After the 2007 election, the SNP enjoyed a honeymoon period that arguably stretched out for two years. In 2011, despite a stunning majority-winning election, that honeymoon period is in danger of being less than a month.

The only court that I plan on attending in London is of the tennis-variety at Wimbledon so there is only so excited that I can be at the protracted wrangling between the SNP and seemingly the rest of the world over which courts should and should not hear Scottish cases in the United Kingdom.

However, the SNP’s continued insistence to chip, chip, chip away at the question of what role the UK Supreme Court should have in Scots Law has forced my hand, not least due to Kenny MacAskill’s ante-upping threat to pull Scotland’s £500k funding of said Court with the rather bizarre justification that ‘he who pays the piper, as they say, calls the tune’.

I suspect that this worrying rhetoric is just the Justice Secretary once again unintentionally fudging his meaning and Kenny is simply seeking to raise the question of what jurisdiction courts should and shouldn’t have. It is too crass to say, as many already have, that we have separation of powers in this country and politicians should not get involved with what the legal process is. That is true for specific cases but in terms of a structural process, it is only Governments that can effect change so the objections raised by MacAskill and the SNP at large are perfectly valid, if perhaps ill-timed and ill-conceived.

As to the question itself, on the face of it, a London court reviewing and overturning the decision of a Scottish court when Scots Law and English Law are two separate kettles of fish seems wrong. However, even just a little bit of digging into the precedents and rules that are in place show that the UK Supreme Court is absolutely the appropriate place for certain cases to be heard. My understanding is that the Privy Council had formerly been a body of appeal for Scots Law cases related to the European Convention of Human Rights and the UK Supreme Court has now superseded that. No objections from me then; the SNP do seem to be guilty of having a solution that is looking for a problem.

Do I like the idea of Scotland’s legal appeal route bodyswerving London and leading direct to the heart of Brussels/Strasbourg helping to ensure that our nation is a full and equitable partner of the European Union? Yes, I do. Do I think the SNP is making that case in a mature and dignified manner? No, I don’t. Do I think that this is a particularly pressing issue for Scotland at this time? Absolutely not, given the pitiful few cases that this would have affected in the past few years and, no doubt, would affect in the years to come.

For me, the SNP is picking the wrong battle, at the wrong time and for the wrong reasons. A situation has presented itself which offered the possibility of exacerbating an apparent imbalance in our constitutional arrangement and the SNP could not resist leveraging the opportunity for its own ends as much as it possibly could. The whole issue does smack of a bit of a practice for independence arguments that will be fully flexed in a few years time as the referendum approaches but with an election just completed and all Scots eager to learn what the SNP’s domestic agenda will be for the year(s) ahead, this sends out a disappointingly partisan message with an abysmal sense of timing.

I do not get the impression that the SNP has researched this area a great deal but simply jumped on a moving train that it hoped would soon turn into a bandwagon. A panel of experts assessing this potential issue in a sober, controlled manner and putting forward recommendations would have been a much more approriate way to suggest changes to a hitherto largely undiscussed and uncared for aspect of Scottish civic life, not springing this upon our collective consciences via Gordon Brewer and the Newsnight Scotland channels. We spook easily don’t you know.

So, given the staunch resistance to the SNP’s calls for ‘London to butt out’, it looks like this is one issue the Nats should have left well alone or it’ll be left shaking its head in dismay at how it fought the law, and the unionists won.