Kosovo makes bad law for possible Scottish secession

Sir, Anthony Aust, a former legal adviser to the Foreign Office, and John McInally are right that Scotland is not Kosovo in relation to potential membership of the European Union (Letters, February 28). If a democratic and lawful secession of Scotland from the UK is achieved, the EU will have no choice but to accommodate the consequences.

But this all invites the question of what is "democratic" and "lawful". It is now said that the make-up of the UK is the quintessential question for a plebiscite, but by and of whom? It is not within the present power of the Scottish parliament to organise a referendum on the question of secession; that can only be done by the Westminster parliament. Scottish secessionists say that the question would be exclusively for the people in Scotland (and some even say that it would be democratic to be answered on a bare majority of those voting); people in Wales, Northern Ireland and England would get no say. And yet the question of secession significantly affects the interests and rights of all of us in the present Union. So if the Westminster parliament sanctioned and then acted on a plebiscite on these proposed terms, would that be legitimate?

The legitimacy of the declarations of secession of the American southern states in 1861 was settled by civil war. Today such legitimacy (which would touch on the interests of all citizens of the American Union as well as the application of the US constitution and the rule of law) would surely be determined by their Supreme Court.

The United Kingdom (ie, including Scotland) will shortly have its own Supreme Court. By statute the Westminster parliament has now recognised our "existing constitutional principle of the rule of law", a principle that the Supreme Court is expected to uphold. How could it be consistent with that principle (which requires all citizens to be treated equally under the law) for people outside Scotland to be disenfranchised on the question of the break-up of their state?

Kosovo is a hard case but it is making bad law.