Leaders: Salmond jumps the gun over constitution

ALEX Salmond is right to assert that an independent Scotland would require a written constitution. But is he right to suggest this constitution might contain the right to a free education, the right to a house and the right to a country without nuclear weapons?

ALEX Salmond is right to assert that an independent Scotland would require a written constitution. But is he right to suggest this constitution might contain the right to a free education, the right to a house and the right to a country without nuclear weapons?

Yesterday’s comments from the First Minister were, in general terms, a welcome contribution to the independence debate. Before Scotland decides its future, we need to have a far better idea about how nationalists see the road to that future, and how that independent state would operate.

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There are big constitutional issues at stake here. Should an independent Holyrood have a second chamber? What exactly would be our parliament’s relationship with the monarch? Who, exactly, would qualify as a citizen of this new state?

These did not, however, feature in Mr Salmond’s remarks yesterday. What the First Minister did do was to suggest the constitution might enshrine those aforementioned inalienable rights on education, housing and the bomb, as well as the conditions under which troops would be ordered into combat.

Inevitably, this raises a number of questions. A range of inalienable rights are already enshrined in Scots Law through the European Convention on Human Rights, but Mr Salmond wants to “go beyond those touchstone rights to embrace fundamental human concerns, the key economic, social and environmental needs of every citizen and the responsibilities of state and citizen towards each other”. Is this really necessary? Is this really the job of a country’s written constitution? Surely how society orders itself is the job of a political system of regular elections that reflects changing views and circumstances?

Of course, Mr Salmond was not talking yesterday simply as a disinterested party examining the issue of a constitution dispassionately, on its intrinsic merits alone. No, he was also talking as head of the party that still has to persuade more Scots that independence is what they desire.

So, a sceptic might say that Mr Salmond was using what should ideally have been an apolitical point about a written constitution to promote a political argument on some of the SNP’s aims for independence.

If Scotland does indeed vote Yes in 2014, the process of drawing up a constitution will be one requiring all parties and the talents of the finest minds Scotland can muster. Mr Salmond is right to throw it open, but leaving a final decision to a parliament with a majority might be problematic. Any written constitution needs to avoid matters of transient policy or it will simply bog down our courts and slow down government as challenge after challenge is made and amendment after amendment is proposed. A nation should have a clear idea of the kind of society it wants to be, but every dot and comma does not need to be enshrined in a written constitution.

Mali action raises wider concerns

THE death of a Briton at the hands of Islamist extremists in Algeria is a disturbing symptom of an escalating crisis in Africa. The Briton was one of two people killed at a gas plant in the east of the country, while other workers were taken captive.

The killing was claimed as retaliation for Algeria letting the French use its airspace to facilitate military attacks in Mali, where the government of PresidentHollande is taking a robust attitude to quelling an Islamist uprising. Yesterday, French special forces were fighting alongside Malian government troops in the streets of the key city of Diabaly.

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The situation in Mali is a disturbing one, with the government being challenged by a loose alliance of groups ranging from hard-core al-Qaeda operatives to local tribal warlords.

The French action in Mali has been supported by the United Nations and has been less contentious in the international community than some previous western interventions designed to defeat Islamist militancy.

But the concern remains that France – and, perhaps, its allies –could end up being drawn into a prolonged and bloody conflict in an unstable part of sub-

Saharan Africa.

Comparisons can be simplistic, but Vietnam and Afghanistan have been mentioned as worst-case scenarios for this French military adventure. It is to be sincerely hoped this is unnecessarily alarmist, and that the rebellion can be dealt with quickly and with the minimum of force.

What will be required afterwards to keep the peace is, however, at this stage only a matter of conjecture. But it would be naive to suggest a peace will be easily maintained.