Scotland and Brexit

We are very glad to have such a robust beginning to the British studies seminar
this year. This comes close to a record number of people who have been
at the very first meeting of the seminar. And I suppose that the reason
is because of George Scott, Christian. Everyone is looking forward to his
talk. And I will actually read a couple of lines and I’ll read them because as I
understand it, these talks are recorded. And unless it’s helpful for people who are
listening to the lectures to have a little bit of detail that otherwise wouldn’t go into
an introduction. So let me say that as George Scott, Christian and Scott, to distinguish
him from his father, George Christian, the adviser to LBJ and so
on. George himself holds virtually a unique
place in the British studies roster because of his U.T. degrees, a B.A.
in plan to 1982, a JD
p_h_d_ and 2000. He is a practicing lawyer
as well as a teacher in English history and literature.
His scholarly work on the British novel has appeared in the Dickens Studies
Annual and the Thomas Hardy Journal. He’s served as
a legislative assistant to a Texas state senator
and he represents clients in the Texas state legislature.
And like his mother, Joanne Christian, who was a member of British studies from the very
beginning in nineteen seventy five until a few years ago before her death,
George also is a very devoted member of British studies. George Christian.
All right. Well, thank you, Roger, for a generous
and mostly accurate introduction, part
about my mother’s is absolutely correct. It is
an honor to be here, as it always is. It’s just an honor to be a member of this seminar, to begin to speak to the seminar.
And I’ve done that on occasion over many years is really sort of
something I could not have ever imagined as a young beauty student or is grown up. Hearing about
the seminar from my mother used to sit in that corner of the table right where Tom Cable is.
And to actually appear and to kind of take her place, in a sense
is really quite touching. And I can never kind of get over her not being
there. It’s quite some it’s quite a time warp kind of a thing.
I’m not sure why Roger asked me to speak about this subject, because my knowledge of Scotland is really good.
Up to about eighteen hundred, not so much after that.
And nobody knows anything about Brexit. I’m convinced now totally
that everybody is clueless about it. And we’ll talk a little about
kind of what we think might be happening. But your guess is as good as mine. And
I really hope that maybe this is more of a discussion about this situation
than it is me telling you anything about it. So let me tell you kind
of how I’m going to approach this. You may recall in 2014,
I if you don’t recall, don’t worry. I barely work all things that long ago. I
gave the last lecture at British studies
for the 2013 2014 term. And the subject of that was
whether Scotland that was just prior to the independence
referendum that was held later in the year. And I spoke about
what might happen if the Scots either did or did
not vote in favor of independence. And I kind of reviewed
what I thought to be kind of a recurrence in Scottish and English relations of periods
of devolution and periods of consolidation and kind of looked at it historically that way.
And this was one of my last slides. And it was that guy who
has dropped into complete oblivion, as far as I can tell. And I asked the question,
do we have another constitutional crisis in Anglo Scottish relations
around the corner? And if you’ll hit that next button, hopefully it’ll work. And at that time,
there was a news report very freshly minted about David Cameron
telling Tory m.p.’s and his troublesome backbenchers that he was
planning to bring a referendum to the ballot on the
exit from the EU. Question And you see here,
he said, the sooner I can deliver on our commitment of renegotiation and a referendum,
the better. And so I brought this up as Gordon Well, if this happens,
what’s going to happen next? Next slide? Well,
it happened. And that’s kind of a funny cartoon. Next slide,
hopefully there was a pretty rapid response from the Scottish government
at the time, even before this was proposed
for the ballot where Alex Salmon, who was the first minister of Scotland
at the time, the leader of the Scottish National Party, he said five and a quarter million people ceasing
to be EU citizens against their will is more than absurd. There is simply
no legal basis in the EU treaties for any such proposition. And it is against the founding principles,
the European Union. Now, what Alex Salmond didn’t say at the time was
there this thing called parliamentary sovereignty. That kind of overrides that. But we’ll talk about that
in a minute. So move the videotape, OK? Since
I gave that talk in 2014 to referenda had been held. As
everyone knows. So the first one, which the next
remain in there. I just put up a little chart. You probably can’t see it of kind of the
demographic breakdown of that vote. And if you want to see it, I’ll send it to you. But
it generally shows that, yes, voters
accept. In this, if they were born in Scotland, they were more likely to vote yes
than remain if they were men, they were more likely to vote yes
than women, too. I mean, to leave
the union and I thought that was just an error. Say it’s a close. It’s a much closer vote, I think, than
people really think it was. And and there is a substantial
number of remain and leave voters
that are still there. This issue still polls about the same way. By the way,
you had changed a whole lot since then. In twenty sixteen
in the EU exit referendum, 62
percent of Scots voted to remain in the EU. And this vote
was pretty generally universal across Scotland in all constituencies.
