The fork in the road

It’s customary to describe every upcoming election as critical. That’s always been the case with Scottish independence, as should the pro-independence parties fail to win a majority in the Scottish Parliament, and we’re unfortunate enough to get a Labour – or god forbid – Tory first minister, independence would be off the political agenda for five years and the Scottish Government would enthusiastically implement all the worst ideas coming from Westminster.

However the May 2026 Holyrood elections really are critical, existential even. These elections could be our last chance, not just to secure a path to Scottish independence, but to ensure the preservation of democracy itself in Scotland. I’m aware that statement can appear alarmist and hyperbolic, but Scotland, the UK, and the West in general are currently facing the rise of political barbarism and the capture of the state by an authoritarian far right which skillfully weaponises attacks on minorities and migrants in order to distract from the economic and environmental rape which is being perpetrated by its super-rich funders and backers.

You only need to look across the Atlantic to the USA to see what could be in store for us over here. Trump is ramping up his attacks on any media outlet which has the temerity to criticise him, and is sending troops into cities controlled by his Democrat opponents. While he’s no Trump, in the UK, Keir Starmer has already displayed some dangerously authoritarian tendencies, with the proscription of a direct action protest group as a “terrorist organisation” and ever more stringent measures being taken to restrict the right to protest and demonstrate against the government.

Although a Westminster general election is some years off, on current polling the gurning ghoul that is Nigel Farage, the golf club fascist, looks likely to become the next Prime Minister. He’ll faithfully ape his MAGA masters and the UK will take a turn into a particularly vile far right English nationalist authoritarianism. Farage routinely describes the corporate centre right that is Starmer’s Labour party as far left extremists, just as he typically characterises supporters of Scottish independence as anti-English racists. His government would not hesitate to proscribe Scottish independence organisations as racist hate groups and 0introduce legislation which would effectively criminalise organisations or parties seeking to secure independence for Scotland or Wales.

While we can hope that Farage’s latest political vehicle will implode before the next general election just as all his other parties have self-destructed under the weight of Farage’s ego and entitlement, for the time being his malignant influence is driving the other British political parties to espouse policies which only a short time ago were confined to the fringes of the moon howling far right.

The future for Scotland as a part of the UK looks particularly bleak, impoverished by high energy bills while our resources are exported south, austerity on steroids when the right inevitably takes back power in Westminster, the slow erosion of the devolution settlement, ID cards, restrictions on the right to protest, an ever widening chasm between the haves and the have nots, and international isolation.

But it doesn’t have to be like that. Scotland can choose a different path while we still have the opportunity to do so.

The First Minister John Swinney has unveiled new plans for an independent Scotland. Central to these plans is harnessing Scotland’s vast capacity for renewable energy production to benefit the people of Scotland. If income and inequality in Scotland were the same as in other comparable European countries, the average Scottish household could be up to £10,200 a year better off. Electricity bills in Scotland could be amongst the lowest in Europe.

The paper points out: “That does not mean Scottish households would instantly be more than £10,000 richer each year if Scotland was a nation state, or even that we would be as successful just by being independent.

“Instead it shows how much better those comparable nation states do than the UK, and what we might be able to do if we were able to make our own choices about the shape and direction of our economy.

“The prize of independence, the Scottish Government believes, is not matching the performance of these independent countries straight away, but the opportunity to start catching up.”

That £10,200 a year is the price of being shackled to a UK which works for the benefit of the wealthy.

Typically, this new plan for independence merited only a passing mention on the state broadcaster’s news where you are and a few minutes towards the end of its afternoon Scottish politics show, which was far more interested in attacking the Scottish Government and talking about the Tories. Most of the time spent on discussing the independence plan was given to the Labour and Tory representatives to poo-poo the plan. This was followed by some BBC editorialising to add to the poo-pooing and then a journalist from the Daily Mail was given her chance to pour more cold water on the plan. There’s that BBC impartiality for you.

Before it descended into blatant scaremongering and ridiculous lies which claimed that an independent Scotland would quickly become an impoverished authoritarian economic basket case, Better Together was set up on the premise that an independent Scotland was perfectly viable, but it planned to make the positive case for the Union, showing that Scotland would be “better together” with Westminster. It quickly became apparent in the early days of the independence referendum campaign that there was no positive case for the Union, and Better Together by its own admission became Project Fear.

Eleven years on, it’s clear that not only is the positive case for the Union as mythical as the Anas Sarwar’s chances of becoming the next first minister, but the Union itself is the biggest myth of all. There is no Union, Brexit made that evident. There is only a unitary Ukania which is a fig leaf for Greater England.

With Reform and the dying Tories now parties of naked English supremacism, and Labour wrapping itself in a British flag while it tries to play catch up, the political space in the UK for a Scotland which wants something different diminishes every day.

Scotland could do so much better, not just economically, but as a nation which forges closer ties with Europe, and which guarantees dignity and humanity in a politics which centres compassion, kindness, and understanding, turning its back on the performative cruelty of the Anglo-British nationalist right. More than that, democracy itself is at stake. Starmer’s politics are hideous, duplicitous and authoritarian, but he is the least worst of the options facing Scotland in the UK. Starmer has proclaimed that he will ignore the results of Scottish elections should the electorate have the temerity to vote for parties which want independence or another referendum. That high handed arrogance dismisses democracy in Scotland out of hand. Under Farage or some Tory-Reform political hydra, it will be orders of magnitude worse.

Scotland’s only hope for a better future is to return a strong pro-independence majority to Holyrood next year, then for that Scottish Parliament to adopt a more assertive and combative stance, challenging Westminster at every turn, then to lever that pro-independence Scottish Parliament to reinforce the pro-independence majority of MPs which Scotland must return to Westminster at the next UK general election. Those MPs must disrupt and block Westminster rule in Scotland, using every arcane rule in the Commons rule book to bring proceedings at Westminster to a halt, creating a constitutional crisis which can only be resolved with an independence referendum or Westminster throwing in the towel.

We are at a fork in the road, one way leads to impoverishment and authoritarianism in a UK in which Scotland has no greater political relevance than an English region, or independence and the hope of a better life for all.

Please note I won’t be about for the coming week as we have family visiting from the USA.

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