’s debt. It will be the successor state. This is settled law.
I am afraid not, Richard. rUK (England, Wales, NI) is the “continuing state”. Scotland is a “new state”*.
Here is the clear position: “the remainder of the UK would be considered the continuing state and an independent Scotland would be a new state.” (‘Scotland Analysis’ HMG, 2013; 2.15, p.34).
rUK has to be the continuing state, simply because it is the only entity that can take up the £2.6Trn of national debt, and the 2,000 international treaties. Dissolution of the Union would terminate everything. In 2013 the British Government (rUK) made clear that it would take over the national debt in its entirety (and the currency, because they are tied together – closer than symbiosis), no matter what. This implies Scotland does not have any responsibility for any of the debt (it doesn’t have rights in the currency), because rUK has accepted sole responsibility as “continuing state”. What rUK can and will do is try to make Scotland accept a moral responsibility to take a share of debt (for monetary reputation reasons), but that means holding debt in a foreign currency, and that isn’t independence, and it is an irresponsible policy for Scotland to follow; it would turn Scotland into the eternal prisoner of rUK
I appreciate that at speed and answering comments, such errors happen. What is profoundly depressing is the ‘likes’ of your comment, when the same point about Scotland and independence has been made over and over again here; time after time after time. I have spelled out the nature of the case many times here; and immediately everyone BTL here simply reverts to believing in magic. This is hopeless.
If nobody understands – or appears to want to understand – what is actually going to happen, and the real nature of the frame of reference in independence negotiations, what on earth is the point of all this?
* See “Scotland analysis: Devolution and the implications of Scottish independence” (HMG, 2013). In the overview the Crawford and Boyle opinion (which is authoritative, whatever illusions anyone wishes to indulge. The only exception is the collapse of international law under Trump’s chaos; but even then, the scale of the debt and the 2,000 international treaties make dissolution impossible for anyone to contemplate). See Ch.2, 2.14-2.17, and Part V, pp.73-91.
I thought that is what I said, John. I this what I have always believed. If I did not, it was a mistake.
Richard,
“England will get the UK’s debt. It will be the successor state. This is settled law.” (An easy mistake to make in haste; but it has received 13 ‘likes’, for an obvious slip-up). Here is the substantive definition:
“Despite their technical titles, the concepts of state continuity and state succession
in international law – considered comprehensively in the Opinion54 – are relatively
straightforward. Continuity applies where the same state continues to exist despite
changes in its territory and population. What Professors Crawford and Boyle refer to
as a ‘continuator state’55 therefore continues automatically to exercise the same rights,
obligations and powers under international law as the predecessor state. State succession
occurs when there is a change of sovereignty over a territory. It is defined in the Vienna
Convention on Succession of States as “the replacement of one State by another in the
responsibility for the international relations of territory”. A successor state, in contrast with
a continuing state, does not automatically assume the rights, obligations and powers of
the predecessor”.
Here is the definition. It isn’t solely Crawford and Boyle; it is the Vienna Convention on Succession of States in respect of Treaties, Vienna, 23 August 1978:untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/ha/vcssrt/vcssrt.html (There is no point dismissing Crawford and Boyle as poliically biased, this is international law).
If Scotland can’t get be “allowed out” of the union then it is not a voluntary union and Scotland is, what a lot of us suspect, a colony.
The Scottish currency, before 1707, was the Pound; it’s our currency. I don’t know what the English currency was before 1707, perhaps English contributors would know what that country’s currency was prior to their country being absorbed into the union?
The English currency was the pound. The English pound was worth approximately eight times the Scottish pound. They were not the same pound. The English pound became dominant, but it took time.
I keep having to repeat the same thing. The UK began as an incorporating Union, but will end formally as a Federal Union (even though it isn’t). There are three reasons for this; two critical, the third was important, but now perhaps, less important. The two critical reasons are the National Debt (£2.6Trn); and the 2,000 plus treaties the UK has signed. It would be catastrophic, indeed impossible to sustain them in a dissolution. In 2014 Westminster made clear it was taking full responsibility for UK debt, the currency and the 2,000 treaties. the intenational legal experts, Crawford and Boyle, ‘Scotland analysis: devolution and the implications of Scottish independence’, (2014) ; wrote the legal opinion on how it will unfold for the UK Government.
Scotland would not have rights in the currency, and should not be responsible for the UK Debt. This opinion is supported by the precedents in international law. What both sides did in 1707, a radical new principle at the time; is now so much dust.