In Scotland, it was particularly strong across the urban belt
of Scotland. Leave got more support in the
borders area, in the rural areas of Scotland, looked a little like England actually,
where the rural areas went very strong for leave, whereas the more urban cosmopolitan
areas went pretty strong for remain. And that’s kind of what happened in Scotland. But
as you could see by the yellow, all of Scotland voted to remain. So there
really is a different mandate. If you look at it this way and that’s debated,
obviously is how you look at this vote. The mandate was pretty strong from the
Scots across the board in all kinds of demographic categories, young,
old men, women to remain in the EU. All
right. OK. The day after
the EU vote, the Brexit vote, things started
to happen immediately. And you may know in May 2016,
there was an election in which SNP stood
on the proposition that if if there is a significant and material
change in circumstances that prevailed in 2014, such as Scotland being taken
out of the EU against its will, then the SNP, the Scottish government
would propose a new independence referendum that this
particular right contingency which did occur and it had
not occurred as of the issuance of this manifesto, would trigger another
independence referendum request by the Scottish government. We’ll talk about
again, I’ll remind you what has to happen for there actually to be a constitutional referendum in
a minute. And as you see here, last year,
the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said she believed that it would be wrong for
Scotland to be taken down a path that it has no control over, regardless of the consequences
for our economy, for our society, for our place in the world, for our very sense of who
we are as a country. That would be wrong. And therefore, my judgment is that we should have that
choice. The policy of SNP has been pretty clear from from the outset
that once Brexit was determined by referendum, that Scotland
was going, at least from the S&P’s perspective, the ruling party
in the Scottish government, that at some point in time
a referendum on independence would be mooted again. Now, since
Nicola Sturgeon said that. You know, there’s been some going back and forth
within S&P, within the Scottish government on the wisdom of doing it, particularly
in the face of these opinion polls that are not showing much change
in the kind of overall attitude of the voters towards independence right now.
OK, now I’m getting kind of get into what I really want to talk about here. It’s not really the politics
of, you know, in Scotland or the politics between Scotland and England, even
though I am going to talk a little about that. But I want to talk to you about
are there really constitutional issues involved here? And if so, what are they
and how serious are they? Because this, I think, is where the battlefield
really, really is. And if you are following
Brexit, generally, this is this is one of the, I think,
most significant issues in Brexit. Just aside from how they’re
going to get out, are they going to have a hard Brexit or are they going to have a soft Brexit? They’re
going to have some, you know, intermediate Brexit. That, I guess is. I don’t know.
Just. Right. Maybe. I don’t know. But whatever happens with
the negotiations between the EU and the UK,
that’s not going to resolve these constitutional questions that Brexit now has
created that that really existed before Brexit. But the Brexit,
Brexit now, because of the uncertainty around it and the differential economic effect it’s
likely to have on the devolved parts of the UK,
particularly in Scotland. Right. It’s created a whole a whole new level,
I think, of scrutiny of the constitutional position of devolved
governments in the UK and has brought now back into question
certainly the sincerity of the UK government in
its desire to continue to devolve powers to
the other governments in the UK. And whether or not we might be actually seeing
a reactionary move by the Conservative Party to reclaim
powers has already devolved. And that’s another outcome that I think people have
begun to talk about recently, that this could come back
as a power play by which parliament, the UK government kind
of gathers up its powers again to legislate for the whole UK.
And of course, this isn’t just a Scottish issue, as you know, it’s a Welsh issue, a Northern Irish
issue. And we’ll get into what those are. I wanted to put this
up here, because it may have been a while since you actually read the Treaty of Union between Scotland
and same body read. That reason was on your list this summer. Anybody? Well,
I went back and read it. It just because I didn’t know what I was going to say today. So I said, well, it’s about
the constitution in the Treaty of Union is that is actually a constitutional provision. Right.
It’s one of the parts of this thing called the English Constitution that everybody kind of
knows what it is, but nobody can point to it like it doesn’t exist in any kind of codified form
or anything. Right. And so when we talk about it, it’s kind of like, I
don’t know, God, you know, it’s distant, it’s remote. It doesn’t talk back to you.
