Media reports over the past weekend suggest that the Tavish Scott, Leader of the Liberal Democrat contingent at Holyrood, is set on leading the group into absolute opposition to Scots being offered the opportunity to express their views on Scottish independence in a referendum.
Jim Mather, Argyll’s Scottish Nationalist MSP, has reminded the LibDems of their party’s historic support for Home Rule, wondering aloud if an anti-referendum stance would alienate some of its traditional supporters, should Scott impose this commitment on his parliamentary group.
Mr Mather said: ‘I understand that, in spite of a substantial level of support for a referendum on Scotland’s constitutional future within the membership of the LibDems in Scotland, Tavish Scott and many of his small group of MSPs have consistently refused to back a plebiscite.
‘The prospect of the possibility of a coalition agreement with the Labour Party at Holyrood appears to be more attractive to these people than giving Scots the opportunity of a vote on the country’s constitutional future.
‘Several high profile LibDems have been critical of Scott’s stance on this issue – John Farquhar Munro, MSP and George Lyon, MEP, have voiced concerns, although for very different reasons – and an opinion poll last year indicated a large proportion of LibDem voters backing SNP plans for a vote on this’.
Mr Mather went on to compare Tavish Scott’s stance with that of his national party’s eagerness to consult the opinion of the nation by referendum on the Alternative Voting (AV) system they want to see introduced.
‘While the SNP believes that the AV voting system is far from ideal,we would not seek to deny the electorate the right to vote on it and we are genuinely mystified at the political gymnastics that can support a referendum on the voting system and completely rule out a referendum on the independence issue. The LibDem position on this is neither Liberal nor is it democratic. They should trust the people’
The referendum paradox
In an increasingly informed and decentralised society, enabled by digital electronic technology, the use of Referenda is likely to become a more common mode of decision taking.
Logically, if the people can be trusted to appoint by election a political party to govern the country on their behalf, they can, using the same process, be trusted to instruct that government on a specific item of government policy. The latter is more interventionist – but that is to be expected in a progressively self-confident electorate.
Whatever the people want to see happen, they will not respect a party set on denying them the right to say what it is.
However, the Home Rule point might have an inbuilt rebound.
The Liberal leader, Gladstone’s conversion to the Irish Home Rule cause – essentially an early argument for the devolution enshrined later in the 1914 Government of Ireland Act (which was never enacted because of the intervention of World War I), split the Liberal party in 1886.
A secessionist group, led by Lord Hartington and Joseph Chamberlain, later Duke of Devonshire, the Liberal Unionists formed an alliance with the Conservative Party in combined opposition to Irish Home Rule.
Deliciously, the Liberal Unionists went into a coalition government with the Conservatives in 1895, maintaining separate organisations and identities – until they merged seventeen years later in 1912.
Two issues are getting confused here.
One is the Liberals’ historic and internally schismatic support for Irish Home Rule – or devolution. The other is the paradox of what purports to be one party supporting a referendum at full national level on one issue and obstructing it within a devolved administrative area on a different issue.
These contradictory stances juvenilise the electorate and defy logic. How can it be acceptable, in principle, to ask the electorate to instruct its elected government on its specific wishes in respect of a voting system – and unacceptable to ask it to instruct on its wishes on independence?
Given that the people can evidently be trusted to decide upon a voting system – whatever their decision should be – it looks as if the problem with the independence referendum is that the people cannot be trusted to make a specific decision, meaning a rejection of independence.
The people can be allowed to play with issues that at heart, the Liberal Democrats are not ready to see through – perhaps because AV is not the system the party wants to see – but would accept as a triumph if the vote went that way.
Independence is another matter – and perhaps for the very historical reasons Mr Mather advanced as encouragement.
The LibDems – and the unionist parties – must be fearful that the Scottish electorate might choose independence, a view that can only be born of paranoia rather than political analysis in the current context.
Mr Mather should use the short time he has remaining as an MSP dealing with his constituents many problems and stop trying to destroy the most successful partnership in history ,the United Kingdom .
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Mr Mathers constituents will be far better served when the Scottish Parliament has all the tools to serve them properly. That can only happen with Independence. The Scottish Lib Dems now seem to be hellbent on distancing themselves from their Westminster brethren as they are aware of the political damage that will be inflicted at the ballot box next May having sold out to the Tories for power – casting aside their ideals and policies. The Lib Dems are in disarray even closer to home over their Candidate selection process and the defection of Cllr George White to the Liberal Party, who has declared he will stand as a Candidate in Argyll and Bute in May. There have been many successful partnerships in History but the Union certainly hasnt been one of them. Not from the Scot’s perspective.
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Many of the myriad constituency problems that Jim Mather is called upon to try to resolve can be traced back to the halcyon days of the “most successful partnership in history ” that kintyre1 fondly remembers from a long discarded atlas when more than half the world, and all that mattered, was coloured red and the sun never set…..Kintyre1 needs to cast off the pith helmet and enter the real world.
The United Kingdom that lost an empire and has never yet found a role, constantly deludes itself that it is a world power ( Trident and colonial wars) and its loss of influence is evident for all to see. As we now face the dire economic consequences of 13 years of Labour ineptitude that followed on from 18 previous years of Tory sleaze and corruption, we brace ourselves for a further round of swingeing cuts to services from a resurgent Tory administration -floreat Etonia, shored up by a compliant LiDem rump for whom seats on the front bench appear to be an end in itself.
Our MSP would be doing less than his duty were he not to take moments from his busy schedule to point out that the trough where we presently languish is not inevitable. Normal countries take control and responsibility for their own affairs and denial of the choice to do just that is profoundly undemocratic.However many countries that have seceded from the control of the the UK in years gone by and however they have fared on their own I can find no record of any one that would seek to reverse that process. Unionists constantly assert that the Scots have no wish to opt for Independence and yet they are collectively reluctant to put that to the test.
“Trust the people” is not a bad modus operandi for a politician.
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We have just had a general election where the nationalist candidate came FOURTH in Argyll & Bute , that should be answer enough to the nats .
Were any referendum to take place we can rest assured that the whingeing malcontents would not desist from their divisive separatist agenda despite being overwhelmingly rejected .
The real world you talk about is one where standing together the people of the UK saw of invasion and won the freedom we enjoy today despite the fact snp leaders spent the war years in jail viewed as traitors and enemy sympathisers .
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