The third argument is international law, which led Crawford and Boyle to this conclusion. The problem is that with Trump tearing up US hegemony over the world as the intent of US policy, he is tearing up the world order, and the conventions of international law (the pressure of enforcement was the US world order). In the new world the other two critical issues still stand (the power of realpolitik). Scotland will leave the UK as a Federal Union, even though the UK never was a Federal Union. That is the world as it is.
You may be right
No, he is not right. Crawford and Boyle have colonised minds and subscribe to the English might is right interpretation of events. They even suggested in their report of 2013 that Scotland does not legally exist. They ignored, or perhaps were unaware, that the Union was conditional on the Scottish constitution was upheld. It wasn’t. It has been suppressed ever since
AndrewF,
Frankly you are fantasising about a past that has no purchase on reality whatsoever. Crawford and Boyle ignored such ideas for that reason. It is in the discard pile of history. It is economics, money and hard negotiations against a background of determined and ruthlessly self-interested vested interests (inside and outside Scotland) that matter. It can still be done; but it will not happen through your constitutional anachronisms. The first step in achieving independence is the maturity to ditch the sentimental past.
The inability of people to see the real framework for independence, including BTL here (sadly) is part of the reason we have been going round in circles on independence in Scotland. The upticks in support do not come from constitutional, economic or political insight in Scotland – including the electorate (they voted Labour for heaven’s sake, less than a year ago); but solely because Westminster Governments are in perpetual, incompetent chaos, and they are finally running out of road; sinking on every conceivable front, buried in overwhelming, intractable problems largely of their own making. Without that, Scotland would be back where it started, exploited and somnolent.
Thanks, John. Agreed.
While the poll is highly encouraging, my point remains the same. Exactly how are we, the Scottish people, going to achieve Independence? I have supported Home Rule for Scotland, as it was described in the 1951 Scottish Covenant, a petition with over two million signatures, which was delivered to No.10 Downing St, and promptly disappeared. Over 70 years on are we really any further forward? Personally. I don’t think we are, and the most recent example is Grangemouth/Scunthorpe. Scotland’s only oil refinery closed, and the owner given Government money to build a new plant in a foreign country. Contrast that with the stramash over British Steel, which I hope is successful, and the workers can retain their jobs, despite the culpability, as Richard has said, of the Labour Government. No, we can have as many polls as we like, it’s not going to change the fact that we are still controlled by Westminster, and unless drastic action is taken, and we stop playing by their rules, which in any case, they can change at a moments notice.
International law does support UDI.
It may have to come to that.
Thank you, both.
The precedent is Kosovo, as Craig Murray has long argued.
Thank you, Alex.
Further to Scunthorpe, readers may be interested in this recent excerpt from a Briton on Naked Capitalism, as no other media, as far as I know, has publicised the history:
“The UK parliament had the first Saturday sitting since the Falklands crisis in 1982. The subject was the future of the Scunthorpe steelworks and in particular its blast furnaces. The legislation that was passed during this sitting, which got bipartisan support, allows the government to take over the plant in order to keep it going until either a new buyer can be found or the plant is taken over completely by the state.
The blast furnaces in Scunthorpe are the last remaining virgin iron producers in the UK, since the government greenlit the decision to allow Port Talbot steelworks, owned by Tata steel, to close down its blast furnaces in October 2024. They will be replaced by an electric arc furnace, which mainly uses scrap steel (like cars) and produces lower grade steel given that it contains impurities (aka siliceous gangue) inherited from the scrap, like previous additives used to produce certain types of steel. That means that the steel they produce is usually used for things like nails, screws, rebar etc. It cannot, without expensive additive reduction, be used to produce high quality steel needed for things like shipping or cars.
Much has been made of the transition to so called ‘green steel’, which does not require a blast furnace, instead it uses a gas (usually natural gas or hydrogen) to reduce the iron ore into briquets of pure(ish) iron called Direct Reduced Iron (DRI). This DRI can be fed directly into the electric arc furnace in order to produce steel. If hydrogen is used then no CO2 is produced. However, the process uses a huge amount of energy, both in the electric arc furnaces and in the BRI process itself. And it needs a substantial amount of gas, either natural gas or hydrogen, for the reduction process. And that is the problem, where would the UK get its gas from?
