If a substantial majority of Scottish voters are to be convinced of the merits of independence, the Scottish Government should “max out” its ability during the current Parliament to demonstrate what this means in practice. Showing, using current powers, that a differentiated policy slate can positively impact the lives of Scottish voters and workers, is a great deal more valuable than more “telling”. Especially with an increasingly impoverished and sceptical electorate.
I always believed that a prosperous and fair independent Scotland is not only desirable, but also completely feasible. The building blocks, people, resources, capital, skills, willpower…they’re all available today. We already have progressive policies aplenty…the SNP manifesto, the excellent work of The Economic Development Association of Scotland. And The Scottish Futures Trust. Scotland’s National Strategy for Economic Transformation (2022). Most recently The Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Act 2026.
And yet despite 27 years of the Scottish Parliament and volumes of progressive policy and legislative work, the reality for most Scots is unfortunately very different.
In Ayrshire, where I grew up, de-industrialisation was a disaster. We lost mines, engineering works, factories, mills, communities. Towns like Kilmarnock were catastrophically blighted and have not recovered despite sterling efforts. And yet some capital investment returned, most notably currently in renewables.
My Mum lives in Stewarton, a few kilometres from the largest onshore windfarm in the UK, Whitelee. It is owned by a subsidiary of Iberdrola (Bilbao headquartered). The turbines were foreign manufactured. In 2009 Alex Salmond opened the site promising a golden low-carbon era for Scotland. The power generated is fed into a highly profitable privatised grid ultimately owned by Iberdrola. Maximising benefits. Just not for the local community. Or Scottish consumers. Domestic electricity costs in Scotland are amongst the highest in Europe. Ironically, in contrast, profits from EDF subsidiaries in the UK are partly redirected to social tariffs for French pensioners keeping their electricity bills nearly unchanged over the last 6 years.
Another smaller windfarm is proposed nearby (Glenouther). Scottish content and ownership are negligible. As are any community benefits. Or consumer benefits. Plus ca change. Near Kilmarnock a 540MW hyper data centre is floated as part of a “£15 billion Scottish investment programme”. Like the other renewables investments in Ayrshire, Scottish content is negligible, jobs numbered in tens (mainly cleaning and security). Local impact is primarily footprint and huge consumption of water and energy.
In Stewarton hundreds of private homes have been built or are planned. It’s an attractive growing town for young families, retirees, commuters to Glasgow. Inevitably the schools are increasingly overflowing, the Health Centre likewise, in both cases now having to reduce catchment areas to focus upon local families. Of the tens of millions of pounds spent and planned in housing estates ringing Stewarton precious little is contributed towards “the greater good” in terms of community infrastructure or facilities.
In our largest industrial sector, the North Sea, since 2014, direct and indirect employment has fallen from some 450 000 jobs in 2014 to circa 115 000 today. The transition is not managed. It is relentless and brutal. As it was for mining and shipbuilding and steelmaking in Scotland beforehand. We do not follow sustainability principles. Or counteract the direction of travel by retraining or redeploying most skilled people. We allow neo-liberal market Darwinism to harvest great armies of quality jobs.
Our manifestos and visions and slides and the well-intentioned, intelligent individuals generating them are fine. Up to a point. Just completely and utterly insufficient. The best practice examples in The Scottish Futures Trust video are great. Just completely insufficient. The words in the SNP manifesto are hard to argue with. But the cold hard day to day reality for most Scots is different. And the more the political establishment (Westminster and Holyrood) currently “tells” them about a brighter future, the less they believe it.
This is manifest in the extractive economic renewables model in Scotland. In the relentless loss of employment in the oil and gas sector. In the impact upon Scottish consumers of the privatised power infrastructure model. In the feeble flow of energy transition “benefits” to impacted communities, who in turn, are expected to take on the David role in any tussles with developers. In the emaciated local content and employment requirements for capital projects like the Newhaven Tram extension in Edinburgh. In the fragmentary support to embryonic struggling Scottish businesses within a national industrial policy vacuum.
But what if the Scottish Government took their own policies and their think tanks seriously? And acted accordingly. Poured their energies into showing, using current powers, that a differentiated policy slate can positively impact the lives of Scottish voters and workers.
What if North Ayrshire Common Wealth Building was systematically “exported” and institutionalised across Scotland? And both public and private sector spending was relentlessly redirected away from Amazon and China and other foreign vendors into Scottish businesses, while delivering higher value overall for all Scots?
What if the “(Un)Just Green Transition” could be turned on its head to benefit consumers, Scottish manufacturers, impacted communities? What if we quadrupled the community benefit payment obligations on new wind farms? What if “David” communities were bulked up with greater powers of consent for infrastructure? What if we worked hard to ensure English power companies and consumers ultimately pay a fair price for the benefits of reliable, growing Scottish electricity? And in turn lowered Scottish consumer prices?
