Written by Stephen Bailey.

Here’s how matters stand as concerns the Constitutional Question in the UK.

First, the SNP has never had a mandate to separate Scotland from the rest of the UK (’independence’), and the facts prove it.

It is a commonly touted SNP assertion that all elections, Westminster or devolved, will be referenda on ‘independence’, and that if they achieve a majority of seats, this will give them a mandate for ‘independence’.

The idea that anti-UK separatism has a mandate for ‘independence’ from ANY election, Westminster, devolved, or local council is THE major fallacy at elections for Scottish constituencies and highlights yet another intrinsic flaw in legislative devolution.

The fact is, the SNP has no mandate for ‘independence’ and never has, ever.

Its victories at Holyrood, Westminster and local council elections represent nothing more than the triumph of a small, vociferous minority (never higher than 36% of the total electorate’s vote) of activists running around and shouting the loudest, drowning out the voice of the overwhelming majority.

They only prove that a small and determined group of obsessed, loud and active zealots and extremists can force their will on the rest of the population, completely skewing the genuine will of the majority of the overall population.

Winning a majority of seats in Holyrood doesn’t give the SNP any mandate for ‘independence’ when they only represent around a third of the total registered electorate AND the vast majority of opinion polls on ‘independence’ in Scotland continue to show a majority for Scotland staying in the UK. Added to the above, in EVERY election during the legislative devolution era (1997 onwards), a majority of Scots have voted for pro-UK parties. No matter how you look at it, a majority of Scots support keeping Scotland in the UK. The same is true in Wales-more Welsh people voted for pro-UK parties in ALL devolved elections ever than for separatist ones.

The bottom-line of UK Constitutional Law is that under New Labour’s legislative devolution ‘settlement’ (a misnomer as it’s actually greatly unsettled and bitterly divided Scotland) a Holyrood election cannot deliver a mandate for ‘independence’, as the Constitution is a reserved matter, regardless of what is in a party’s manifesto (i.e. ‘independence’), or their reason for existing being ‘independence’.

ONLY the National UK Parliament at Westminster can deliver a constitutionally legal and democratically valid mandate for ‘independence’. Even a referendum win for the SNP would only be advisory. It would not provide a legally binding commitment to do so as referendums are only advisory.

It is therefore established conclusively with the facts of UK Constitutional Law that the SNP, or any other party, CANNOT receive a mandate for separation from the UK from a devolved election and that the objective, verifiable, empirical data demonstrates conclusively that the SNP has FAILED to earn a democratic mandate from Scots for breaking up the UK even if it was possible under the Constitution.

Please click on the following link for my previous discussion on this topic, which includes a comprehensive set of fully referenced and sourced election and other relevant data: https://www.scotlandmatters.co.uk/2025/10/27/snp-no-mandate-for-independence-uk-law/

AVOID ANTI-UK SEPARATIST SPONSORED FATALISM

This is the idea that something is going to happen, regardless of what or which course of action is taken to avoid it. It is a dangerous and misguided belief.

It seems to have set in among some of those who say they want to maintain the UK. Some of them appear to have adopted the misguided belief, sponsored by anti-UK separatism (the SNP in Scotland, Plaid Cymru in Wales and IRA/Sinn Fein in Ulster) that the separatists represent the will of the Scottish, or Welsh or Ullish (Ulster) people (despite, as above, never winning much more than a third of the total vote of the Scottish electorate in Scotland’s case (36% is the highest percentage in the 2015 Westminster elections (*1), 27.9% in 2021 for Holyrood (*2), 20.72% of the total Welsh electorate in the 2021 Senedd election for Plaid (*3) and 29% of the total Ulster electorate for IRA/Sinn Fein in the 2022 Stormont election(*4) and that therefore somehow ‘independence’ is inevitable.

This is erroneous and based upon specious thinking, not hard evidence, which contradicts them.

Some politicians, at both UK national and devolved levels, are far too keen on appeasing anti-UK separatism. They appear to have no idea how to take the fight to them, and simply exude an air of downbeat defeatism.

This is toxic, and no good will come of it.

