Bad tactics?
Article by Alex Orr. I think the SNP have given up on a single issue referendum a bit too easily. The clear choice is between independence and the status quo. Most calls for 'more powers' are ill defined and no more powers can be granted for the Scottish parliament without the agreement of Westminster.
The devolution conventions oroginal proposals included broadcasting powers however these were removed by Tony Blair (he also personally sabotaged plans for a 'Scottish six' 6 O'Clock News).
Scotland's oil wealth won't last forever and the idea that we can have a few more powers and that will sort our problems is wrong. We need independence immediately. If we can inch a few more concessions out of Westminster along the way then fair enough but the SNP should not be talking up vague calls for more powers as a valid option for the Scottish people when the only real opportunity is independence.
Time to take issue out of the hands of politicians
By Alex Orr, SNP MSP
BOTH THE SNP and the Liberal Democrats have promoted the need for some form of constitutional change and have talked favourably of a constitutional convention, yet the Liberal Democrats are refusing to sit down or even negotiate with the SNP unless they give up their policy of a referendum on Scottish independence. Given this seemingly insurmountable roadblock, the time has come to take this issue out of the hands of the politicians, who have failed to get their act together, and pass it to the people.
Perhaps the most significant achievement of the Scottish Constitutional Convention, which from the late 1990s prepared the way for devolution, was to entrench popular sovereignty as the founding principle of the new Scottish politics. Popular sovereignty belongs, simply, to the people. In democratic regimes it embraces a right for voters to place before their peers for their judgement a proposition of its own choosing, as in the "citizen's" or "popular" initiatives that operate in Switzerland, New Zealand and some of the American states.
The launch of a citizen's initiative to hold a multi-option referendum - offering a choice between the status quo, greater powers for the Holyrood parliament or full independence - is an eminently achievable way to end this current constitutional impasse and represents an exercise in participative politics as promoted by the Scottish Constitutional Convention.
A citizen's initiative, where the voter petitions for the holding of a referendum, would put pressure on the Scottish parliament to bring it forward. On the model of the Swiss popular initiative, numbers would have to be significant (around 100,000) and there would need to be some agreement on the use of e-petitions and other mechanisms and checks on the validity of the petitioners.
But if a sufficient number of Scottish citizens petitioned for a multi-option referendum on Scotland's constitutional future, then, in the name of citizen empowerment and faced with an already largely politically apathetic and disillusioned electorate, it is difficult to see the parliament defying the will of the people and the principles on which it was itself established.
Such a citizen's initiative might also have a particular relevance to the circumstances in which Scotland now finds itself. Proportional representation is justified on its own democratic merits, but it is no secret that part of its attraction for some champions of devolution was that it would create an additional barrier to the advance of political nationalism. A power of citizen's initiative could challenge this by giving a sufficiently large number of frustrated voters an opportunity to intervene in politics on terms of their own choosing rather than on the terms dictated by the politicians' club.
This would not only serve to tackle voter apathy and cynicism towards the political system, but has the potential to revitalise democracy, re-engage people in the political process and make politics work for people, a valuable prize indeed.
