It came as little surprise when Lord Keen of Elie, the UK Government’s law officer for Scotland, tendered his resignation in the wake of Brandon Lewis’s statement that the UK Internal Market Bill would break international law “in a very specific and limited way.” In fact the only real question is what took the Advocate General so long. 

Richard Keen QC is a former Dean of the Faculty of Advocates and well respected at the Scottish bar as an extremely able lawyer. In 2018 he represented the UK Government in the case about whether Article 50 could be unilaterally revoked and, in 2019, in the prorogation case. The fact that he lost both cases should not be taken as any reflection upon his abilities or his probity. 

In a crowded field this has been yet another unprecedented week in British politics. While all eyes in Scotland were focused on the anticipated attack on Holyrood’s powers in the UK Internal Market Bill, nothing had quite prepared anyone for the shock of finding out that as well as overriding the devolution settlement the British Government intended to explicitly disavow their international treaty obligations and their duty to obey international law. 

It is difficult to overstate the enormity of this. The UK Government is openly threatening to depart from its obligations under two international treaties – the Withdrawal Agreement and the Good Friday agreement. A major trade treaty and a major peace treaty with significant implications for human rights. 

SNP MPs went back to Westminster this week facing a fight against Tory plans to curtail the powers of the Scottish parliament in order to create a post Brexit “internal market” in the UK.  Sadly, this is unlikely to be a fight we can win at Westminster.  Last year’s General Election delivered a huge majority for Boris Johnson and took away the leverage the SNP had in the previous hung parliament. But what’s done is done and whilst we cannot win the fight at Westminster, we can win it in the court of public opinion. The polls suggest this is already happening. 

Ultimately most readers of this paper know that the only way to protect Scotland’s parliament is by achieving our independence from Westminster rule. Winning more hearts and minds to that point of view is an important task and one to which SNP MPs can contribute albeit that Holyrood will be the engine room in which the next independence referendum is delivered. 

When Boris Johnson celebrated his first year in office last week it was comforting to remember that the biggest defeats he suffered during that year were made in Scotland by Scots. In the prorogation case the decision of Scotland’s Supreme Court, the Inner House of Court of Session, paved the way for a historic victory in the UK Supreme Court and it was the Scottish constitutional tradition that neither government nor monarch are above the law which won the day.