LONDON — Britain’s highest court on
Wednesday rejected a bid by the devolved
Scottish government in Edinburgh to
hold a new referendum on independence without London’s consent.
اضافة اعلان
The unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court torpedoed
the Scottish nationalist government’s push to hold a second plebiscite next
year.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who leads the
Scottish National Party (SNP), said she respected the ruling, but accused
Westminster of showing “contempt” for Scotland’s democratic will.
“This ruling confirms that the notion of the UK as a
voluntary partnership of nations, if it ever was a reality, is no longer a
reality,” she told a news conference.
Her government will now look to use the next UK
general election due by early 2025 as a “de facto referendum” on separating
after more than 300 years.
“We must and we will find another democratic,
lawful, and constitutional means by which the Scottish people can express their
will. In my view, that can only be an election,” she added.
In parliament, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called
the ruling “clear and definitive”, adding: “Now is the time for politicians to
work together, and that is what this government will do.”
‘Mandate’
The Supreme Court’s Scottish
president, Robert Reed, said the power to call a referendum was “reserved” to
the UK parliament under Scotland’s devolution settlement.
Therefore “the Scottish parliament does not have the
power to legislate for a referendum on Scottish independence”, Reed said.
Sturgeon’s SNP-led government in Edinburgh wanted to
hold a vote next October on the question: “Should Scotland be an independent
country?”
The UK government, which oversees constitutional
affairs for the whole country, has repeatedly refused to give Edinburgh the
power to hold a referendum.
It considers that the last one — in 2014, when 55
percent of Scots rejected independence — settled the question for a generation.
But Sturgeon and her party say there is now an
“indisputable mandate” for another independence referendum, particularly in
light of the UK’s departure from the EU.
Most voters in Scotland opposed Brexit.
Scotland’s last parliamentary election returned a
majority of pro-independence lawmakers for the first time.
Opinion polls, however, indicate only a slight lead
for those in favor of a split.
At the Supreme Court last month, lawyers for the
government in London argued that the Scottish government could not decide to
hold a referendum on its own.
Permission had to be granted because the
constitutional make-up of the four nations of the UK —
England, Scotland,
Wales, and Northern Ireland — was a reserved matter for the government in
London.
Scotland not Kosovo
Lawyers for the Scottish
government wanted a ruling on the rights of the devolved parliament in
Edinburgh if London continued to block an independence referendum.
Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain, Scotland’s top law
officer, said Scottish independence was a “live and significant” issue in
Scottish politics.
The Scottish government was seeking to create its
own legal framework for another referendum, arguing that the “right to
self-determination is a fundamental and inalienable right”.
But the Supreme Court rejected international
comparisons raised by the SNP, which had likened Scotland to Quebec or Kosovo.
Reed said international law on self-determination
only applied to former colonies, or where a people is oppressed by military
occupation, or when a defined group is denied its political and civil rights.
None of that applied to Scotland, he added.
He also rejected the SNP’s argument that a
referendum would only be “advisory” and not legally binding.
Any such vote would carry “important political
consequences” regardless of its legal status, the judge said.
Sturgeon’s SNP ran in the 2021 Scottish
parliamentary elections on a promise to hold a legally valid referendum after
the COVID crisis subsided.
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