It will only aid the continuance of anti-UK separatist rule and give them undeserved confidence that they can force separation from the rest of the UK on an unwilling public. They are ruthless, sociopathic, narcissistic and monomaniacal in their pursuit of separation from the rest of the UK and will just manipulate this defeatist attitude for their own purposes.

THERE IS NOTHING INEVITABLE ABOUT THE BREAK-UP OF THE UK

Don’t aid anti-UK separatism. There is NOTHING inevitable about ‘independence’.

The trends in public opinion are still strongly in favour of the UK. A strong majority of Scots, a vastly substantial majority of the Welsh and a majority of citizens of Ulster (across the communities) support their part of the Union staying in the UK.

The arguments for keeping the UK together are vastly stronger than those of the anti-UK separatists, who have demonstrated time and again that they have no viable plans for ‘independence’, especially, but not exclusively, economically. Breaking up the UK would be a recipe for disaster, financially, politically and culturally.

They are simply trying to force the pro-UK community into submission with continuous pressure of various kinds (a guerrilla war of attrition) as they have no positive arguments to offer for separation and they know it, hence the pressure tactics of the bully.

Don’t let them. The pro-UK side has by far the better arguments and so deserves to win. Don’t let a vociferous minority force its will on the majority.

Onwards and upwards say all those of us who want to maintain the UK. This United Kingdom of Great Britain and ‘Northern Ireland’ (Ulster) is NOWHERE NEAR dead and is fully worth fighting for.

Opinion polls have consistently shown that a majority of citizens in all parts of the UK (Scotland, England, Wales, and Ulster) share a common British identity and still firmly want to keep the UK together.

There is NOTHING inevitable about the break-up of the UK. With a positive will, the empty falsehoods and fallacies of anti-UK separatism can be defeated and a robust, mutually beneficial Union can exist in perpetuity.

DON’T FORGET-SECURE THE UK-VOTE THE SNP OUT OF POWER IN THE HOLYROOD ELECTIONS AND KEEP PLAID CYMRU OUT OF POWER AT THE SENEDD ELECTIONS THIS MAY.

Sources:

(1) 2015 UK General Election statistics: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7186/

(2) 2021 Holyrood election statistics: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9230/

(3) 2021 Senedd election statistics: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9282/

(4) 2022 Stormont election statistics: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9549/

Written by Stephen Bailey.

Scottish and Welsh separatist parties, the SNP and Plaid Cymru have recently announced a new partnership to form a ‘progressive alliance’ against Westminster. The collaboration was formalized through a meeting between First Minister John Swinney and Plaid Cymru Leader Rhun ap Iorwerth in Edinburgh on October 30th 2025.

The meeting at Bute House marked a significant step in strengthening cooperation between the two separatist parties, building on their previous ties.

Both leaders have stated that a future Plaid Cymru devolved administration in Wales and SNP administration in Scotland would represent a ‘wake-up call’ to the UK Government.

As of November 6th 2025, the partnership remains a strategic political alignment focused on upcoming elections in May 2026, with no indication of formal coalition government yet established.

This newly announced axis of separatists from different parts of the UK highlights yet another major intrinsic flaw in legislative devolution-the ‘Domino Effect’.

The ‘Domino Effect’ can be defined in the following terms. Legislative devolution in one part of the UK (SNP-dominated devolved Scotland mostly, but not exclusively) has enabled anti-UK separatists (the SNP are the prime villains in this) to rise to power, ignore reserved limitations on their remit and use their devolved executive to pursue referenda on separating their part of the country from the rest of the UK. This has encouraged separatists in other devolved parts of the UK (Wales and Ulster) and even England, to pursue their separatist agenda much more aggressively when they wouldn’t have without this encouragement in a kind of knock-on effect like a row of in line dominoes falling after being knocked over by the previous one, hence ‘Domino Effect’.

