We Need State Builders, Not Local Administrators
A de facto referendum must be a mandate to leave the British state — not to manage Scotland within it
We need to vote for state builders, not for those whose ambition is to become local administrators.
A de facto referendum must not be a vote to manage Scotland within the British state. It must be a vote to leave it. Anything else is procedural theatre, no matter how well intentioned.
Holyrood was not designed as a launch platform for independence. It was designed as a containment structure: sufficient authority to absorb political pressure, insufficient power to allow a clean break with the British state. Participation in it is not neutral. It conditions behaviour.
Holyrood Conditions Political Behaviour
Once elected, independence politicians are immediately bound into that structure. Their remuneration, staffing, procedural legitimacy and day-to-day political relevance all flow through institutions authorised under UK sovereignty. They are not “employees” in the narrow legal sense — but they are functionaries of a constitutional system whose purpose is to prevent a break from the Union.
This matters because political behaviour follows incentives, not intentions.
You can believe in independence sincerely and still become structurally incapable of acting on it. The longer you administer devolved power, the higher the cost of breaking away becomes — personally, institutionally, and politically. Independence is postponed not out of betrayal, but because the system makes delay the rational choice.
This is not a moral argument. It is a structural one.
The Problem Is Not the Voters
That is why repeated electoral mandates have produced management rather than movement.
So the problem is not that voters are wrong. The problem is that the meaning of the vote has been misdefined.
A Holyrood election framed as a de facto referendum must be treated as such in practice. A clear majority — 50% + 1 of votes cast for parties and independent candidates standing on an explicit independence pledge — constitutes a democratic mandate to begin the independence process. Not to administer devolved governance indefinitely. Not to negotiate permission. To act.
What Must Happen After the Vote
That mandate must be honoured immediately.
No candidate elected on that basis should accept remuneration tied to administering Scotland under UK authority. Not as a gesture. As a necessary severance from the incentive structure that neutralises decisive action.
Holyrood should therefore be vacated by independence representatives. Not because independence has been achieved overnight, but because no one was elected to take up those seats. They were elected for a single, declared purpose: to initiate state formation.
This is not a withdrawal from democracy. It is the execution of a specific democratic instruction.
A Council for Independence
Those elected would constitute a Council for Independence: a temporary, mandate-limited body deriving its authority directly from the electorate. Its role would not be to govern day-to-day life, but to coordinate the independence process — strategy, sequencing, international engagement, and domestic mobilisation.
This must be declared in advance. There can be no ambiguity. A public framework detailing the first months and years of action must be available before any vote is cast. Voters must consent knowingly to both the objective and the method.
No Power Vacuum — Only Clarity
There would be no power vacuum. Scotland’s administration does not collapse in the absence of ministers; it continues under existing statutory mechanisms. That continuity is not a flaw in this approach — it is evidence of the constitutional reality Scotland exists within.
And it is precisely that reality which must be made visible.
Continued participation in devolved governance obscures Scotland’s status and diffuses responsibility. Disengagement clarifies both. It draws a clean line between administration and sovereignty, between management and self-determination.
The Choice a Real Referendum Must Present
International recognition does not arise from constitutional tidiness. It arises from clarity of mandate and political coherence. At present, Scotland offers neither. A declared, democratically empowered independence body acting outside the structures designed to contain it would.
Independence will not be delivered by administering the limits of someone else’s authority more competently. It will only be delivered by refusing to confuse management with liberation.
That is the choice a real de facto referendum must present.