And so what does the Treaty of Union have to say
about this? Because once this was ratified in 1787
by the two parliaments of England and Scotland at that time,
a sovereign nation. Right, with a sovereign parliament, obviously
had authority to actually do this. You know, what were the terms of that agreement and what became
part of the Constitution? Well, this is kind of a preamble to it. And it says,
right, as you can see, that the two kingdoms on this date forever
after be united into one kingdom by the name of Great Britain. Right. And then it goes on into flags
and stuff like that. That flags are really important, right? Aren’t they? I went back
just for grins to look at what the Anglo Irish Treaty of Union says about
this follows the same pattern. And it also has this stuff about flags.
And I was like, great, what the Irish treaty doesn’t have that the Scottish one does is
a lot of language about no Popery and Protestants,
which is a really interesting distinction, actually. And then it has all these details
about the duties that are going to be paid on various things. That treaty is quite interesting actually to look at.
Because it has sort of broad kinds of principles in it like that. It also has real specific
legislation. And I want to I want to I want you to think about that, because
we’re we’re going to talk about some of these issues in terms of the kinds of powers that
they’re fighting about. Right. OK. OK.
So that’s kind of the basis of the kind of constitutional position
of the current UK. With respect to England and Scotland, they’re bound by this treaty.
Right. The most that everyone agrees was legitimate. Right. But that’s not
the whole story. There are many other parts. Right. Of
the constitutional picture. Right. These are all right.
Specific statutes and other conventions that govern the question.
Right. Of the constitutional relations of these two entities. Right. And
nobody is even quite sure what kind of entity Scotland really is.
And, you know, that’s a question that continues. You know, historians can’t agree on that,
which I find particularly interesting. It’s just a very elusive kind of concept.
So I wanted to give you a sense of the kinds of
considerations, right. That lawyers in the U.K. and lawyers
in Scotland and judges are being asked to look at and consider
in litigation that’s ongoing right now between the Scottish government and the U.K.
government and that all of these particular lords and
are implicated here. Right. This is an enormously complex question.
Now everybody knows, right? The first thing I’ll talk a little about is the Scotland
Act of nineteen ninety eight. All right. This is the act that was passed
by the UK government, by parliament to devolve power to
Scotland and to reestablish a Scottish parliament.
Right. With certain devolved powers. And
what this went back and read this law. It’s an immensely long wall, a
huge statute. It’s quite detailed in some respects and it’s quite vague
in other respects. It basically what it does, it reserves certain
powers to write U.K. government. So the first thing it does,
it says we’re going to have a Scottish parliament. It’s going to be elected in this fashion, goes through
a lot of the process that you have to go through to actually constitute parliament. But then the meat
of the statute is who’s going to do what? What does the U.K. government keep?
What do we give to Scotland? Most of the statute is devoted
to what’s kept by the UK government. It’s reserved.
What is actually granted or devolved right is much, much more limited.
And it’s also riddled with exceptions. And then, of course, there’s a provision
that after you’ve gone through all of these reserved and devolved powers, it says. But
the UK parliament reserves the right to legislate for the whole United Kingdom.
What parliament giveth. Parliament taketh away. In the same statute
and we’re going to look at the problem that that’s causing right now,
along with the Scotland Act of nineteen ninety eight. There is something
called the Sewel convention. Does anybody know what this is. Has anybody heard
of the civil convention. I had heard of it. I was reading.
I always reading going and I saw this Sewel convention. What the hell’s the social convention.
Well I’ll tell you what it is because it’s become really important. And
nobody knows what it is. This is so typical of British law generally
and the way the English run things that there are these really important things
that happen that aren’t written down. You don’t know where they are. Somebody said something in a meeting
and suddenly it became a constitutional convention. And you’re going, how did this happen?
OK. I’m just going to tell you what it is. It’s real boring, it may sound, but you got to know this
to kind of understand what’s going on. So I’m going to read this part. I know it’s not good
just to read your notes, but bear with me just for a little short paragraph
here. The Social Convention refers to a statement, a statement,
OK, made by Lord Sewell
in the House of Lords regarding the Scotland bill. And this was in
debate on the bill beginning in nineteen ninety seven, carried over into nineteen ninety eight.
This was actually on a date July 21st, nineteen ninety eight.