It is manifestly true that this has been the case throughout the entire UK. Take Wales, for instance. The Welsh separatists, Plaid Cymru, have existed since 1925 (nine years before the formation of the SNP) but in their early years had been more of a cultural movement, trying to promote Welsh language and culture. They had promoted the speaking of Welsh and other Welsh cultural phenomena, like the Eisteddfod (an annual festival that showcases Welsh music, literature, art, and other cultural themes). They had desired separation from the UK, but this was a very much longer-term objective.

After the introduction of legislative devolution in the late 1990s and influenced by the SNP’s aggressive campaign for separating Scotland from the rest of the UK, this stance began to change and Plaid began to adopt a much more militant pro-separation agenda. The domino effect was starting to come into play. They pushed for new referenda on granting the then Welsh Assembly more and more powers, including one in 2011 that substantially increased the areas of its legislative competency. Emboldened by the successful attempts of the SNP to hold a separation referendum, Plaid began trying to jump on the bandwagon and has intimated a few times now that they would push for a separation referendum in Wales if they felt the conditions were right (i.e. they felt they would win). In an ominous echo of the 2007 re-naming of the Scottish Executive to Scottish Government by the SNP in 2017, the Welsh assembly announced that it now wished to be known as the Welsh ‘parliament’, a further ominous step in the direction of independence. Subsequently, the Welsh ‘parliament’ was further renamed the ‘Senedd’

Added to all these depredations, Plaid have also intimated that they will definitely begin agitating for a separation referendum if there is another one in Scotland and Mark Drakeford, the then Labour First Minister in the Welsh ‘parliament’ tried to bribe the electorate by saying he would grant Plaid a referendum on separation if Labour were re-elected in the 2021 elections AND he would allow Adam Price, the Plaid leader, to be First Minister.

To cap it all, the new SNP/Plaid axis has now emerged, as described above.

All of this resurgence of aggressive anti-UK separatism has only come about as a knock-on effect of the SNP’s machinations in Scotland. Events would not have developed in this direction if legislative devolution hadn’t been introduced into Scotland.

A similar, though markedly more pronounced effect is in evidence in Ulster. The introduction of legislative devolution there has witnessed a rising tide of anti-Union separatist sentiment and a volumetric increase in calls for separating Ulster from the rest of the UK and placing it under Dublin control. As with Wales, these clarion calls for Dublin control have been magnified by the megaphone of legislative devolution, which has brought the topic very much into the forefront of the public’s eye, something that just wouldn’t have been anywhere so acute without legislative devolution.

Separatist and even some ‘mainstream’ politicians in England have been affected by this phenomenon as well. Even though the idea of English regional assemblies was conclusively defeated in a referendum held in North-East England on 4th November 2004 by a margin of 77.9% to 22.1%, the knock-on effect of legislative devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has led to a resurgence in the concept of English regional government. This idea was resurrected in 2012 when certain Northern English MPs wrote a letter to ‘The Observer’ newspaper and openly stated that it was time to reconsider having Northern regional assemblies (in England). They were clearly inspired by Scottish legislative devolution. Huddersfield MP Barry Sheerman wrote:

‘The North has a much larger population than Scotland [which has an assembly]… We don’t have a body to deal with strategic problems and issues for the North [of England]’.

The public in these areas of the North started to have concerns that legislative devolution had left the northern regions of England as the poor relations of Scotland in terms of economic and political clout. These concerns were magnified even more when Holyrood got more powers in 2016 and would be further exacerbated if (or it would be more correct to say ‘when’) more powers are added in the future. The continual granting of new powers to the Welsh ‘parliament’ has, and will, continue to have the same effect on England.

What’s more 2021 saw a further unsettling development with the formation of a political party dedicated to the political independence of the North of England from the rest of the UK. There’s even a political party seeking separation for Yorkshire as well.

London is also undergoing the same process of travelling down the legislative devolutionary, constitutionally fragmenting road. An assembly was set up with powers over many matters affecting the capital of the UK and also had a directly elected mayor who answered to this assembly.

