By Rab Bruce’s Spider

I’ve seen a few people commenting that Boris Johnson cannot continue to deny the right of the Scottish people, and this certainly seems to be the Scottish Government’s official line, but I fear such hopes may well be misplaced. If Boris Johnson continues to deride Scotland, to walk out of the House of Commons when SNP MPs rise to speak, and to ignore the Scottish Government, what can anyone do to prevent it? I’m afraid I can think of nothing. If every SNP MP were to walk out of the HoC, that would be a gesture, but it would accomplish nothing. The best thing it would do is save those individuals a lot of daily hassle, but we should not forget that they are there to represent their constituents, many of whom will be supporters of the Union, and all their constituents still require some sort of voice.

But, getting back to Johnson’s continuing refusal, he may become more unpopular, and support for Scotland becoming a normal country may increase in light of the ongoing snubs and insults, but is there anything to stop him? The Tories are already planning to implement constituency boundary changes which will ensure that, under their beloved First Past The Post voting system, they will remain in power for the foreseeable future. Even if Johnson is replaced, the next Tory PM will be just as extreme, and can continue to refuse a Section 30 Order.

I very much get the feeling that Nicola Sturgeon has decided on a strategy of trying every legal and constitutional move in the full knowledge that she will be thwarted at every turn. This will allow her to play the victim when it comes to appealing to the international community, but will it accomplish anything other than to obtain sympathy?

Calls for civil disobedience may well rise, but we should face the fact that most Scots are law-abiding individuals who may not wish to break the law. Of course, the Poll Tax revolt was a notable exception to this, so perhaps someone will come up with some sort of peaceful civil action that people can take. So far, I’ve seen no real proposals. Whether the Scottish Government would support any such disobedience must, though, remain doubtful since they seem determined to play by the rules. In addition, the comments by Lisa Nandy of the Labour Party show that English politicians have been paying attention to events in Catalonia and are quite prepared to advocate violent suppression of any signs of disloyalty to the Union. While she will no doubt try to explain that her remarks were taken out of context, this is a typical ploy as used by Donald Trump and many UK politicians. They say something outrageous in order to bring the discussion into the mainstream so that it can be normalised. You can be sure that such tactics have been discussed within the UK Government, although whether they would actually go that far is yet to be tested. I’d venture to suggest that the majority of scots would not be prepared to test it.

As for the Yes community resorting to acts of violence, I’d like to think only a few extremists would ever consider that course of action. Whatever targets are aimed at, innocent people would undoubtedly be harmed, and that sort of response does nobody any good.

So, sadly, I must conclude that, on the basis of what we know at present, Boris Johnson can carry on denying Scotland its democracy for as long as he likes, and there’s not a lot we can do about it except continue to support the SNP in order to demonstrate that support for becoming a normal country has not gone away. We need to do this whatever happens because you can be absolutely sure that any sign of a fall in support will be pounced upon by Unionist politicians and the media to declare that nobody wants IndyRef2.