And here’s what Lord Sewell said, and this is his exact words in quotation
marks. We would expect a convention to be established that
Westminster would not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters in Scotland without
the consent of the Scottish Parliament. He said that
in a debate we would expect that. That doesn’t really sound like that
would rise to the level of like a binding kind of agreement to do that
or anything. But this became the sole convention. It was embodied
in a memorandum understanding between the government, the UK government
and the devolved executives of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which was concluded
in nineteen ninety nine. So it became kind of part of an ammo you right.
Which is kind of like a contract. We’re gonna kind of dealy with each other this way.
Governments do this all the time. It’s a will, a weird what the legal status of the nimo you
actually is if anybody can enforce one against another government. But it is like a contract.
The theory of the convention, the Sewel convention is that the UK
Parliament’s sovereignty and power to legislate for the whole UK, which nobody really questions
here. Right. That’s a kind of bedrock law, if you will.
It has not been changed by devolution. Right. There’s nothing in the Scotland Act or lacks for Northern Ireland
or Wales that is in any way change parliamentary sovereignty, but
that the, quote, spirit, spirit of
devolution implies that political power lies with the Scottish government
and that its consent should be obtained prior to legislating in areas of devolved competence.
The Sewel convention also applies when the UK parliament varies
the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament or the executive competence
of Scottish ministers. OK, so the social convention is a fairly.
Pervasive and broad. You know, it’s a far reaching idea,
and the underlying principle is that while Parliament retains sovereignty to legislate
for the whole UK, it won’t do that under most
conditions. There’s still that word normally in there. Right.
It without asking the Scottish government to give it the political consent
that would presumably make the relations between the two entities
more pleasant. Well, as we’ll see here in a minute, the pleasantries are out the window
here. Nobody is being pleasant about this right now. I don’t know if anybody’s gone
and listened to any debate in parliament between this MP members and the government lately.
Things have gotten to be. I’m not sure. An all time low
in the feelings between Scotland and England or the hard feelings. But they’re
pretty seriously close. It’s hard. I mean, we have we’re used to Republicans
and Democrats fighting each other, but we’re not used to Texas trying to kill New York
in it. Really. It’s become quite entertaining to watch
if you’re outside of it. But but I think part of what’s going on here is the political
ramifications of Brexit, which were poorly understood in advance.
Obviously, nobody understood. They thought they were going vote the name. Right. So now what?
But I think the political ramifications have gotten a little out of hand and we’ll continue
to do so. So since two thousand nineteen
ninety eight and the Sewel convention, there’ve been two more Scotland bills
that have further refined and further devolved certain powers to Scotland.
One of those was in 2012 and the one in twenty sixteen,
which was really intended to forestall.
A Scottish revolt over Brexit. Which is why they did
it or they thought they were doing it. That bill actually actually
enshrines the social convention in law just the way I read it. Just what Lord Tootle said
is in the statute. So it’s still got that same aspirational kind of language
and but it now has statutory affect. Right. So in some
sense, the social convention is binding. Now, what does that mean?
Well, that’s what this case is about.
And I want to talk about this because I think we’re going to see a number of cases
that are currently being litigated on the scope of the suit convention and whether
it can have any actual like real effect if it’s justiciable in a way
that it can be enforced against anybody. Well, this case
are Miller v. secretary of state for exiting the European Union from last
year. Twenty, seventeen. And let me just say what the Supreme Court
was asked to decide and what they did decide.
Three things. There are three holdings, if you will, in this case. The first
one, although the removal of the EU constraints on competence implied
by Brexit would alter the competence of the devolved institutions unless new
legislative constraints were imposed. The u.k.’s relations with the EU already
reserved manner in the devolved legislatures have no competence in relation
to the withdrawal from the EU. That sounds pretty clear, right?
He is Dyball is reserved matter, right? It’s parliament. We
have parliamentary sovereignty. There’s no question that this whole convention can force
the UK parliament to get the consent of the devolved legislatures
for anything related to Brexit. That’s the position.
And that’s certainly the position of the UK government. That is not still right, an accepted position by
the government of Scotland. The second holding in the case, there is no legal requirement
to obtain the consent of the devolved legislatures before notification of leaving the EU
was given. Was given, right? So one
of the things Scotland argued was you can tell us you were going to do this.
Right. And it involves powers that have been devolved upon us and we want some say
in how you’re going to handle that. Well, they got the big back
of the hand from the U.K. government on that, as they have really since
the boat ride. There’d been very little real discussion going between
the devolved legislatures. Somewhat more with Wales, you know, on these kinds
of issues. The third.