London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, has ignored the remit of devolution in London, just like the SNP has in Scotland, as well as Plaid Cymru in Wales and IRA/ Sinn Fein plus the SDLP in Ulster, to look after the Capital’s local affairs and got involved in matters that are the business of the UK Government at Westminster, such as Brexit for example-he approached a foreign country, Germany in this case, during the UK’s negotiations with the EU over Brexit and asked for London to be treated as a separate case from the rest of the UK in the post-Brexit arrangements. He’s acting as if he’s the Prime Minister of a sovereign, independent city-state of London, whose affairs are totally separate from the rest of the UK.

If matters follow the same trajectory as Scotland (especially), Wales and Northern Ireland, this tendency to consider London to be somehow different and separate from the UK will get worse and would pose an obvious, clear and present danger to the constitutional integrity of the UK, as has undeniably been the case in Scotland, Wales, and Ulster.

Recently, the Mayoral Office even acquired an official website with an address of ‘LGOV’, or ‘London Government’, a clear indication that the Mayor sees himself as the Prime Minister of the city-state of London and the Greater London Assembly as the seat of the Capital’s ‘national’ government.

The balkanization of the UK, initiated and accelerated by the introduction of legislative devolution, continues to accelerate, introducing an extremely ominous potential for future further fracturing the constitutional integrity of the UK.

The extreme South-West of England has added another domino to the chain. The Duchy of Cornwall has, for a long time, had a history of a small minority of residents asserting that they have a separate cultural identity from the rest of England. They had a different language and certain elements considered themselves to be of different ethnic origin. However, Cornish became a dead language by the end of the Nineteenth Century having essentially ceased to be used by the vast majority of the population and the concept of a separate Cornish identity as a political issue declined and fell into abeyance as a result.

Despite Mebyon Kernow, (‘The sons of Cornwall’) a political party that pushed for Cornish autonomy (I.e. a Cornish assembly) being formed in 1951, it was the introduction of legislative devolution in the late 1990s that really sparked interest in a devolved assembly in Cornwall. The Cornish Constitutional Convention launched a campaign for a devolved Cornish legislature on the back of the referenda in Scotland, Wales and Ulster that led to the setting up of devolved institutions in these areas. In October 2007, Andrew George, a Liberal Democrat MP stated:

‘If Scotland is benefiting from devolution then Cornwall should learn from this and increase the intensity of its own campaign for devolution to a Cornish Assembly’. Clearly, the domino effect was spreading further in England, thanks to devolution in other parts of the country. In 2009, Liberal Democrat MP William Rogerson presented a ‘Government of Cornwall’ Bill before the House of Commons which argued for a devolved Cornish assembly that was very similar in set up to the Scots and Welsh legislatures. The domino effect-like influence of Scots, Welsh and Ulster legislative devolution is clear from the following statement made by Rogerson:

‘Cornwall has the right to a level of self–government. If the Government is going to recognise the right of Scotland and Wales to greater self-determination because of their unique cultural and political positions, then they should recognise ours’.

But that’s not all. Not content with (trying) to break up the United Kingdom, the SNP are now imperilling the very existence of Scotland as a unitary political entity.

Recent developments have shown that the actions of the SNP are having a type of domino effect within Scotland itself.

The Shetland Isles have voted to explore ways to become independent from Scotland. The Shetland Islands Council overwhelmingly voted to start looking at ways to become financially and politically independent from Scotland. Councillors voted 18 to 2 in favour of a motion to formally explore options ‘for achieving financial and political self-determination’. In a debate lasting more than an hour, members argued decision-making has become increasingly centralized and public funding for the island has been cut under the SNP-dominated Holyrood administration.

Councillor Steven Coutts stated that devolution has not benefited the area and said the Scottish Parliament feels ‘remote’ to islanders, who face some of the highest rates of fuel poverty in the country.

‘The status quo is not working’ he said, adding: ‘Devolution and the Islands Act have not made any tangible difference to the quality of life’.

Other regions of Scotland (the Borders, Clydesdale, Tweeddale; Berwickshire, Roxburgh, Selkirk; Dumfries and Galloway) have expressed similar sentiments and the reason for it is invariably unhappiness at the way the SNP is mismanaging their affairs. The SNP and their misdeeds have had a knock-on effect on Scotland itself similar to that they’ve had on the UK generally as well as England. The SNP and legislative devolution have encouraged a previously unitary, cohesive country, the UK and a part of that country (England) to fragment into several separate entities. It’s just extremely ironic that it’s the SNP’s own actions that have led to this domino effect in Scotland itself.

