I FOUND the article in Monday’s National by George Kerevan on the similarities between Boris Johnson and Enoch Powell extremely interesting (Boris Johson has given new life to a virus spawned by Enoch Powell, August 26). There is, in counterpart, one major difference between them, although it is difficult to know whether Johnson’s position is genuine or simply mendacious self-serving.

Another element of Powell’s romantic nationalism, to use George’s good phrase, was also allied to his view of the Westminster Parliament and the Union. It was genuinely felt and made Powell, for instance, an ardent opponent of Scottish devolution. He said in 1975: “The House of Commons brooks no competition and no concurrent authority in any part of the realm.”

This view of the Commons would also have meant that Powell was well aware of the concept of Parliamentary sovereignty, which holds that the Westminster Parliament’s legislative authority is absolute, omnicompetent and legally unlimited. Moreover, no Parliament can bind the actions of a successor Parliament.

The Brexit supporters in the House of Commons who are so keen to stress their desire to return sovereign power to Westminster, and to proclaim the glories of the UK constitution, have ignored the fact that they have driven a coach and horses through this fundamental principle of the Westminster world-view. They proclaim that the 2016 referendum is paramount and has to bind Parliament. Even if the 2016 referendum had been binding and not simply advisory, which it was not, this assertion would not be true.

It is, therefore, nonsense for Johnson to have said as he did earlier this week that MPs do not get to decide whether Brexit happens. Johnson knows this is constitutional nonsense. Of course, he cannot then resist the habit of a lifetime and “embroider” the facts, describing the victory of Leave as being “by a big majority.” That would be 1,269,501 votes out of 33,551,983 cast, often also called by other Brexit supporters “the biggest mandate ever.”

In Scotland, however, we have the famous ruling by Lord Cooper in 1950 that the unlimited sovereignty of Parliament is “a distinctively English principle” with “no counterpart in Scottish constitutional law.” Johnson and his cronies will not, I suspect, want to be reminded of that.

Nor will he want reminded of what Enoch Powell wrote in The Times in July 1987, when he argued that if the Scots wanted to leave the United Kingdom they should be “allowed” to do so.

Gavin Brown

Linlithgow

I READ with interest the George Kerevan piece on the comparison between Enoch Powell and Boris Johnson. I recognise that many of Enoch Powell’s views were as George Kerevan cited, and consequently unacceptable in the inclusive, open society that we are trying to build for an independent Scotland.

However, on one issue I would disagree with George. Intellectually Enoch Powell was a giant, albeit misguided on the issue of race, and Boris Johnson is not in the same mental capacity league.

During the early 70s there was much contention over the issue of membership of the Common Market. At this time Enoch Powell was very active touring the country giving speeches, in his highly intellectual rhetorical style. Below I include an extract from one such speech, where he is making the case for a nation to be free to govern itself. Although his campaign at the time was very English, the example he uses is instructive.

“I have quoted the law to you, the formal legal position as the government have officially affirmed it, but it would be disingenuous to pretend that there is not a higher law according to which no nation can be bound against its will, to the surrender and renunciation of its freedom, independence and sovereign identity. The right to nationhood is one of those rights of which it may be said that time does not run against it. It is not yet known whether the Scottish nation will decide by a majority to resume the status which they relinquished in 1707, but if they do, I would like to hear their reply to those who would tell them that they could not do it because of the Treaty of Union.

“History is littered, and some of its most glorious pages are adorned, with the instances of nations which reasserted and reclaimed their right to govern themselves, and live under their own laws and policies, and not after five or ten years of eclipse, but after centuries. It is bitterly ironical that an Englishman, of all people, should need to argue the point at all to his countrymen, seeing that historically we have made the cause of nations rightly struggling to be free our own cause. In doing so we have been deterred by no superstitious awe before the title deeds of tyrannies or empires. There is no superior juris prudence which can ever say to a nation you shall not, or you shall not longer, be the masters of your own fate.”

This extract can be heard in Powell’s own words on YouTube (bit.ly/EnochPowellSpeech, 7:49-9:55)

It is to their eternal shame that the current Conservative and Unionist Party no long has people with such a scholarly capacity. I cannot agree with much that Enoch Powell said, but in this case his reasoning and understanding of the relevant juris prudence allowed him to recognise and articulate its inevitable conclusion in the case for Scottish nationhood.

David Bird

Pathhead

WHO let the Gord out again?

More inane drivel from the former Vow-maker assaults our intelligence. “Hardline” separatism is beyond comprehension, it is sovereign independence we aspire to in Scotland. Just another construct to cloak his latest rant in!

Gordon Brown is of a bygone British Anglo-age. It does not exist and in fact it never really was! It was an incorporating Union within the English Parliamentary system, a de facto Greater England.

It looks like The Gord is now spooked and beyond rational thought. He is passé, yet has the temerity to spout such gibberish. He really needs to bow out and realise he is really now an anachronism in time and space.

John Edgar

Kilmaurs