There has been much mind exercise regarding the above conundrum and the reason for his is that Nicola Sturgeon is in the habit of telling everyone that this will be a trigger for a future referendum without actually making plain what the procedure will be for ascertaining the process for determining the will of the Scottish people in this respect.
Ok so I have a suggestion and it isn’t rocket science .
We live in a democracy ( well near enough). Now the principal of a democracy is that ,as near as possible , the people’s will will be upheld.
Ok so far? And the way that this is expressed is through the ballot box. Now the way we do this is that the various parties/ individuals, put forward their policies that they will adopt ,if elected and this is done by means of including these potential policies in their manifesto which comes out in the run up to the election.
Now manifestos are supposed to be presented in plenty of time ,so that the electorate can digest the contents and therefore make informed decisions on who to elect , confident that what is said in a manifesto will be delivered by the party/ individual on election to government.
Now a government elected on a particular manifesto is said to have a mandate to govern or to carry through promises made in the manifesto and the reason for this is that a government elected on a particular manifesto is accepted as working within a democratic mandate.
So this gets me back to the question in hand and that is how is the Scottish government going to asses when and whether the Scottish people are in the mood for another referendum?
Well it is dead simple ,isn’t it? They simply put that question into their manifesto. Now as far as the SNP are concerned , it is dead simple and it is simple because they have this in their constitution. The second paragraph is very clear that their reason to exist is to gain independence. So unless they have in some way deviated from their own constitution they simply have to reaffirm this intention and ask the Scottish people to elect them on the basis of progressing in an orderly manner towards a second referendum of independence by some other means.
So wouldn’t it be nice and simple if the SNP were to put this into their manifesto and there would be no doubt of how the Scottish people wish to progress on the road to independence.
It would be nice to see some concise thinking on independence in the SNP manifesto which is to be produced on Wednesday.
The Scottish people deserve to be led , not humoured
Bob Costello 