Added to this, why is the UK Government not enforcing the remit system set up by the devolution ‘settlement’ in which the devolved legislatures (Holyrood, the Welsh ‘parliament’ and Stormont) can only debate and pass legislation on matters that aren’t reserved for Westminster’s consideration? Why does it allow the anti-UK separatists to abuse the remit system to such a monumental degree? It’s irrelevant that separation is the raison d’être of the SNP (or Plaid or IRA/Sinn Fein and the SDLP). They simply have no business getting involved in reserved matters. The then Labour government did nothing to stop Alex Salmond changing the title of Holyrood from the ‘Scottish Executive’ to the ‘Scottish Government’, even though it was extremely obvious that this was a deliberate attempt to subvert the concept of legislative devolution and move Holyrood towards a perceived equal status as a ‘national government’ on a par with Westminster. Added to this, the Welsh Assembly changing its title to ‘parliament’ is something that the UK Government does not appear to have wanted to stop. All in all, there has been an apparent and palpable lack of interest and vigour from Westminster in defending the Union against these increasing encroachments by separatism on UK sovereignty and their pretensions to being national governments, rather than just devolved administrations.

There is a clearly discernible pattern of legislative devolution in one part of the UK, I.e. Scotland, having a knock-on effect on other parts in a domino-like effect. The SNP in Scotland set the ball rolling by aggressively ignoring their devolved remit and this clearly encouraged other devolved regions like Wales and Ulster to follow suit and become more bellicose in their demands for more and more autonomy and even to push for full separation. Moreover, this phenomenon has spread to England, as seen in the North-East and the South-West of the country. It’s even threatening to break up Scotland as many areas of that part of the UK and its associated islands have strong links and sympathies with the UK and don’t feel much of a bond to Scotland, politically or culturally, and have either openly expressed a desire to remain in a constitutional arrangement with the UK or have the potential to do so. Legislative devolution has unleashed an uncontrollable wave of copycat aggressive separatism that threatens to throw the British Isles back to the early Tenth Century days of being a disunited, warring hodgepodge of fiefdoms and kingdoms.

Written by Stephen Bailey.

Robert Black of Edinburgh University has asserted that Scotland was ‘absorbed’ into England by the Acts of Union of 1706-07, rather than being a partner in a union. He has said that Scotland ceased to exist as a state in international law after 1707, while England continued to exist and was merely renamed ‘Great Britain’. According to Black, the evidence supports the conclusion that Scotland was absorbed into a still-extant England, with its legal system altered and its international persona lost, as its treaties were rendered null and void while England’s remained in place. He compared the situation to a corporate ‘takeover’ rather than a ‘merger’, asserting that any corporate lawyer would classify the event as a takeover. However, these claims are contested; the Court of Session in Edinburgh ruled in 1953 that Scotland and England had voluntarily merged to form a new country, the Kingdom of Great Britain, a position reaffirmed in a 2022 Supreme Court case. The Law Society of Scotland has also previously stated that Scotland entered the union as a partner, not a dependency.

Black’s view is highly misleading and so inaccurate and the assertion that the UK is a union of four separate countries in a loose constitutional arrangement is just fallacious.

Why?

We all live in a country called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and ‘Northern Ireland’ (Ulster). The United Kingdom is a unitary (single) country and ultimate legislative sovereignty (the ability to enact laws across the entire UK) resides solely with Westminster (with ultimate political sovereignty, the ability to decide who governs the UK, remaining with the electorate across all parts of the UK).

Here is the evidence of this:
https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/role/sovereignty/

The above is a fact of history and constitutional law, irrespective of the advent of legislative devolution.