The government has talked about producing hydrogen from water through electrolysis, but that needs large amounts of electricity. Some countries, like Tunisia, which has huge areas of sunlit desert, can install vast solar panel farms to create energy for the electrolysis process and they then ship the resultant hydrogen. Both hydrogen and DRI are difficult to ship; hydrogen because it is such a small element it can easily find the tiniest hole to escape from and the DRI is pyrophoric, meaning it can get very hot if it comes in contact with water or even water vapor. Two ships were sunk as a consequence of water contamination of their DRI cargo. Given its difficulty in shipping, it tends to be used where it is created. India is the biggest DRI producing nation but most of their production is from coal.
The current owners of the Scunthorpe plant are the Chinese Jingye group, who bought the works from the official receiver in 2020 after its previous owners, Greybull Capital, who in turn acquired it from Tata steel (for £1), couldn’t make it turn a profit. Jingye had plans to make the plant competitive and invested around £1.5 billion in it, but a number of obstacles were thrown in their path by the government. The first was when the government sanctioned Russian gas, resulting in UK wholesale energy prices going from £40–50/MWh in 2020. to £80–100/MWh by 2023, which British Steel’s CEO has described as “uncompetitive globally,”
Then the UK’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), launched in 2021, added a further £50–70 million to the annual cost at the Scunthorpe site by 2025. Added to that, ‘Net Zero’ policies and eradication of UK coal mines drove Jingye to use expensive imported coke and ore. Consequently, the company is now losing over $900,000 a day on the plant and after Trump’s 25% tariffs were introduced, they decided to throw in the towel and close the site by letting the blast furnaces cool down. In order to try and save something from the wreckage, they sold their inbound shipments of iron ore and coke to other steel producers. Once a blast furnace stops working and cools down it effectively collapses in on itself and would cost many millions of pounds to restart (as it would require a complete rebuild).
Listening to the politicians, the fault lays completely with Jingye, who, according to some in the government, bought the plant purely to close it down, even though it was effectively defunct when Jingye acquired it and they invested a substantial amount in an attempt to make it profitable. There is even talk around Westminster of not allowing the Chinese to invest in British industries, despite the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, going on a charm offensive in China, trying to encourage more Chinese investment in the UK.
The business secretary, Johnathan Reynolds, said he wouldn’t have allowed the Chinese to invest in the “sensitive” steel sector, even though no-one else wanted it as it was losing around £233 million a year. He also said that he would reduce the losses, no doubt by drawing on his history and politics degree and his, unfinished, legal studies for inspiration. He has only ever worked in politics except for his time as a trainee solicitor.
Under the new law, Jingye has to keep the plant running and if they don’t then the directors could be sent to prison. Which is going to be difficult as they’ve been banned from going onsite. Eventually, the site will be nationalized and will become an ongoing money pit; in the meantime, under the terms of the new act, Jingye is responsible for all the ongoing costs until a new buyer can be found (which is unlikely) or it is nationalized. After this debacle, it is unlikely that the Chinese would want to invest in British industry, so the government has saved the country from their inward investment.”
What caught my attention was Greybull Capital. The firm, set up by some rich kids, has, ahem, a history and was criticised by Paul Myners in the Lords in 2019.
I’m in no way an expert but at Uni I minored in the institutions of and history of the EC (I graduated just as the name changed to EU).
I’ve also given lessons and written curriculae on EU business law which uses the evolution of “Europe”.
You hear a lot about the process of joining up and how long it will take for an independent Scotland to qualify for membership.
Those observations tend to ignore/forget the actual law situation. Not only that Scotland has always retained its own system of law within the union which was EU-compatible, but the Scottish parliament has still not ratified the Retained EU law act from Westminster.
Basically Scottish law would seem to still be wholly EU-compliant and the only big questions facing an independent Scotland would be the currency issue and Schengen.
Coupled with the high regard the UK was always afforded by the EU and what I see as no real need for a CTA with GB in the way that Ireland had after the 1921 partition, I could envisage a re-accession of an independent Scotland within 3 years.
To join the EU Scotland must have its own currency
The SNP leadership ambivalence on this, despite Tim Rideout’s resolution from 2019 on this issue at SNP conference is the biggest impediment to progress.
That is technically so Richard, but I wonder if that viewpoint is not a tad too rigid right now.
On a pure realpolitik level, the EU of April 2025 is not the EU of even 2 short years ago. It’s facing many challenges from within and outside and what I’m seeing now is a desire to act quickly for Europe’s benefits.
