'Better Britain' is gone but we can still have a better Scotland

THE start of a new year is always a time of mixed emotions. A look back at a year passed often comes with joy and sometimes with sadness. Yet it’s also an opportunity to look forward with hope and optimism to the coming year, even if parts of it provide some element of foreboding.

For many in the Yes movement, and wider Scotland, the end of 2024 was tinged with added sorrow after the passing of Alex Salmond and the knowledge that Hogmanay would have been his 70th birthday. That he didn’t reach three score years and 10 is a tragedy for his family but also for Scotland, the land he loved.

His legacy is all about out us in free prescriptions and the absence of tuition fees benefiting so many, and the infrastructure which has improved our land. Whatever some may claim, the record book is clear as to whose administrations delivered them.

As Clement Attlee’s Labour government of 1945 is rightly remembered, so will the tenure of Alex Salmond in Scotland. More than just transforming our land, he empowered and inspired so many to believe in themselves and their possibilities collectively as a nation.

It’s still remarkable how many still look back at that spirit of 2014 which Alex brewed, providing hope and optimism for so many, along with the fun and camaraderie which went with it. A defeat was always going to dampen it, but the fact that support for independence remains around 50% and often polls above it is testimony to that spirit lingering.

What has been lacking has been the leadership to seize the moment as Alex was so skilled at doing. It’s why as the clocks chimed this Hogmanay many had a tear in their eyes toasting absent friends – but also made a new year resolution to redouble efforts and deliver Alex’s dream.

The better Britain which he and many of us were born into has long passed. History cannot and should not be rewritten. It was Attlee’s government which brought in so much in the lee of a country devastated by war. Despite the many challenges, the NHS, a welfare state, critical infrastructure and vital state services in public hands were all delivered.

It was a time of optimism with a collective belief that it might take time but things would improve. Even Tory administrations which followed bought into that.

But then came Thatcher, her New Labour spawn and the age of austerity. Now we have a Labour government which isn’t even a shadow of Attlee’s, instead following the lead of administrations which collectively dismantled so much of what was integral to creating that better society.

In 2014, people in Scotland were told remaining in the Union would continue that better Britain – indeed enhance it – and the country should come along on the journey. Our European Union membership was assured; the broad shoulders of the UK there to sustain and support us in the good times and the bad; the pound sterling a rock for our economy, and Britain to be a force for good in the world.

The reality is that we’ve been dragged out of the EU against our democratic expression and not even access to the single market provided for. HMS Brexit has crashed the UK economy upon the rocks, with Scots suffering along with everyone else, yet denied rights that Northern Ireland has obtained.

The pound, far from soaring, has declined, as the manufacturing industry, fishers and farmers and even tourists have found to their cost. The “Britain a force for good” pledge, expressed shamelessly by both Tory and Labour governments, has been shown to be craven hypocrisy.

A genocide is happening in Gaza the likes of which seemed unimaginable to generations who grew up in a time where parents and grandparents had fought to eradicate such horrors, and where the UK is complicit, not simply silent.

Even before the UK’s latest lurch rightwards, Alex believed that Scotland should be a nation. For him it was not just an economic argument. His love of Scottish history saw him dream of nationhood once again. But he recognised that to win the argument more widely it had to be about more than just espousing independence or chanting freedom.

Our constitutional situation required to be linked to where we were heading if we remained in the UK and the better Scotland that awaited if we struck out on our own.

That was what Alex sought to articulate throughout his life and most especially in 2014 – the threat to our NHS, the bairns before bombs, the looming spectre of Johnson and his ilk, and most of all, the damage to our economy and society. All of which the naysayers jeered has come to pass.

As Alex argued, the tragedy of Scotland is not how bad things are but how much better they should be. For a land blessed with so much, we have delivered so little. Oil and gas for several generations and now a renewable revolution, yet fuel poverty is endemic and the manufacturing industry is being crippled by high energy costs.

Emigration continues to blight us and immigration is needed. Any Scot can look at old class photos at new year and see many now furth of their native land. And as so often during our history not forcibly cleared but forced to leave all the same for opportunity denied them at home or sadly sometimes even just for a job.

Scotland can do so much better than this, as Ireland, Norway and other nations show. Independence is about escaping an ever-worsening right-wing UK but also explaining the better society and economy that independence provides.

We no longer have our leader and friend but we know what he wanted and can continue on his path to achieve it. It’s not just independence and nothing less but independence for the society and economy we need and want.

[This article was first published in The National on 06.01.2025]