Every ten years or so, Independence comes up for debate again.

In 1995, Sir John Swan launched his Independence Referendum and voters soundly rejected it.

In 1986, then Senate President the late Hugh Richardson tried and failed to put the issue to a referendum. And in the mid-1970s, then Premier the late Sir John Sharpe published a Green Paper on the issue and his successor Sir David Gibbons later issued a White Paper.

Now Premier Alex Scott will bring the issue up at the Progressive Labour Party's Founder's Day celebrations on Sunday.

He promises that it will advance the debate further after it has lain in abeyance since the 1995 referendum.

Mr. Scott has already laid some groundwork for the debate with his public spat with Government House over the appointment of the Chief Justice, and there will be more, not least over Government House's call for submissions for a mechanism for further constitutional reform.

These disagreements help to create a tone of an “interfering” Government House keen to limit the rights of Bermuda and its government. Regardless of the merits - and the Governor was perfectly within his rights on both issues - Mr. Scott has managed to convince some people, anyway, that Bermuda is being pushed around.

If Mr. Scott does drive the debate forward, the months ahead are bound to see a fair amount of debate on the mechanism for deciding the issue.

Questions of whether it should be decided via a General Election - the PLP's preference - or a referendum - the United Bermuda Party's choice - will no doubt take up a good deal of time.

These are important questions and worth debating at any time. This newspaper's position supports a referendum as the cleanest way to decide the question, followed by a Constitutional Conference to agree the details.

In that way, voters can say yes or no to Independence apart from the question of who is best able to to govern the Island, regardless of whether it seeks Independence or to stay as it is.

The bigger question is whether Bermuda should pursue Independence at all. There will no doubt be some question of whether a small place like Bermuda is able to be independent, but that is not the key issue.

Assuming Bermuda can be independent, the question is whether that choice is in its best interests.

That is likely to be a long debate, and Mr. Scott - assuming that he will come out strongly in favour of Independence on Sunday - will have to come up with at least one compelling reason for it.

There are emotional reasons for supporting Independence and opposing it. It will be easy to inflame with issues of race, national pride and the like, just as it will be easy to overblow the dire results of going it alone.

But Bermuda must be pragmatic and get down to hard facts on whether it will ultimately benefit the Island or hurt it.

And in all of this, it should be remembered that Independence will not be a panacea for the Island's problems, and may make them more intractable, insofar as the financial demands on the Government will grow.

But Independence itself won't do much to change educational standards, the housing crisis, the tourism industry or the cost of health care, to name a few pressing social issues. But an excellent argument can be made that those are issues on which Bermuda's leaders should be concentrating their efforts, rather than on a project that may only benefit their own vanity.