Back in the real world, Kosovo & Montenegro don’t have their own currency either and use the Euro.
So we do actually have some sort of precedent.
Of course the idea of a nation joining the EU without a sovereign currency has never been dealt with.
But then again, Brexit showed that despite no legal precedent nor treaty provision, shit still happened.
Pragmatism rules now in Europe.
Maybe
But Scotland does emphatically need its own currency and not the euro or there is no reason further it to be independent.
@ Richard,
I’ve come around to the idea of Scotland joining EFTA and sticking with it for the long-term.
Membership could be achieved quickly, which gains access to the Single Market (but not the Customs Union). EFTA members are at liberty, unlike EU members, to make bipartite trade deals. This would avoid having an EU border with England, and all the baggage that entails, as well as making future trade easier to deal with.
EFTA already has almost 30 free trade deals beyond the EU, which Scotland would benefit from upon accession.
Full EU membership is still the preferred option for most people in Scotland, as part of the UK or not; but as compromises go, EFTA membership has a lot going for it.
Does Scotland emphatically need its own currency?
Yes, I agree.
The transition out of the UK will not happen overnight. Scotland has a trusted, respected, stable and desired financial status. Edinburgh is already a financial centre.
So they create a punnd to shadow the pound until they are ready to go it alone.
Aforementioned punnd is then the de facto currency of the newly independent state.
Is this pie-in-the-sky thinking? If you think “yes” – why not look into the disintegration of Yugoslavia and what that entailed in terms of newly-created currencies.
It won’t be as simple as laid-out above, but to truly believe it’s not possible in this rapidly-evolving world smacks of intransigent thinking.
Dare I say it smacks of a certain English bias?
It is actually not hard
See the work of the Scottish currency group
I’m quietly amazed at the relative calm and complacency of a lot of the comments here. There is clearly no understanding on several poster’s parts of the anger, the bitterness and the deep distaste that the behaviour of successive Unionist governments at Westminster have fostered in Scotland over many, many decades The next serious poll that is conducted on an unquestionable vote for independence will be won and won well. I hope and believe that it will be the 2026 Holyrood election treated as a de facto referendum.
The provoking causes litter our physical and political landscape. The failure to protect – let alone develop – our oil refinery capacity; the manner in which our oil and gas wealth have been ripped off and squandered; the outrage of the pricing of our electricity industry – and on and on for pages. As to the assumption that somehow Starmer or his more rabid successors may combine/deal with Trumpland to continue to abuse us as a ‘home’ for the obscene ‘British’ nuclear submarines and their missiles, forget it. The Union is now clung to by a rag bag of nervous pensioners, sectarian bigots, tax sheilded big landowners, Unionist political careerists from the STP (LINO/Tory/LibDem), neo-liberal pressure lobbies and the Britnat establishment of English Brexitanians. The desperation of Unionists is almost daily apparent; one recent Tory stunt being to refuse to join an all-party consultation of the danger of right-wing extremism, unless the SNP gave up its demand for independence. The mockery this provoked may be imagined.
Our future is our own country, currency and membership of the EU – rejoining the continent of whose culture, unlike England, we have always been a part. I suspect that Wales will follow. To discover why it is more than high time that this should happen, one only has to read any one week of this blog. If what one reads here revealed a prospectus for a country to whose rulers one would wish to be subject, I don’t reckon there would be many takers even in England – and none north of the Border.
Thanks, Nigel
Apologies for delay
A long post …
Scotland has recently started the process of Decolonisation at the UN, see:
https://liberation.scot/
“On 7 March, on behalf of more than 17,000 members of Liberation Scotland, Justice pour Tous
Internationale notified the Secretary-General of the United Nations in New York and the Chair and
Bureau of the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization (C-24) of the establishment of
Scotland’s peaceful liberation movement. It also submitted an advance notice of petition for the
formal recognition of Scotland as a Non-Self-Governing Territory under the United Nations
decolonization framework, in accordance with the principles enshrined in United Nations General
Assembly Resolutions 1514 (XV), 1541 (XV), and 1654 (XVI), and Chapter XI of the UN Charter.
Together, these establish the legal basis for decolonization (that is, independence) and the right to
self-determination for peoples under external governance.
The Advance Notice argues that the UK government has actively obstructed Scotland’s right to self-
determination, in contravention of UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 (XV), which states, “all
peoples have the right to self-determination” and that the “subjection of peoples to alien subjugation,
domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights.”
