The Scotland Office just won’t give up with its daft attacks on the independence referendum. First it was the nonsense about “Two Referendums” then it got all hot and bothered about “Two Questions”. It has now gone for a hat-trick of irrelevance.
Following in the meandering footsteps of his boss, Michael Moore, David Blundell has taken another tilt at the windmill by claiming that there would “be little confidence in the referendum” because the Electoral Commission would not be involved. Instead Holyrood is to set up a Scottish Referendum Commission.
When it was pointed out to him that the legal situation meant that Commission could not be formally involved, even with new legislation he made another of his “on the hoof” promises that his government, the one in London, would be willing to “give the Electoral Commission the authority.”
So, basically, what he is saying is that the people of Scotland are not to be trusted and are incapable of running a fair and free referendum and that he and his unionist cronies would be only to happy to step in and make sure its done properly.
This is the underbelly of unionism.
So far the argument from the Moore and Mundell has been that the people of Scotland can’t be trusted to do things for themselves. They are not capable. They don’t understand things. They need help from London. It is central to the unionist argument that Scotland is incapable of hacking it as an independent nation state. Expect more of this from Labour and the Lib-Dems in the future.
If someone is feeding Scotland Office this crap then they are certainly doing a good job, as far as the SNP is concerned.
