Deconstructing The 'Once In A Generation' Argument
“Once in a generation” – How unionist politicians use a campaigning message from 2014 to circumvent democratic principles and select the standard to which the UK’s Constitutional Law is held.
Too often it is argued that a second referendum on Scottish independence is unwarranted because it’s 2014 precursor was said to be a “once in a generation event”. In this article, the democratic dangers of this position and the political fragility of those who promote it will be explored.
Cornered by successive electoral majorities of pro-independence representatives, unionists revert to the position that the independence question was answered in 2014 and therefore should not be asked again. To support this position, they cite an incomprehensibly weak source of authority: that the first referendum was said by some pro-independence campaigners to be a “once in a generation event”.
Fundamentally, the UK’s Constitutional system is underpinned by the principles of a ‘representative democracy’, and to adhere to those principles, effect must be given to the electoral mandates attained by the SNP who have returned successive majorities of pro-referendum Scottish representatives. However, as the UK Supreme Court has held, existing UK law provides that the UK governments authorisation must be attained for any referendum to be lawful. This democratically dysfunctional framework entitles the UK government to refuse authorisation regardless of the democratic expressions of Scotland, thus enabling suppression of Scotland’s democratic will. Our paper titled ‘The Constitutional Straitjacket’ examines the anti-democratic implications of this framework itself, but for the purposes of this article, the essential principle to note is that according to UK law, the UK government can refuse to hold a second independence referendum but from a political perspective they must create and communicate a suitable justification for why a referendum will be refused and why Scotland should accept that refusal. The ‘once in a generation’ argument is that justification.
At its core, the generational argument proposes that the principles of democracy should be disapplied in the context of a second independence referendum for which several electoral mandates have been attained. The justification of this disapplication rests on a campaigning message used by some independence campaigners in 2014 which, it is argued, should be treated as irreversibly binding the Scottish electorate for the indeterminate period of a ‘generation’.
The most blindingly obvious demerit of the generational argument is its lack of legal authority. Democracy underpins the entire system of Constitutional Law in the UK, whereas the ‘once in a generation’ message was used to drive voter engagement in an unsuccessful campaign and has no legal authority whatsoever. A legally unsupported usurpation of one of the most foundational principles of the UK’s Constitutional Law is completely absurd and must be unconditionally refuted. It must instead be unequivocally accepted that it does not matter whether campaigners stated that the 2014 referendum was a once in a generation event, because such words cannot override the legally entrenched principles of democracy.
Proponents of the generational argument are selective (to say the least) with the messages that they hold as supreme binding law. Soon after campaigning against Scottish independence on the basis that Scotland’s EU membership could only be guaranteed by voting No, David Cameron authorised the Brexit referendum which led to Scotland’s exit from the EU. It is usually the winners of elections that are held accountable for upholding campaigning commitments, so why then do the UK government treat the ‘once in a generation’ message as binding law, yet accept the abandonment of a primary commitment made by the No campaign without question? This framework can be applied to various other commitments made by the No campaign which were subsequently abandoned, demonstrating the clear political motivation in the government’s sole treatment of the ‘once in a generation’ message as binding law.
Political motivations have no place in the effect given to long established Constitutional principles. There is no legal authority supporting the generational argument, and there is no consistent application of the principle on which it is founded. It is indeed a falsified authority used by unionists to justify holding Constitutional Law to a standard selected according to their own political preferences, rather than a standard set by fundamental ideals of democracy. It is used to circumvent democracy where democracy is an inconvenience. Moreover, even if the generational argument were to be accepted (which it should absolutely not be), by the UK governments own standard (found in Annex A, Schedule 1 of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement), they agree that after seven years have passed post referendum on Irish reunification, another could be justifiably held. It need not be proven that 7 years have passed since 2014 and as such the question must be posed: why is Scotland's democracy held to a different standard?
It is clear that the outcome of the first referendum is viewed as Scotland’s unqualified consent to every disaster subsequently imposed by Westminster, even those which Scotland expressly opposed. According to Unionists, democracy has expired, and any circumstantial change occurring after the first referendum is just bad luck. Under this dangerous precedent, a government which was overwhelmingly rejected by Scotland could impose any oppressive measures it likes on Scotland while denying the Scottish electorate any opportunity to reject those measures. An electorates’ consent to their government must be dynamic and cannot ossify. Westminster’s construction of Scotland’s unqualified, uninformed, and pre-determined consent to the UK governments rule is completely invalid. Comparatively, if Brexit was rejected in 2016, and the EU passed a binding regulation soon after causing the UK’s payments into the EU to increase dramatically, would Brexiteers see the 2016 vote as their consent to the implementation of this regulation, or would they seek another referendum because of it? Would it be democratically coherent to fail to hold a second EU referendum in such circumstances if a majority of MPs were elected on a primary manifesto commitment to hold one? Would the 2016 vote be labelled as a “once in a generation event” by the UK Government when it is a referendum that they would want to pass?
Do elected parliamentarians have no shame when they selectively disapply democracy according to their political objectives? What little credibility remains for a Westminster system which has enforced policy after policy against the will of the Scottish electorate and which has decimated the value of the fundamental democratic rights supposedly held by that electorate. The once in a generation argument is the product of the UK Governments desperation. It is illogical, anti-democratic, legally unsupported, and a damning indication of the state of the Union.