Amanda MacSiiver (Extremist) IndyScot

Given you've ignored the questions I posed yesterday, perhaps you can tell us exactly what you're personally doing to build this "sustained majority". If necessary we can leave exactly how you prove it definitively, and how you guarantee Westminster will respond in the affirmative to voluntarily losing their resource rich province until you've had another few days to think about it. These however are the sorts of things you'll need to be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt before we follow your advice, and against all strategic logic drop all other strategies for building pressure on the Anglo-British state, and simply accept their legitimacy as a sovereign state controlling any exercise in Scottish self-determination.

An excellent response, but there's an even more fundamental weakness in McAlpine's position. McAlpine acknowledges the economic extraction, demographic losses, cultural damage and structural underdevelopment that Alf describes, but dismisses the historical processes that might explain them. He recognises the symptoms but refuses to investigate the diagnosis. His greatest mistake is conflating two questions: how the Scottish people demonstrate their democratic will, and by what constitutional authority that can be exercised. He proposes sustained 60% support, then negotiations with Westminster. But 60% is a political threshold, not a legal one. What happens if Westminster refuses again? What forces it to negotiate? He never answers. His strategy, like the SNP, ultimately depends upon the cooperation of the Anglo-British state. The state whose authority over Scotland's constitutional future is being challenged. His claim that the 2014 referendum made the Union voluntary is extraordinary. A vote against constitutional change can't retrospectively establish the lawfulness of 1707, cure any defects, or extinguish the Scottish people's right of self-determination. His dismissal of international law is indefensible. International law exists even where direct domestic enforcement is unavailable. An authoritative legal opinion isn't an enforceable judgment; recognising sovereignty isn't the same as granting independence. The UN route isn't about asking foreign bureaucrats to give Scotland sovereignty. It is about challenging the constitutional and international legitimacy of the authority presently claimed over Scotland, and establishing the legal consequences of that challenge. International recognition of a credible constitutional case could itself transform political consciousness, strengthen Scottish confidence, generate diplomatic pressure and change the circumstances in which the people exercise self-determination. It could therefore contribute directly to the popular mobilisation McAlpine considers indispensable. Democratic mobilisation and internationalisation therefore can reinforce one another. Alf's point about 1707 deserved considerably more attention. The dissolution of Scotland's Parliament, the institutional continuation of England's Parliament and the question of whether the resulting constitutional arrangements were lawfully authorised are substantive historical and constitutional issues. McAlpine refused to examine them, much less refute them. He simply declared them irrelevant because they happened three centuries ago. But the passage of time isn't, by itself, an answer to a question about constitutional legitimacy or its continuing consequences. McAlpine's political campaigning experience is undoubtedly relevant to winning popular support. It doesn't entitle him to dismiss constitutional history and international jurisprudence as meaningless distractions, particularly when he offers no enforceable alternative to Westminster's continuing veto. There are legitimate questions about how Liberation's international strategy would proceed, what institutional decisions it requires, and how favourable findings could be translated into practical constitutional change. Those questions deserve precise answers, not ridicule. The fundamental question isn't simply how many Scots support exercising sovereignty. It is where that sovereignty resides, whether it was ever lawfully alienated, and who possesses the authority to determine how it is exercised. McAlpine insists that the Scottish people must decide their own future. On that principle there's no disagreement. What he never explains is why, if the people are the ultimate constituent authority, the exercise of that authority must remain dependent upon Westminster's willingness to cooperate. That's the glaring contradiction at the heart of his argument, and no number of repaired potholes resolves it.