Kenny MacAskill – 2022 Speech on Scotland’s Future

The speech made by Kenny MacAskill, the Alba MP for East Lothian, in the House of Commons on 14 December 2022.

I will happily support the motion. All efforts to ensure Scottish sovereignty and Scotland’s independence deserve to be backed, but I fear that the likelihood of seeking salvation through Westminster’s procedures is as likely to be as forlorn as the debacle in the United Kingdom Supreme Court. The reference there, especially without even the authority of a Bill having been supported by the Scottish Parliament, was supreme folly, compounded by the advocacy of a Lord Advocate who had all the passion and appetite for it of someone eating a bowl of cold sick.

John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)

Has the hon. Gentleman noticed that since the supreme folly—as he describes it—of going to the Supreme Court, the polls have rocketed in the direction of pro-independence support across Scotland? If that is failure, I do not know what success looks like.

Kenny MacAskill

I very much welcome the increase in the polls, as I will come to, but we have to find a route and a method to get there. So far, the courts have ruled that out, and indeed, it looks like the political options—certainly in this place—are limited.

The overreach in the dictum in the Supreme Court judgment that Scotland was neither a colony nor had resorted to violence was both absurd and perverse, which is why a route for Scottish independence needs set out, but that route must neither be subject to a UK court nor be beholden to a UK Parliament. Legally, historically and politically, the people of Scotland are sovereign, not a UK court or a UK Parliament. That has been part of our constitutional history, as other Members have mentioned: it was set out to me as a law student by Lord Justice Cooper’s judgment, which was passed on. It was the accepted wisdom—politically, it was the accepted position of even Unionist opponents of independence—that the Scottish people could achieve independence if they voted for it, but that is being denied.

So what is to be done when—not if—this procedural wheeze fails to deliver independence, as the procedural wheeze of referring the matter to the UK Supreme Court failed to deliver the referendum? It is about taking back sovereignty to the Scottish people. On Saturday, as well as attending a political meeting in the afternoon, I went to a concert of the Proclaimers in Edinburgh on the Saturday night. The crowd fair enjoyed the song “Cap in Hand”:

“We fight, when they ask us

We boast, then we cower

We beg for a piece of what’s already ours”.

As support for independence rises, as the thermometers and temperatures plummet, and as energy costs soar in energy-rich Scotland and people go hungry and go cold, that absurdity must end. Now is the time Mr Nicolson might wish to be aware of: no more cap in hand, so what is to be done?

First of all, we can endorse our historical claim of right. As Canon Kenyon Wright said—I paraphrase —“Some may say no, but we are the people, and we say yes.” I hope SNP Members will sign my colleague Neale Hanvey’s St Andrew’s day declaration, early-day motion 633.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)

Order. I gently remind the hon. Gentleman that there should be no mention of Members’ Christian names or surnames. Please refer to them by their constituencies.

Kenny MacAskill

My apologies, Mr Deputy Speaker.

The independence convention requires to be supported. It is necessary to bring together the democratically elected representatives of Scotland, our MPs and MSPs, for two reasons: first, as a rebuttal—it is not the UK Supreme Court that is sovereign, but the democratically elected representatives of the people of Scotland—and secondly, to drive home the point when this motion fails and is defeated tonight that it is not this Parliament, but the elected representatives of the people of Scotland who are the democratically elected voice of the people of Scotland. I hope Members on the SNP Benches will support the call for an independence convention; after all, it was a call made and supported by the First Minister in February 2020. We are now approaching three years on, and it is time that convention was delivered.

Thirdly, we should support the call for a plebiscite election, one that could be triggered next October and deliver us our referendum—the no ifs, no buts referendum that we were promised by Members on the SNP Benches. That can be achieved by collapsing the Scottish Parliament; a member of the SNP has already set out a way there. That could be done, and could deliver the referendum that the people of Scotland were promised would happen in October of next year by the First Minister and others. That must be done.

Finally, support must be given to all demonstrations, all international legal actions, and all peaceful and democratic actions to drive forward the position that the people of Scotland are not prepared to accept diktats supinely, either from a UK Supreme Court or from a Tory Government unelected by the people of Scotland since 1955. The need is great; the time is now. I will support the motion, but this question needs to be answered by SNP Members when they are defeated: when will they actually stand up and take powers back for the people of Scotland, and ensure that it is Scottish sovereignty and Scottish democracy that rules, not the diktat of a Tory Government further impoverishing the people of Scotland?