Not My Parliament
Where now after the self-determination bill falls?
Neale Hanvey’s last ditch attempt to obtain some democracy from Westminster was voted down on Tuesday 16th January 2024, by 228 votes to 48, making it very clear that Scotland is no more than a colony of its imperialist English masters, therefore we as Scots must reevaluate our relationship with the whole Westminster system. The ball is now in our court.
This year gives us the opportunity to do just that with the Westminster elections on the horizon, as this is the time when the imperial masters of England pretend, they allow their colonies a taste of democracy. This “democracy” as the self-determination bills rejection shows is nothing but a sham to create the illusion for the international stage to make Britian look democratic, but in reality, it gives the citizens of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland no voice and no real chance of changing the political system or indeed government unless they vote for an English Party, it is not the first time Scotland has been governed by a party with no political representation in our land. They are not even hiding their contempt after the boundary changes removing seats from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and increasing seats in England given England an even higher majority.
Over the last 3 General election Scotland has voted for a Scottish party on a manifesto to have a referendum on Scottish Independence. The endorsement of this manifesto pledge by the people of Scotland has not been ignored it has been rejected by the English house of commons, the same house of commons that introduced the two-child cap with the rape clause, the bedroom tax, universal credit and took Scotland out of the European Union against the democratic vote of the people of Scotland.
So, what can we the people of Scotland do at the upcoming Westminster elections? I believe we have three options open to us.
1: Disruption: This would see us continuing to stand for election as we do now and hope those, we elect, disrupt the houses of parliament in the hope the British establishment get fed up with us and give us our independence.
Chances of success and outcome: Westminster have already increased English seats by 10 and decreased Scotland’s seats by 2 thereby increasing England’s dominance in the parliament, there are also only a few ways you can disrupt parliament and very few people out with social media pay attention to what happens in parliament.
The SNP cannot be trusted to follow through with a campaign of disruption therefore reducing the rebel MPs to a handful rendering the disruption as futile.
Westminster will continue to just ignore our MP’s and have them removed from parliament and discipline them possibly leading to a recall petition to permanently remove them from parliament.
2: Abstentionism, this would be electing candidates who will refuse to take the oath to the king, this would mean they would not be allowed to take their seat in the house of commons, stop them taking part in debates or move motions in parliament or to take a wage.
Chances of success and outcomes: Abstentionism sounds like a good option until you investigate it deeper.
In Ireland abstentionism started in 1847 but they never had an abstentionist MP until Charles Dolan resigned from the IPP to join Sinn Fein who lost his seat at the next election. Ireland also had an armed rebellion during the time of abstentionism and ended up with partition not full independence.
Abstentionism also accepts that Westminster plays a role in the governance of Scotland, by standing candidates for the parliament we are consenting to Westminster having a say in Scottish affairs as we would be playing by their rules even if we do not take the seat.
Westminster also has the power to fine any MP £500 for refusing to take the oath and to have the seat declared vacant as if the member had died leading to a by election.
But we do have a third option that I am favouring more and more.
3: Reject Westminster outright: This would require us to campaign on a Not My Parliament platform calling on voters to spoil their ballots by writing NOT MY PARLIAMENT on their ballots, staying at home is not an option as it does not make the necessary political statement that, we the people do not consent to the Westminster parliament and hereby use our sovereign right to reject and sack it from Scottish life, spoiling our ballots makes it very clear we are using our sovereign power to reclaim our democratic rights and reject the sham elections of the imperialist parliament of Westminster.
Chances of success and outcomes: Rejecting Westminster by more spoilt ballots than the votes for the winning candidate would send a massive message to the international community that Scotland does not accept being ruled as a colony by the British state, it would put the world on notice that if Westminster do not accept their rejection by the people of Scotland then the 2026 Scottish parliament election will be an election for the independence of Scotland and repeal of the Treaty of Union by the sovereign people of Scotland.
It would also remove the democratic right of the unionist candidate who will have the most party votes to represent the constituency as the majority would have actively rejected them by spoiling their ballot.
Conclusion: We have the chance to be an Independence United campaign taking party politics out of the game and put Independence as the one and only issue on the agenda. By voting for candidates, we would by accepting the Westminster election as a democratic entity, but if we use that election to spoil our ballots, we are publicly rejecting the election, the Westminster parliament and the treaty of Union.
So, the question is do we play their game by their rules, or do we use our sovereignty and reject their colonial rule?