By Oliver Green
Due to the rise and overwhelming mandate given to the Scottish National Party by the Scottish people at their parliamentary election in 2011, allowing an independence vote on independence was absolutely crucial if we were going to have any chance of preserving our union in the 21st Century. The election delivered the first majority government since the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, a remarkable feat as the mixed member proportional representation system used to elect MSPs was designed to prevent any party achieving an overall parliamentary majority. The SNP won 69 seats, the most the party had ever held at either a Holyrood or Westminster election, allowing SNP leader Alex Salmond to have undisputed one party rule. Such was the scale of his gains that of the 73 Scottish parliamentary constituencies, only 20 are now represented by other political parties. In addition, the total level of SNP membership had jumped to 43,644, making it the third largest political party in terms of membership in the United Kingdom.
It was also a vote we could not afford to lose. Losing Scotland would have been the end of Britain, starting with an unimaginably messy divorce, and would almost certainly have led to Wales and Northern Ireland also seceding over the long term once they could see the union breaking up. Market confidence in us would have been undermined for good, and we would have been drastically diminished as a major power, politically, militarily and economically. Our position within NATO and the UN Security Council would have been placed in jeopardy.
When the campaigning began, the Unionist No Campaign had a clear lead of around 20%, but in the final month it evaporated to give the Yes to Independence Campaign a slight lead in one rouge poll at one point. This was the consequence of a very negative unionist campaign, which focused on scare tactics rather than actually selling the benefits of our Union to the Scottish people, and which also had to rely on the leadership of the Labour party, which was the only unionist party in the UK with enough Westminster parliamentary seats (41) in Scotland to have any legitimate authority to campaign effectively, as the Conservative party only held one Westminster constituency in Scotland. As a result, the Union was saved by a slim margin of 5% to the No Campaign to independence and the three main unionist parties of Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrats reached a consensus of granting further federalised powers to Scotland as a way of arguably addressing the ongoing problem of how detached and removed our Westminster politicians have become in recent times from the opinion and feeling of the Scottish electorate.
Therefore, establishing a new constitutional convention to refashion the United Kingdom into a revitalised federal family of four distinct nations, whilst also creating a new and inspiring unionist power bloc, is the only way we will defeat the SNP, settle the question once and for all, and lead to the emergence of a more perfect union, which is capable of rising to the numerous challenges and opportunities that lay ahead. But to put this into perspective, it’s necessary to analyse the history of our great Union and of Scotland’s continued distinctiveness and political evolution over the course of the 307 year history of the United Kingdom prior to the 2014 referendum.
The History of Scottish Devolution
In 1707 the Act of Union abolished the separate Parliaments for Scotland and England, and created a single Parliament at Westminster.
However, Scotland retained many distinctive features, including a separate church and legal system. A form of administrative devolution for Scotland was established in 1885 when the Scottish Office was created as a Department of the UK Government, assuming responsibility for many of the issues which in England and Wales were dealt with by Whitehall Departments, such as health, education, justice, agriculture, fisheries and farming, and was headed by a UK Cabinet Minister, the Secretary of State for Scotland. In 1979 a Referendum was held on proposals by the then Government to establish a Scottish Assembly, but although a small majority voted in favour the proposals did not obtain the support of 40 per cent of the electorate, which had been set as a prerequisite before they could be implemented. In 1989 the Scottish Constitutional Convention was established, consisting of representatives of civic Scotland and some of the political parties, to draw up a detailed blueprint for devolution including proposals for a directly elected Scottish Parliament with wide legislative powers. The SCC’s Report in 1995 formed the basis of further proposals which were brought forward by the UK Government in 1997.
These proposals received overwhelming support in a Referendum on September 11, 1997, with 74 per cent voting in favour of a Scottish Parliament and 63 per cent voting for the Parliament to have powers to vary the basic rate of income tax. Following the passage of the Scotland Act 1998, the Scottish Executive (officially referred to as the Scottish Government since August 2007) and Scottish Parliament were officially convened on July 1, 1999 – a date which marks the transfer of powers in devolved matters, previously exercised by the Secretary of State for Scotland and other UK Ministers, to the Scottish Ministers. Elections to the Scottish Parliament are conducted on the basis of combining the traditional first-past-the-post system (to elect 73 constituency members) and a form of proportional representation called the Additional Member System (to elect 56 regional members – seven for each of the eight regions used in European Parliament elections.
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