Our country, the UK is a unitary, or single, country, not some confederation of sovereign countries held together in a loose constitutional arrangement as separatists and even some who want to maintain the UK assert. The history of its formation is:

Pre the 1706-07 Acts of Union England and Scotland were completely separate sovereign countries. Wales had gone into political union with England during the Sixteenth Century and Ireland had seen various degrees of English influence since the Thirteenth Century becoming part of a country called the United Kingdom with the 1800-01 Acts of Union (’Northern Ireland’ after partition in 1921).

After 1707, both Scotland AND England stopped being independent sovereign countries and formed a single (unitary) composite country, Great Britain, in which legislative sovereignty and the resources of the two countries were pooled for the mutual benefit of both. The Scottish Parliament was abolished after a vote by its members and Westminster became the national parliament of Great Britain in which national legislative sovereignty resided solely (ultimate political sovereignty remained with the electorate across the entire UK). Scotland later became one of four constituent parts of the UK along with Wales and Ireland after the 1800 Act of Union with Ireland (’Northern Ireland’ after partition in 1921), not an independent sovereign country.

The Scottish Parliament voted to merge Scotland with England and abolish itself to form a new single country, Great Britain. Scotland retained its separate and distinctive legal system and religious settlement. England didn’t ‘take over’ Scotland, as Black erroneously claims.

What are the FACTS behind the Union of Scotland and England?

An evidence-based debate about the history of the formation of the United Kingdom is needed. The long-held and popular notion that the Scots were ‘bought and sold for English gold’ simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The argument that the Scots bargained away their Parliament for free trade and access to England’s colonies is just a myth.

Christopher Whatley is a professor of Scottish History and Vice-Principal and Head of Arts and Social Sciences at Dundee University and one of Scotland’s most eminent historians. What’s more, Professor Whatley’s conclusions are the results of four years of painstaking research, examining handwritten records of the speeches made about the Union, piles of burgh and church records, private diaries and the papers of minor politicians whose votes were crucial in securing the Union. Whatley believes many of the materials have never before been studied in detail. He’s studied the FACTS and come to the conclusions he has based on evidence from certified authentic primary historical documents. He hasn’t just repeated popular misconceptions based on separatist propaganda. Neither is it the case of ‘history being written by the winners’ as a broad range of records from many different sources from the time are being used to base conclusions on. Therefore, his conclusions have substantial veracity.

Professor Whatley has researched the issue and found that the evidence supports that several Scottish parliamentarians fervently wanted the Union, and says any debate about its future must recognise this. ‘It was not forced on them. It is of critical importance that the debate should be conducted in today’s terms and not based on some sort of grudge or mythical understanding of how we got here in the first place.’

Professor Whatley’s conclusions are, as previously stated, the results of four years of painstaking research, examining handwritten records of the speeches made about the Union, piles of burgh and church records, private diaries and the papers of minor politicians whose votes were crucial in securing the Union. Whatley believes many of the materials have never before been studied in detail and said his findings took him by surprise.

With the help of his research assistant Dr Derek Patrick, he compiled a list of members of the Scottish parliament from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to the Union and then carefully tracked back their history, voting records and political ideology. ‘It is the first time this has been done and shows many held pro-Union views, primarily for religious reasons, though also economic and political ones went into this project expecting and hoping to find all sorts of evidence of bribery. But the records that we looked at showed that politicians were not simply ‘bought off’. Most of them were on board already. They didn’t need a bribe to vote for the Union.’

He also cast doubt on the famous book by George Lockhart, also known as Lockhart of Carnwath, whose ‘Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland’ is the key source of information about bribery allegations. It is a critical document in Scottish history. In an appendix, it lists 30 people who received sums of £20,000 of gold that came north from Queen Anne. But Whatley claims that at least four of those people did not even have a vote in parliament and, more importantly, most of those who did receive money were actually long-standing unionists anyway.
‘I’m not saying money didn’t change hands. The idea that bribery was the reason why Scottish parliamentarians gave up their independence is completely misleading. It fails to appreciate that for religious and economic reasons most of these characters were pro-Union anyway.’
Whatley says money was paid largely for legitimate reasons, including for back salaries and as compensation for the Darien disaster, the ambitious scheme to establish a Scottish colony in Panama, which ended in loss of life and financial ruin. The venture was not helped by King William of Orange and many Scots, to this day, believed that their chance of independence had been deliberately sabotaged by the English. They were completely incapable of going it alone afterwards and felt deeply betrayed.
‘I’m not suggesting that these Scottish parliamentarians who negotiated the Union weren’t flawed. Yes, they were womanisers, drunkards and inconsistent. They were politicians – they also wanted to get to the top of the tree. But to reduce it all to the idea that they were bought off for their own personal gain is simply not true.’

