Straining At The Nats

I have long felt that there must be a Eurosceptical streak in the SNP (and in Plaid Cymru, come to that), going back to the 1975 referendum and beyond. After all, if rule from London is intolerable, how can rule from Brussels be any less so?

So, which way are the Nationalists going to jump with regard to the new Constitreaty? If nothing else, the Common Fisheries Policy remains intact, so will the SNP’s MPs vote against the legislation giving effect to the Constitreaty, and, in the admittedly unlikely event of a referendum, will the party campaign for a No vote? If not, why not?

Alex Salmond has been expressing his support for the British Government’s alleged efforts to defend the integrity of the United Kingdom’s legal systems, but that is just drivel, from Blair and Salmond alike. Since 1st January 1973, European law has prevailed over British law of whatever kind, now including, of course, enactments of the devolved bodies, and always including rulings of the highest courts in London and Edinburgh alike. And ultimately, European law is whatever the European Court of Justice says that it is.

So much, then, for the crowing of Scottish Nationalists, within and beyond the SNP, about Scotland’s exemption from the jurisdiction of the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, itself a spectacular failure of both Attlee Tests. As much as anything else, at least that Court will be made of proper judges, whereas most of those who sit on the bench of the ECJ are career politicians, sometimes with law degrees, but very often without even that.

Yet from that bench may be struck down any enactment or judicial ruling anywhere in the EU, including Scotland. To accept and even welcome this state of affairs while objecting to the Supreme Court on purely Nationalist grounds is an eye-watering example of swallowing the camel but straining at the gnat.