Everyone knows that if there’s a political crisis or a stushie going on and people are clamouring for something to be done, the best way to avoid doing it is to set up a commission. Give it an important-sounding title, The Commission For Looking Into Something To Be Done, appoint a chairperson, call people to give evidence, and sit back and watch as the thing people are calling for never, ever happens. Works every time. Job done.

The reason setting up commissions works in this way is that all the hearings and witnesses and reports and declarations give the impression that progress is being made, so everyone’s happy, for a little while anyway. Commissions are particularly important in the tricky area of self-determination, devolution and independence because supporters of independence and constitutional change can go years, hundreds of years sometimes, without anything changing at all. Needless to say, there have been lots of commissions on the subject of Scottish home rule and independence.

The latest one to catch my attention is The International Commission for European Citizens or ICEC (gotta have an acronym). It was established in 2011 and has been very busy indeed proving something is being done by issuing lots of declarations and determinations and resolutions. The latest one was signed at the weekend and was called, with suitable solemnity, The Cardiff Declaration. It’s worth taking a look at in more detail not only because it is a classic of the genre, but because it helps reveal the curious hyperopia common among nationalists: the contradictions are there, right in front of them, but for some reason they cannot see them.

The stated aim of The International Commission for European Citizens essentially is to gather together several pro-independence organisations, institutions and individuals into one organisation, a commission of commissions. It has members from Scotland, Wales, Catalonia, the Basque Country,........

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