The third thing the judges said that I think is really important, and I’m going to quote
from the opinion, because this is judges being political.
Judge Hudspeth said judges would never be political, but
they are right. But listen to what they said. They said judges, therefore,
are neither the parents nor the guardians of political conventions. That interesting
language, parents or guardians of political conventions, they’re merely
observers as such. They can recognize the operation
of a political convention in the context of designing a legal question. But they
cannot give legal rulings on its operation or scope because those matters are determined within the
political world. What the hell does that mean?
Well, we can give an opinion if it is, it has to do with a legal question. But
wouldn’t it always? Isn’t that very legal question we’re asking is whether that
social convention that’s in the Scotland Act of 2016 has application to
trenching on the devolved powers of.
I thought that was the legal question that was being litigated in this case. Well,
they go on to say as if that were not enough in reaching this
conclusion. We do not underestimate the importance of constitutional conventions,
some of which play a fundamental role in their operation of our Constitution. Some do
some, but not others. Like which ones?
The civil convention has an important role in facilitating harmonious relationships between the UK Parliament,
the Doyel legislatures. Well, it ain’t working, but the policing
of its scope and the manner of its operation does not lie within the constitutional remit of the
judiciary, which is to protect the rule of law. OK. So we have
I think I’m understanding this properly. I don’t.
You know, no way represent that. I am. You have law, politics.
There is some realm of law in some realm of politics. And judges know the
line between them when they see it. But they can’t tell you what it is. It
depends on what the situation is and what kind of heat they’re
getting and from. Right. I mean, this this is the this
is a very, very impressive punt of an issue for the
future, because they they did not establish a standard for determining when and
when, not right. To take account of a concert of an apparently very
important constitutional convention that is so important that it’s actually in the constitution.
It’s in the law. Right. This is not a convention that’s unquantified. And so,
you know, the fact that they’re going like this on that demonstrates to me not that the law
is settled and that you don’t have a problem, but that they really do have a problem and they realize this
decision. Sango put the problem to rest. Right. It’s going to keep going because
once again, it’s a political problem that continues to have legal implications.
Right. And so even though the upshot of this
case seems to be that, well, the civil convention’s not really justiciable,
we can’t really make a decision about that. And courts really can’t
enforce that against the UK government. Well, that’s that’s the outcome of that
decision, I think. So that’s the real effect of it. But it does not appear
really to have given us any clarity about the law, about the law or
win the suit convention would actually be operative. If it’s not a dead letter
after this case, and they were careful to say that it’s not because apparently harmonious
relations are like constitutionally important or they wouldn’t have said so.
But if they’re there, if they refuse to enforce it in order to promote harmonious relations, it
does seem to leave the door open for future problems here. It seems to me,
OK, here we are then. We’re in a position now after this case
in twenty seventeen where we seem to go, OK? Parliament
can legislate for everybody. That’s a general rule. We seem all to agree to that,
that the civil convention doesn’t require parliament to ask anybody’s permission. It
wants to legislate in areas of devolved competence, which we’ve already determined are is every area,
whether it’s devolved or not. Right. And
we can’t really go to court to force anybody to do anything. Certainly you can’t force parliament
to do it. And the judges are not willing to cross that line. And so here we are,
the U.K. parliament. Right, should be now. OK, we’re good. We know
what our power is. We can exercise it. We don’t have to ask these pesky Scots or pesky
Northern Irish what to do. And so full speed ahead, we’re going to
negotiate with you. We’re gonna get a good Brexit deal. Right. Whatever
it is, we don’t have it yet. And Katy,
bar the door. We’re good. Well, guess what happens? Here comes twenty eighteen around.
Things are not going well for the Conservative Party. It’s having
fairly serious leadership problems. It’s got fairly serious
backbench revolt going on against any give in the
position on Brexit. And you’ve got a prime minister
who called an election. That was one of the more brilliant calculations.
You know, I got to thinking when I was looking at this. If this outfit
had been in charge in 1940,
we’d be there wouldn’t be a problem. I mean
this anyway. I won’t get off on just my comment. You know, my feeling about
it. I mean, it it really is kind of just a parade of horribles like,
you know, you can’t believe they they go from one enormous blunder to the next.
They manage the public perception of this horribly. Right.
And there’s enough to go round that goes around the Scottish government. It goes all around.
It’s all over. All of them. Right. Here comes twenty eighteen.
Right. OK.