What if future Edinburgh tram projects learnt (via the Scottish Futures Trust) to deliver exemplary community relations and impacts…many tens of local apprenticeships and profoundly strengthened Scottish supply chains? What if we were able to crack the Scottish shipping procurement nut for future CalMac ferries? What if we committed to rebuild the Mack in Glasgow using Scottish materials and skills and designers? What if our housing plans led to better communities not just thousands of “wee boxes”? And what if our local authorities treated communities as key partners, and jointly planned and delivered our future together?
Tens of thousands of jobs. Billions in redirected spending. Positive community impacts the length and breadth of Scotland. Lives improved. Isn’t that the goal of all these policy papers and think tanks and Government bills?
Ach. Surely pie in the sky! Westminster will never stand for it. We haven’t got the expertise or the money. Or the chutzpah. We’re never as gallus as our ancestors. The Forth Road Bridge builders. The North Sea pioneers. The hydro dam crews. The NHS inventors. The shipbuilders. The brilliant academics. The cultural giants. The social transformers. These are Scots of legend. Not us. We’re trapped. By Westminster. By Brexit. By neo-liberalism. By globalisation. By big scary global threats. We’re feart!
Wasn’t our environment ever so? And isn’t it extraordinary that as our horizons and constitutional freedom relatively grew our ambitions and delivery capacity appear to have shrunk? The Scottish Parliament has achieved much to admire, not least in modernising Scottish social attitudes and in attempting to mitigate Westminster austerity. But it turns ever more inward. Substituting tolerant virtue signalling and paperwork for delivery. A far cry from the modernising, redistributive, dynamic purpose many of us envisaged in 1999.
There is little point in more “telling” in the hope of convincing the undecided of the merits of independence. Or waiting for a voter demographic transformation. Or using the utter disfunction in post-Brexit Westminster as a “bogey man” to drive Scots across the electoral finishing line.
We are fortunate in many regards. We have a well-educated population. A land mass with lots of space. Bountiful capacity to generate energy. Plentiful freshwater and large open seas. Potential powerhouse sectors in tourism, education and research, food and drink, renewables, the arts, film and television. Vibrant communities, both rural and urban. Excellent international relationships (including Europe). A huge global diaspora.
We are small. But we are far from helpless. After over 300 years of Scotland being part of the Union, three of the home nations are now run by parties who don’t believe in the status quo and are dedicated to breaking it up. English nationalism is relentlessly on the rise and is unlikely to be an easy Goliath for our David to deal with en route to any independent future. And what is that future? If there are sunlit uplands ahead, what are they and how do we ensure we reach them? What does an independent Scotland really look like? And crucially, if it’s very different from our diminished and impoverished neo-liberal present, how do we start right now building this “alternative Scotland”?
Perhaps the biggest barriers to “showing” Scots that a differentiated policy slate can positively impact our lives are:
- Fear of failure/risk aversion in the political classes
- Challenges that seem so large and complex we don’t know where (or how) to start
- Broken connections between regulation/policy and host communities, citizens, commercial firms
Maybe the key challenges lie elsewhere. But isn’t it worth a try? Develop some scalable pilot projects? Convene experienced task forces with a mandate to develop and rapidly implement new solutions? Fully leverage our success cases (Yell renewables, North Ayrshire circular economy, award winning community housing developers, cultural icons like Alan Cumming and Nicola Benedetti). Select areas with the greatest impact and scalability and get going!
The pilots will inevitably not all work. But we will learn from them. And we will share what we learned to improve in future. None will be HS2! None will resemble COVID “fast lane” procurement. But we will visibly demonstrate the best ideas from those hundreds of thousands of words and thousands of policy slides. In the real world. At pace. An efficient change frontier. Project by project. Community by community. Through Scottish partner businesses. And Scottish workers. And Scottish grassroots groups.
And Holyrood can be very different too. More delivery buzz. Less committee pondering. More servant leadership. More curiosity and engagement with front line delivery across Scotland. More visibility on the ground with our communities, our growing companies. Our winning pilots. Less ribbon-cutting and drive-by photo opportunities. More curiosity, and virtually limitless practical collaboration and support. A winning Scottish team.
This is what I want from the Scottish Government. I want to be shown a new urgent practical way of operating. Showing, using current powers, that a differentiated policy slate can positively impact the lives of Scottish voters and workers. We’ve been told about this for long enough. The ideas on offer are largely long established in other parts of the world. We have opportunities a-plenty for pilots and wider systematised implementation. And we have lots of unused capacity outside Holyrood to tap into. Enough tell. Let’s get showing together please!
Neil Gilmour is a former energy industry senior executive recently returned to Scotland having led numerous successful world-scale projects.