Compensation for the Darien venture is sometimes called the great national bribe. But Whatley also challenges that view. ‘It wasn’t a bribe. It was a victory for the Scottish negotiators because they got what they wanted. That is why many walked away from previous discussions. But in 1706, they got something which they would never in any other circumstances have achieved: their money back plus five per cent for a failed scheme. I’m not saying we should be grateful to the English. Leave them out of it. Darien failed for various important reasons, including the location. But the compensation allowed Scottish investors to start from scratch within a new economic environment. I consider it a great negotiating victory, not a bribe to supine Scots.’

Most controversially, Whatley casts doubt on the origins of Burns’s quote. ‘Bought and sold for English gold,’ is one of his most famous and has long been widely thought to refer to the Union Treaty. Whatley points out that it in fact predates the Union, and was used in the late 17th Century to condemn government ministers who supported William on the Darien venture and were therefore seen to be in the pay of the English.

There is also a widely held view that had the Scots not accepted English proposals for the Union, the country would have been invaded. According to Whatley, this is another convenient myth. He said troops were ordered to the border in 1706 but at the behest of Scottish politicians who were concerned about riots, disturbances and even the threat of the parliament being stormed.

At the time it was the Jacobites, who only represented a minority of the Scottish population (FACT: more Scots fought for the Hanoverian pro-UK side than for the Jacobites). Whatley said Scotland was a nation divided and that had troops come north they would have been welcomed by many Presbyterians who feared more than anything else a Jacobite insurgency.

Scots held some very good reasons for desiring Union in 1707-economic, defence, and especially at the time, religious and royal succession reasons, as well as shared identity reasons.

Indeed, it was Scots who had been lobbying for Union ever since the Union of the Crowns in 1603 when James VI of Scotland became James VI of Great Britain. He urged the English Parliament several times to join with Scotland.

Scottish politicians lobbied for Union in 1670, in 1688, in 1689, and 1702.

Many in Scotland saw the obvious benefits of economic access to England’s large market and to its overseas colonies, access which would in time bring Scotland unprecedented prosperity.

Furthermore, some of those who were able to travel outside of Scotland were able to see that parts of England, and the Continent were moving ahead of Scotland, economically and socially, and they believed that Scotland could progress similarly through Union with England.

Militarily, there was the correct belief that (what was then) the English Royal Navy would be able to better protect Scotland against its continental enemies.

There was a desire to maintain the Glorious Revolution of 1688, to keep out the Young Pretender James VIII who was living in France, and to ensure the succession of the Monarchy would pass to the Protestant House of Hanover after Queen Anne died.

Moreover, by 1707, there was a sense that Britain was coming together as a nation in its own right.

After all, Britain had already been regally united for over 100 years, sharing a common Monarch since the Union of the Crowns in 1603 when the Scottish King James VI became James I of Great Britain.

It was James I who also created our Union Jack flag.

So by 1707, the Scots and English had been developing a sense of shared identity, and to an extent living a shared experience, for over 100 years already.

That meant that by 1707 there was already, among some, a shared British patriotism extending to all of the British Islands.

So, there were several compelling reasons for the Union related to the economic benefits of joining together, to a concern to maintain defence against external opponents, to religious reasons to maintain the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the succession of the Monarchy, and to a growing loyalty to the idea of Britain as a nation, and to the idea of being British; an idea which had been developing over the previous 100 years of shared Monarchy and experience.