Let me tell you what happens in Scotland in the spring of 2018, when we were all coming to the British study
seminar and enjoying all the lectures and teaching our classes and having a good time, there was all this stuff
hitting the fan over there and we’d see it, the paper and stuff and go, that’s quaint.
In May of last of this year, just a few months ago, the Scottish
Parliament voted by a fairly significant majority of ninety three to
thirty, just fairly big super majority to reject
the government. The UK government’s Brexit legislation. You all saw this right? This was a
pretty big deal or seemed to be. And
but why did they do that? Well, the argument was.
The deal, the Brexit bill of the government legislated in Scotland’s
soul areas of competence. Wait, I thought we just resolved this.
Didn’t we just say that the civil convention doesn’t apply? They don’t have to ask. They have.
Why did these M.P.s do this? The law was settled.
What’s going on? Well, the first minister, SNP leader,
she has just taken the position. I don’t care what that court said.
I’m a political leader
that doesn’t have anything to do with me.
I’m not only the leader of the government, I’m leaving my party. And, you know, SNP in Scotland
is by a pretty long shot. The biggest party. All right. It’s got,
you know, a fairly hefty majority.
In the Scottish Parliament, it’s lost a little recently,
but the polls are showing it’s back up again. I think all of this sorted going up and down
through these caregiver sessions is kind of
right. Lifting SNP again, she says
Scottish Parliament should approve any. Legislation
that impinges on devolved competency. Which gives it a veto
power. Right. Well, and you know what? Theresa May said about that. Right. We can’t
let Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland get in our way
here and have any kind of veto power over the Brexit
deal itself. Now, what’s interesting, too,
prior to the vote, right, to reject the government’s
Brexit bill of ninety three to 30 vote, the Scottish Parliament had already passed
a contingency bill, legislation that said if there is no deal.
Right. How are we going to handle Brexit? How is Scotland
going to handle Brexit? That bill got passed. Right. Earlier in the spring
and is out there on the books. At least for now,
that Bill has been challenged in the Supreme Court by the
UK government. And here we go again. We’re having
an argument in a court over whether that bill, whether the Scottish
government has the power to do that. And that decision has not been made yet.
That is still pending. And so we don’t know yet. I think I probably do know
how that court might rule on this. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Know
no, we can’t have conflicting bills out there about Brexit. We’ve got to have one.
And they’ll find a way probably to try to pour oil on the political
waters. But I don’t think there’s no evidence that the Scottish government is going to accept that either.
Right. So what we have now is kind of the difference between a political crisis
and a legal gray, a legal crisis. We don’t think we know what the law probably is,
but we’re also in a political posture where it might not matter that much what the law is.
That’s trouble. You don’t like to have that happen. Do we?
Particularly in a government of laws that we think Anglo American kind of system is
that everyone pretty much takes what a court says. Right, as the law
of the land that we accept that that we deferred to it, even if we don’t like it, that we really don’t
decide there is another tribunal that we can appeal to. But
I think right now feelings are so hard on both sides of this debate
that we may be creating a political crisis that even though it doesn’t
itself threaten the constitution like in a legal sense.
Doesn’t change the constitutional principles. It may create conditions where
those might be changed. Now, is
it. Is it possible that now we’ve seen this story before, haven’t
we? A little bit different context, look, different time, little different level of violence,
certainly in the Irish case.
How how did Ireland get out of the union?
A treaty, right? We all know this. OK. That sounds
good. Who is the treaty between?
There was no sovereign Irish government that was recognized by anybody, certainly
not my parliament or the prime minister, anybody else. Fact Lord George said,
I talk and deal in any kind of capacity that recognizes you as sovereign
or plenipotentiary in any way.
How do you make a treaty with guys from Ireland
if you let the Irish? How did I do?
Sure does a good job. You’ll go off on it. I will leave you. You’ve convinced us yet.
But there was never really a resolution of the issue, and I don’t
think many people talked about it. How’s it constitutional? Right? Well, it got ratified when
parliament ratified the treaty. Right. Well, parliamentary sovereignty.
Parliament acted. It passed a law to ratify the treaty. Therefore, it cured whatever
irregularities existed in the actual conclusion of the treaty. So
it was a back door way. Right. Of getting the result
and kind of going around the constitutional issue of the legitimacy of the treaty to begin with.
They had to cure that, which they did probably very wisely.
Now, what I’m thinking here is what if this MP. Right.
