US and UK in turmoil, but at least their democratic sovereignty is intact

I suspect that most readers of The Nation are more concerned about the current abject state of affairs in Thailand rather than events, no matter how dramatic, in the United States and United Kingdom. However, Ian Martin’s assertion that Scotland is on its way to sovereignty within the European Union, separate from England, really needs to be challenged.
In fact, recent opinion polls indicate that a majority of Scots are not in favour of another independence referendum, despite the desperate efforts by the Scottish government to exploit the Brexit issue to further its own agenda of breaking away from the United Kingdom and joining the European Union. 
Indeed, it is clear that around a third of Scots who support independence voted in favour of leaving the European Union, an inconvenient truth which the Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, chooses to gloss over. So Scotland’s future relationships with both the UK and the EU are not nearly so clear-cut as Ian Martin claims.
Still, whatever one thinks of these issues affecting the future of the UK, and indeed the election of Donald Trump in America, the fact is that the electorates in both countries enjoy the freedom and dignity to participate in a democratic process. The contrast with the people of Thailand, who, for the time being at least, have lost that right and are increasingly being told what they can or cannot say, read or even think, could not be more stark.
Robin Grant