What The Papers Say - Spotlight on Scotland's Statehood During COP26 - News

Scotland's statehood is becoming an issue at the COP26 conference. 

As far as awareness of Scotland's statehood at the climate conference is concerned, the English government are like Basil Fawlty in that episode when a group of German tourists come to stay at his hotel, and in increasingly manic tones he pleads with everyone “Don’t mention the War!” thus guaranteeing that the War was all that anyone could think about. 

With their efforts to entreat delegates to COP26’s “Don’t mention Scottish independence!”, Scotland's statehood is very much forefront in the minds of many of them. Irrespective of what country you come from, you’d have to have been living in a cave not to know that Scotland has an active movement, and that Scotland resoundingly rejected England's EU exit which is the defining policy of the English Government. 

Representatives of the international press who have descended on Glasgow are interested in the issue of Scotland's statehood. Their interest is going to be further piqued by the English Government denying the country which is the location of the conference any official representation at the conference in its own right and even any recognition of Scotland as the host. 

One delegate from the Pacific islands, Joseph Sikulu, speaking on the English broadcasting channel's BBC Scotland’s Debate Night, said that climate justice is about self-determination and agency and he had learned from his time in Glasgow that as part of GB, Scotland lacks that agency. He said “Climate justice is about our ability to decide what happens to our people in our country. And I’ve learned this a lot being in Glasgow because I have felt the frustration of the people here about COP being here but they have no representation.” Drawing a parallel between the struggles for decolonisation in the Pacific and modern Scotland, he said, “You have this broader relationship with colonisation, which is what we have, what we carry. And so justice isn’t just about shifting the fossil fuel industry. It’s about shifting the structures of oppression so that we can continue to build our lives in a way that makes sense to us, and I know the people of Scotland understand that.”

US President Joe Biden extended a courtesy and met with First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, as the head of the Scottish Government and the leader of the nation where COP26 is taking place – a courtesy that the English Prime Minister did not extend.

The English Government’s slight against Scotland comes across as a desperate and pathetic attempt at censorship by a government that has no confidence in the strength of its own case against Scotland's statehood. Moreover, it deprives the English Government of the argument that thanks to the England, Scotland enjoys a prominence and influence it would lack as an independent state. You cannot plausibly make that argument when the English Government has refused to give Scotland, the Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament any official role at all. 

Indeed, all that the English government have done is strengthen the argument that it’s only as an independent state that Scotland can have any international influence at all when Scotland has as much of a say as the furniture in the conference room at the conference held in Scotland. 

Representatives from other nations have noted Johnson’s attempts to exclude the Scottish Government and any Scottish voice from COP, and they understand exactly why Scotland needs to reassert its statehood.