Continues down this line? We don’t know this. We don’t know this. Right. We
don’t know really much about the outcome. We
don’t know what kind of Brexit it’s going to be. We really know. Really good idea of what the economic
consequences of this will be. The Scottish government has issued
its own report on the effect of Brexit on its economy.
It’s pretty severe. It’s in in in terms of the
comparative effects on the other parts of the UK. It’s worse.
The reasons for that, it’s the particular kinds of products that Scotland exports
and makes. The UK government has been notoriously
slippery about trying it, about identifying what it thinks
the economic effects of Brexit are going to be. Has it really released anything
definitive on that and has kept a lot of it confidential? So we’re not really sure
what the UK government really thinks. The only thing that they seem to be saying on a consistent basis,
you’ll hear David Mondale lose the Scottish secretary, stand up and say this kind of
as a mantra. There’s, um. There are not arguments here, by the
way. If you listen to the debates in parliament, they’re not really they’re not
making arguments to each other. They’re making slogans. It’s just
like our own political debate now. Right. And nobody’s
listening. They’ve gotten to a point where all they do is kind of repeat, repeat, repeat.
And the things they repeat are on the Scottish side. Right.
The Scottish vote on the Brexit referendum should be
respected, that the Scottish people are sovereign. They voted
to stay. And you can’t take a south this way without at least
asking us what we think and involving us in the negotiations.
And there are variations in that position. Some are harder, some are softer on the other side.
The UK government’s mantra argument is Scotland voted
to remain in the UK in 2014. And it doesn’t matter
how Scots feel about Brexit because they already voted
to stay in the UK and the UK is leaving Europe. And
that’s the deal, right? The mantra of response to that
is but. You didn’t tell us
you were going to leave the EU. And in fact, right. You represented
that one of the reasons people should vote to remain was that you get to stay in the EU.
Right. And so it’s the old bait and switch.
Right. You’ve got Nigel Farage going over there. That’s right. Did
any of you heard the term Project Fear, thereby heard that? That’s kind of. Yeah, you have what
project Fear originated in the independence referendum to try to frighten
people to vote against independence, basing it based on, oh, my God, you’re gonna lose the pound and your
pensions are gonna go away. And, you know, my God, you know, the US will take you
over or whatever. Right. Well, the Project Fear effort
has been revived for Brexit in this kind of very
strange way. The Conservatives are actually doing it again to try to leverage.
Right. Their own hard liners into making a deal.
By in some people’s opinions overblowing the effect
of Brexit on the English economy, then thereby forcing the back benchers for a more reasonable
position. It’s a very strange inter intra party
situation. It’s not talk until the Labor Party and it’s sir
not talking to any of the devolved parties either. It’s it’s in the Conservative
Party now. A larger concern, I think, here.
Is that. The question of the union and the
continuation of the union is becoming much more strongly identified
with the Conservative Party, and you’ll see this both with the
relatively small number of Scottish conservatives who are in Parliament
and in the Scottish Parliament. But also it’s definitely
true south of the Tweed, it where the Conservatives now are the Unionist Party
and Labor is somewhere out there may be willing to do more deep devolution
or, you know, their variations in the labor position. And then you have the you know,
the radical fringe, the SNP, Nationalists and SNP is
now being termed a nationalist party, which is a pejorative
way of talking about this MP. Even though I always go well, it is called the Scottish National Party.
They’ve never hidden the fact that there are a national party right now. Oh, my God. Nationalism
right by its own national is bad. Bad. That’s what’s happening in Europe. That’s what’s happening in the US.
So you’re getting this kind of weird Trump effect where the SNP is actually being accused
of being part of this nativist kind of rise in Europe, when really what the
Scots are saying is, no, we want to we want to stay in Europe,
don’t we? We’re not the ones who want to lead. Oh, you know, you’re this native Smith.
Wait a minute. No, that’s the English who are that way. You see, what’s
happening is the parties are yanking the tail of this thing.
And kind of trying to hang onto it is it’s trying to fight like crazy
to get away from. And it’s become entirely
a party issue. And so what Theresa May is trying to do is how do
I get out of it? I do. I do give her some credit for trying to do there.
