The Sheriff of Nottingham North & Kimberley
by Who pulled off their portrayal of the Sheriff of Nottingham better? The late Alan Rickman or Alex Norris?
Who’s Alex Norris you may ask.
Well he’s the Labour MP for Nottingham North & Kimberley and the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain in Andy Burnham’s government.
And like the character of the Sheriff of Nottingham in ‘Robin Hood’ he appears to think he can deny the Scottish people the right to decide their constitutional future, whilst saying the decision on Brexit can be revisited despite happening two years after the independence referendum.
What next? Does he think he can call off Christmas as well?
Appearing on Sky News following the Labour conference, the modern-day Sheriff attempted to perform mental gymnastics that would make an Olympic gymnast wince. When pressed on Andy Burnham’s hints that the UK could revisit the Brexit debate and rejoin the EU single market, Norris scrambled to erect a fortress around Westminster’s hypocrisy.
According to the Labour MP, revisiting a vote held in 2016 is merely forward-looking engagement, but allowing Scotland to revisit a vote held two years earlier in 2014 is strictly forbidden.
The double standards are staggering, even by Westminster’s standards of ‘Do as I say, not as I do’.
Let us shine a light on the sheer hypocrisy of Labour. In 2014, the anti-independence campaign – led hans-in-hand by Labour and the Tories – promised the people of Scotland that a ‘No’ vote was the only way to guarantee our continued membership of the European Union.
That promise ended up with Scotland being dragged out of the EU against our will just two years later.
Andy Burnham has exposed his own hypocrisy as he and Labour frontbenchers casually entertain re-opening the Brexit verdict because it suits them, yet lock the gates and bolt the drawbridge when Scotland asks for the exact same democratic right.
Westminster Labour’s posture relies on tired clichés that treat Scottish democracy as a luxury they own and decide how to use.
Yet history and precedent tells a completely different story about how Scotland’s democratic right is unassailable, and why Westminster’s position is double standards on stilts and an abuse of power.
Major political figures and Westminster governments have repeatedly held constitutional referendums on far lower or similar vote shares, often without them even featuring in prior election manifestos.
The idea that a democratic mandate magically expires after a single vote -while Labour politicians rewrite the rules for Brexit whenever it suits them – is a fiction more suited for ‘The Tales of Sherwood Forest’.
To make matters even more absurd, consider who holds the actual keys to democratic legitimacy here.
First Minister John Swinney leads the Scottish Government with a full mandate derived directly from the people of Scotland in a nationwide election.
Andy Burnham, meanwhile, operates without any such national parliamentary mandate. Yet, like a self-appointed feudal lord levying taxes from afar, feels entitled to dictate to the Scottish electorate what they can and cannot vote for.
When Sky News presenter Helen Lewis pointedly asked Norris if Labour’s position was “no to another independence referendum, no matter if the SNP keep getting elected, no matter if it looks like there’s a majority in the country for independence”, his response was the political equivalent of hiding behind the ramparts: “The answer was the answer.”
This exposes the rotten core of Westminster governance. They treat Scotland and its people not as the promised equal partners in a voluntary union, but as subjects to be ruled over by decrees issued from Nottingham, London, or wherever Labour’s merry men happen to be gathering.
This brazen disregard for the basic democratic principles they respected in 2011, the shameless post-Brexit hoarding of power, and this utter contempt for election mandates is reason enough for Scotland to take its future into its own hands.
Scotland does not need a Sheriff in Westminster deciding which votes are allowed and which are cancelled. It is time to ditch the contempt Westminster has for Scotland and build a modern, independent European nation.