Tag: SNP

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Imagine the budget we could have with Indy

Don’t get me wrong; last week’s Scottish budget was good one. It’s great to see extra spending on the NHS, colleges, transport and a future increase to the Scottish Child Payment to £40 a week, making life easier for the lowest paid. And good to see the tax paid by low paid workers cut slightly through rising thresholds, as levies go up on private jets and luxury properties.

But. If we are being honest, these are marginal changes. Of course, if you are living on the margins, the changes can be life changing. But will it deliver the fair and prosperous society we aspire to be?

The constraints of devolution mean that in many of these areas the best the Scottish government can do is signal a direction of travel, not a reach a destination.

Labour claim that increases are only possible because of Westminster’s largesse with the UK Labour government providing a much better settlement than the Tories. But the better way to look at it is that the increases are so small because they are limited by Westminster.

Total Scottish government spending will rise from £64.5Bn this year to about £68Bn next. That’s about 6.5%. After rising costs have been factored in the Scottish Fiscal Commission reckon this will fund real term growth in spending of just over one percent per year. Now that’s better than a one percent cut, but let’s not pretend that’s going to end child poverty or eliminate long NHS waits.

Which is why talk of this being an election budget is misplaced. For sure, Shona Robison has done a decent job of bolstering public perceptions of competence, and there are signals aplenty of doing the right thing. But the budget headlines are unlikely to set the heather on fire amongst an electorate where the largest group on my canvass returns are the disengaged and disillusioned.

To do that we need to talk about the budget we didn’t have, the budget a Scotland in control of its own financial affairs could have. In that discussion we can both highlight the severe and absolute constraints that devolution places on Scotland, and illustrate the immense benefits that could come from controlling our own finances.

Let’s start with tax. The changes announced last week mean that most people paying income tax in Scotland (55%) will pay less than they would in England. That’s a strong campaigning point but it not a laurel to rest upon. The only people who will see their tax bill go down are those earning less than £43,662 per year, and that’s really not a lot of money for a family these days.

The tax system is not nearly progressive enough and we should aim to reduce the proportion paid by low- and middle-income earners by raising taxes on the highest paid. The Scottish government has increased the tax on top earners but there is a limit to how big a differential can be sustained in one region of a UK economy which has no control over the movement of labour or capital across its borders.

And the Scottish government has zero control over taxes on other income, particularly the cash the rich get for just having money in the first place. Nor does it have any control over the main taxes on business and spending which are key levers in building any fiscal framework.

If you don’t control the whole thing, the benefits of running just one bit of the tax system are limited.  Arguably, sometimes even worse than nothing, as you not only fail to reap benefits but get the blame.

If Scotland governed itself a world of possibilities open up. Control of VAT means we could lower or remove it from arts and hospitality to boost these hard-pressed sectors, perhaps in return for meeting policy objectives like the real living wage. Or we could increase it for luxury goods bought, by definition, by those who could afford to pay. 

Control over business tax means we can tailor it to support domestic small enterprises and stimulate growth, whilst having different bands which ask those making the biggest profits to pay more.  Independence means that a Scottish stock market could impose a proper financial transactions tax on investment trading raising money to alleviate poverty and discouraging those who play our economy like a casino.

And in response to overhyped concerns that such measures will lead to a flight of personnel and jobs across the border let’s take a lesson from America. Basing taxation obligations on citizenship means that wherever in the world Scots have good fortune they continue to pay towards the social and physical infrastructure of their home country.

Independence offers the option of all this and more, and that’s before we even talk about the regulation of land and natural resources. Self-government doesn’t of course mean you have to do things this way, just that you have the choice.

And that’ll be a bigger motivation to vote than a one percent change in public spending next year.

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If you want the SNP to win, you have to vote for it

[ published in The National on 12th January 2026]

At the risk of becoming a psephological nerd let’s return to the voting system for the Scottish general election in sixteen weeks’ time. The most important thing in any election is to win the argument, but a close second is understanding the electoral system in play and how to use it to turn support into representation.