And in fact, she was up in Scotland a couple of weeks ago making nice with Nicola Sturgeon
in the U.K. government, invested a bunch of money in Scottish universities and
job, you know, economic development and stuff. I mean, you know, to show, you know,
we’re not the big assholes you think we are, right? I mean, it was a real nice gesture
to, I think, try to smooth some of this over. Well, it’s not working. On
July 4th of this year, while we were all over here eating hotdogs
and watching fireworks, there was a debate in parliament. It was opposition day in
parliament. And this is really worth your time if you’re at all interested in the issue
starts at about three forty five in the afternoon. Long day goes from like 10:00 in the morning,
not, you know, 10:00 at night. I mean, there’s a long sitting like they love to do
and it’s opposition day. And the question for opposition day, which was mooted by this MP,
members of the British parliament was. Scottish claim of a right.
I was going, oh, Paul, you’ll love this. This is sixteen eighty nine style
Scottish claim up, right, that the Scottish people are sovereign. That’s the question.
They’re going to debate that. Well, for the next I know four or five hours
there’s this debate and it’s not a heavily attended
debate, which many of the pieces note you should see
this. It is like a kindergarten class. These people
are no more interested in what each other has to say. They are you know, they’re telling each other to sit
down and shut up. They are? Yeah. You’re just gone. The whole decorum of the House of Commons.
What is going on here? And the speaker is up there trying to, you know, humorously
kind of manage this and mediate it. It is a complete disaster area
and you’re gone. This is what the greatest deliberative body in the world. And they
can’t even hold a reasonable kind of discussion about the, you know, the nature of the kind
of political sovereignty. Right. They weren’t discussing where the parliament is sovereign. They were discussing whether
Scottish people. Right. Who expressed an opinion in a referendum
in a lawful manner, a fairly strong opinion, whether they ought to be listened
to or not and what manner what procedure they should be. And it it you
know. And ultimately, guess what? How did they vote? They voted
yes. Scottish people are sovereign, right? So we got I mean, you just go
they always sound and and they’ll go. And you’re just going,
you know. What was that all about? It’s I mean, it’s
funny in a way, but it’s also a problem. And however you stand
on the issue, whether you like small nations, whether you like.
You know, self-determination at. Some smaller
level than the entire UK. Or whether you don’t.
This is going to. This is not going away, and that’s my major kind of leave for
you, is that this is going to go on. It’s going to be litigated, certainly. Either way.
But I do think that eventually there will be another Scottish referendum
on independence eventually. It might not be anytime real soon
because I think what’s going to happen if we do get a hard Brexit and, you know, you never
know what rabbits they’re going to pull out of the hat at the last minute on this and
they might get a reasonable deal or they might get it kind of a bridge arrangement. You know, Scotland’s
position has been we want to be in. The free trade. We want to be
in the Trade and Customs Union. That’s been the Scottish position consistently, either
within the UK or outside the UK. And Michael Russell,
who is the Scottish Brexit secretary, I’ve actually met him at a British scholars conference
in Edinburgh a few years ago. He’s running around Europe right now saying,
you know, there is going to be a referendum. And Scotland. And
he is representing the EU would allow Scotland in as a member state. Once
it’s a state, they can join me. He’s saying that today.
And which indicates to me, you know, one, he’s been a very brave face on kind of a difficult situation.
I don’t know if he really believes that. But don’t forget, this is the S&Ps
party manifesto to do this and they
haven’t changed that. And in fact, they’re doubling down. And eventually
they’re going to have to do it if they want to hold on to any kind of credibility in Scotland
or legitimacy as a party. And I think what you’re going to see is breaks.
It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen in a messy
divorce manner, all divorces are messy. I don’t know why David Cameron did think of this.
It’s going to be a mess. It’s going to have some unforeseen economic consequences. Even though Scotland
exports probably four times more products to the UK as it does to Europe,
it still exports about a fifth of its entire GDP to
Europe. You can’t take that. The English market is not going to expand
by 20 percent to accept all the Scottish exports that are at risk. It’s not.
And if you lose even some part of that, it is going to cause massive
unemployment in Scotland. People are going to leave the country. It’s going to
kill. That is going to hurt the tax base is going to hurt the services the Scots want, which is the NHS,
the university’s education system. These things are important to the Scots. I mean, S&P,
that’s what they run on. That’s why they want these powers. Right. And so
this is going to be a problem. And I think if things go real hard on Scotland out of Brexit,
you’re going to see a referendum probably sooner than later in the next few years. Don’t know
how it’ll come out, but we
in our lifetime, we could see the end of this. And I think it’s a real possibility. Maybe
not a likelihood. But after 2014, I was going, well, it won’t happen again. Another jet
for another generation at least. I don’t think betting more so with that, I’m
going to stop. It’s just my opinion.