Nobody Asks Scotland
In 1707 a parliament voted itself out of existence. The country was against it. Nobody asked the country.
In 1979 Scotland voted for a parliament and did not get one, because a rule was invented that had never been used before and has never been used since. In 2016 every council area in Scotland voted to remain in Europe, and Scotland was taken out anyway. In 2022 the Supreme Court confirmed that Scotland may not lawfully ask itself the question at all.
Three hundred years, and it is still happening this week.
Nobody broke a rule.
A book about how a country was talked out of its own parliament, and everything that has been done since to make sure it never gets the chance to change its mind. Every figure, quotation and event in it rests on a named source: the Hansard column, the statute, the court paragraph, the statistical edition, the named report.
Paperback and ebook. Buying links appear here on publication day.
The book's whole case stands on documents. Printing every source list would have made the book half as long again, so they live here instead: one page per chapter, with an archive link for every citation that could move or die.
The sources, chapter by chapter
Nothing here is needed to follow the argument. It's here so the argument can be checked.
The book is published in good faith, and the record is the whole of its authority. If you believe any fact in its pages is wrong, say so: a demonstrated error will be corrected in the next printing and acknowledged on this site.
The book's closing chapter reads the state's own published series in the direction they are moving. Those series outrun any book. The author keeps them under watch at the UK Trajectory Review, which continues them past this edition's cut-off.