Professor Alf Baird, co-convener of the Liberation Scotland committee said:
“Scotland’s political and constitutional status aligns with the established international criteria for
recognition as a Non-Self-Governing Territory. The forthcoming petition aims to rectify Scotland’s
exclusion from the UN decolonization agenda by formally requesting its inclusion on the list of Non-
Self-Governing Territories, thereby initiating the process for Scotland’s recognition as a territory
entitled to self-determination and independence under UN oversight.” He added: “This is a
momentous development but necessary due to the undemocratic nature of our political system
whereby successive elected majorities of nationalist politicians in Scotland have failed to deliver
independence, and with the UK Government continuing to block the inalienable right of Scots to self-
determination. There is also the realization that colonial exploitation and domination of Scotland and
its people must be ended and can be, via the UN decolonization process Liberation Scotland has
initiated. Almost all former colonies that have become independent countries since the creation of the
United Nations in 1945 have done so through the UN self-determination and decolonization process.”
Sara Salyers, Director Salvo Scotland, the Campaign Organization of Liberation Scotland,
commented:
“Contrary to what we in Scotland – as well as the world at large – have been led to believe, the
historical incorporation of Scotland into the United Kingdom in 1707 did not constitute a voluntary
partnership. It was never an expression of self-determination, but a process marked by political
coercion, by the threats of economic sanctions and military invasion and by bribery. Ultimately, it saw
the abandonment by England of the Treaty of Union in favour of the annexation and ongoing
colonization of Scotland. The dissolution of Scotland’s independent governance structures followed,
along with the displacement of the indigenous population, the suppression of Scotland’s cultures,
and the colonial exploitation of Scotland’s maritime and territorial assets. The denial of Scotland’s
democratic rights has continued ever since.
By misrepresenting Scotland as a voluntary partner in the creation of a new state, rather than a
dependency of the English Crown, the UK government has failed to meet its responsibility under the
criteria set forth by the United Nations under Resolution 1541 (XV): Principles which should guide
Members in determining whether or not an obligation exists to transmit the information called for
under Article 73e of the United Nations Charter. What Liberation Scotland now seeks is both internationally lawful, and a fundamental human right. Itis simple justice for our nation and long overdue.”
Sharof Azizov, Executive Director, Justice pour Tous Internationale, has commended the strength of
the case:
“The Advance Notice of Petition convincingly argues that Scotland lost its political autonomy and
became a colony under Westminster’s governance and that this and other institutions of the state
have systemically eroded Scotland’s constitutional distinctiveness and suppressed Scotland’s rights
to self-determination.”
Given the compelling evidence demonstrating Scotland’s continued governance under external
authority, its lack of full self-government, and the systematic denial of its right to self-determination,
the Advance Notice will follow in due time with a formal request urging the C-24 to formally recognize
Scotland as a Non-Self-Governing Territory within the UN decolonization framework, in accordance
with the legal criteria set forth in Resolution 1541 (XV) (1960) and the principles articulated in
Resolution 1514 (XV) (1960). The evidence presented in this submission will establish that Scotland
satisfies the requirements for classification as a territory that has not yet achieved a full measure of
self-government and therefore qualifies for inclusion on the UN list of Non-Self-Governing Territories.
A copy of the Advance Notice of Petition and supporting papers can be viewed on the Liberation movement website: http://www.liberation.scot”
Also an excellent discussion by Craig Murray here: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2025/04/liberation-scotland/
I want an independent Scotland
It will not be secured on the basis of napping 18th century army positions
And, as usual, Craig Murray’s article was wildly detached from reality.
None of this strikes me as remotely plausible, or even desirable. It will make independence harder. I’m sorry. Any claim has to be better than this. And Craig Murray really will not help this cause. Realism is required. I support a Kosovo style claim. But this is not it, as far as I can see.
Damn, I wonder if my original long post got lost in the ether.
To surmise: Scotland & joining the EU. It could happen quickly and seamlessly in my opinion.
Scotd lls law currently fully compliant with EU law because it hasn’t incorporated the English law acts pulling the UK out of the EU.
Enough love in the EU to welcome the Scots back.
Only big decisions would be EURO & Schengen.
I thought I had cleared one…
Despite the ideas about how this might be achieved, I can’t see the SNP coming up with anything other than we’ll ask very politely. If I’m wrong, I’d be glad to hear what its plan is.
I am not sure they will come up with the idea
But any plan has to be credible