Lady Muck o' Lochay #NoVotesSNP2026

It failed to meet normal international standards on every measure. It was designed and managed to produce the final result. By contrast, look at the conditions applied to the referendums in Gibraltar and the Malvinas where the U.K., confident of its settler populations, went above and beyond the standard applied even in its own elections in order to silence any suggestion of improper conduct and silence the critics in the international community. The govt was determined to show it had met every standard for a fair and impartial vote. Not so in Scotland where it failed every one. Please note, even all this still did not satisfy the C-24 or C4 and both remain listed as NSGT’s. (Btw, we use the word colony to make the point. The word colony is rarely used in modern law, but the reality people mean is still here: states administering territories beyond their *own* mainland.) A referendum cannot automatically resolve the unlawful annexation of a territory especially, as in Scotland’s case, when it ignores the principal requirement that a state must not interfere in the exercise of that expression of public will. A referendum conducted on the basis that a component part of a state is seeking secession is not the same as a referendum conducted by (not on behalf of), a still sovereign, annexed nation deciding, not whether to secede, but whether to accept its status on the annexing state’s terms, a status that is absent an operative treaty and absent any rights and obligations whatever under that treaty. This is *not* accepted in international law and the UK state knows this. That’s why it’s that state, not Liberation Scotland, which first raised the question - in 1954 - of whether Scotland was a dependency, colony, in order to publicly deny it. It’s time our self appointed pro-indy spokespersons understood this also. The cosmetic exercise of ‘the referendum’ was organised to produce exactly Robin’s belief that whatever our status before it, after the referendum this became a voluntary union. That, as you can see, I hope, is not true. The flagrant manipulation of the process aside, if Scotland was annexed prior to the referendum then a poll managed by the occupying state, (including control of the postal ballot), and which allowed that state to break the terms of the Edinburgh agreement but not the Scottish ‘side’, and which was non binding, is not a legitimate expression of self determination. That unmediated and free, fair process is yet to take place. P.S No matter who agreed to it, a franchise which includes 2nd home owners, temporary residents (students, military, temporary workers) and recent arrivals disqualifies the referendum as a test of the will of the Scottish people.

Not something Scots should celebrate. The defeat and execution of Charles I culminated in the English occupation of Scotland. Cromwell’s troops committed the same atrocities as in Ireland though the history books don’t talk about that. Cromwell then annexed Scotland officially and wrote a constitution for his new state. Because Scotland had supported him, Charles II reversed the annexation handing Scotland back to the Scots. I’m no royalist, I promise you, but them’s the facts.