The UK Parliament at Westminster can delegate (or devolve) power over certain matters to any part of the UK (I.e. Scotland, Wales and Ulster) at any time. However, whilst power to decide policy on devolved matters to whatever degree is transferred to the designated part of the UK, national legislative sovereignty remains with Westminster and is not transferred to the devolved legislature. Therefore Holyrood, the Welsh ‘parliament’ and Stormont are not the sovereign national parliaments of their parts of the UK, they are sub-national devolved legislatures with responsibility over the matters that have been devolved to them (their devolved remit). The Constitution (I.e. ‘independence’) isn’t one of them and so Holyrood, the SNP and the devolved legislatures and separatists in Wales and Ulster have no business getting involved in it, irrespective of it being their reason for existing.

Added to this the leader of the biggest party in the devolved legislatures, currently the SNP in Holyrood, is the First Minister of that devolved part of the UK, NOT the Prime Minister of an independent sovereign nation. They have responsibility over and the authority to speak on purely the matters devolved to them, not national UK reserved matters. The leader of the biggest party at Westminster remains the national Prime Minister of the UK with authority and responsibility over and the authority to speak on behalf of the nation, the UK.

Westminster also has the power, under the UK Constitution to withdraw devolved powers at any time. A bill needs to be introduced into Parliament that repeals the original acts that set up devolution in the first place and it would be abolished. A democratic mandate such as a referendum or winning a majority in a general election on a manifesto commitment to abolition MUST be sought and won before taking such an action. It CANNOT be done without the explicit majority consent of the relevant part of the UK.

The fallacious separative narrative, which is increasingly becoming accepted even by some who are pro-UK that their part of their UK is a sovereign nation that’s in a loose confederation style constitutional arrangement with the rest of the UK just isn’t supported by either history or constitutional law. It must be very firmly challenged and the real facts laid out at every given opportunity if we are going to maintain the UK. Complacency and apathy will just aid the spread of this fallacy with the consequential effect of boosting separatism in its efforts to break up the UK.

The proponents, defenders, and supporters of legislative devolution (which includes the supposedly ‘one nation’ Conservative and Unionist Party) don’t appear to understand this. They have thoroughly embraced and promoted very strong legislative devolution. ALL the mainstream UK political parties have embraced legislative devolution. As a consequence of legislative devolution the SNP, especially, Plaid Cymru and IRA/Sinn Fein plus the SDLP as well, have had their ability to pursue ‘independence’ greatly enhanced and so have utilised their devolved legislatures as a platform to do just that. The result has been a constitutional crisis that is a very clear and present danger to the existence of the Union. It has created a situation in which the UK has become a warring, squabbling hotchpotch of four separate, increasingly fractious, squabbling statelets, the UK Government, and devolved Scotland, Wales and Ulster administrations. The UK is increasingly drifting apart under the legislative devolution ‘settlement’. Legislative devolution hasn’t appeased anti-UK separatism (and certainly hasn’t ‘killed it off, stone dead’ as New Labour suggested it would three decades ago at the beginning of this process).

The folly of this ‘four nations in a loose constitutional alliance’ approach was thoroughly highlighted by the recent Covid-19 pandemic, with Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP always wanting to be different from the rest of the UK irrespective of the merits of such an approach. This contrarian approach to drawing up policy for Scottish matters is a hallmark of SNP administration at Holyrood since they took over from Labour as the ruling party in 2007.

Continuing down this path has manifestly been shown to be inimical to maintaining the UK as a single nation. So why are the Government and all the so-called ‘mainstream Unionist’ parties so thoroughly committed to continuing and even expanding the devolved remit of the devolved legislatures? It’s clear that the devolution process could lead to the eventual break-up of the UK.

It can’t realistically be claimed that it is desired to genuinely want to maintain the UK as a single nation and countenance the process that greatly quickens the break-up of the UK, legislative devolution. Continuing down the path of legislative devolution isn’t a tenable way to secure the UK’s continued existence into the future.

The only viable way to do this is to promote a one-nation (unitary) approach. One nation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and ‘Northern Ireland’, with a legislatively sovereign national Parliament at Westminster. One mutually beneficial country is the best way forward for the UK.

Source: ‘The Scots and the Union: Then and now, Professor Christopher A. Whatley, Edinburgh University Press, 2014