A correspondent to this paper claims that in last week’s column where I suggested SNP supporters should vote for the party on the regional list I am arguing against proportional representation.

Let me assure all readers that I am doing no such thing. I believe strongly in proportional representation, and the additional member system we have for the Scottish Parliament is far better than the first past the post system in achieving it.

That system aims to achieve proportionality not by asking electors to state their preference, but by allocating seats in Holyrood in line with their first choice. It does this by allocating additional members from regional lists taking account of seats already won in the first past the post constituency contests.

Let’s take Edinburgh and Lothians East as an example.  Nine constituency members and seven additional members are to be elected in this region, a total of sixteen MSPs. Say, for the sake of argument, that SNP support across this region was about 37%. The system is then supposed to deliver the party 37% of the seats – which would be six MSPs.

The constituency contests will be counted first. On this level of support the SNP could win six out of the nine by first past the post. If it achieved that there’d be no chance of any additional seats from the list.

But this is far from guaranteed. Some of these contests will have three or four parties in with a shout of winning, margins will be close, and for sure there will be some unexpected results.  So, the SNP could just as easily win only four or five of the nine with this share of the vote.

In this example, if the party failed to capture six constituency seats it would be hoping to get an additional member elected from the regional list. But this will only happen if the people who supported SNP in the constituencies also vote for it on the peach-coloured regional ballot paper. If some of them don’t, the proportion of votes the party gets, and therefore the number of seats, goes down.

If say five percent of those who voted SNP in the constituency ballot did not do so on the list, the party’s vote share would fall to 32%. At that level the party would only be entitled to five of the sixteen MSPs across the region. If it has already won five of the nine constituency seats, it’s not going to get any more.

It is only the votes in the regional ballot which are used to determine the allocation of the additional seats. Which is why of you want the SNP to win the election you need to vote for them on each ballot paper. See it as one vote with two parts. And frankly, if you were only to vote SNP in one, it is the regional contest which is the most important in deciding the composition of the parliament.

This is the biggest flaw in the system. By having two ballot papers it suggests to voters that there are two choices to be made, that they can express a second preference. In reality, if they do not vote the same way on both ballots, many could find that effectively one vote cancels out the other.

This is completely different from the single transferable vote system which we use for electing local councils. That allows you to express a preference by ranking candidates in order. In those circumstances of course I would argue that SNP supporters should vote for their party and then put other pro-Indy parties as the second and third choices.

But that is not the system we will be using in May. You are invited only to put an X against the party you want to win, not to order the candidates by preference.

Some people may think that I am making this argument to somehow dupe or cajole supporters of smaller Indy parties like Alba and the SSP into voting SNP. I am not.

This is still a relatively free country, and you if you think a particular party aligns more with your views than any other, you should vote for them.

Nor am I saying that the SNP should not work with other pro-Indy parties; of course it should. But it needs to get elected first.

My argument is directed not at Alba or anyone else, but supporters of the SNP. In one sense this is quite weird. I cannot offhand think of another political party where some of its supporters, indeed members, openly argue that they should vote for someone else. If enough do that it will deny the SNP the mandate it needs to demand this country should decide its own future.

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Time to take the list campaigns seriously

[ published in The National on 12th January 2026]

On Thursday it will be seventeen weeks until the Scottish general election. Seventeen weeks until the country decides whether to continue the argument for self-government or retreat from it.

Given the imminence of the ballot, you’d think parties would be putting the finishing touches to their campaigns. And yet the party of government, Scotland’s largest, has yet to select nearly 40% of its candidates.

In a letter sent to members the day before Christmas Eve the party’s national secretary announced the start of the selection process for list candidates. Nominations close two weeks on Friday.

Now, a lot can happen in 17 weeks of course. Nonetheless, the SNP look as if they are cutting it a bit fine.

Why so? Officials will tell you they had to agree a selection process which embraces mechanisms to get a more diverse set of candidates, particularly aiming for gender balance. That only explains why it takes a bit longer to decide, not why the party has left it so late to get started.

I suspect the truth is that it’s just not been that much of a priority, either for the elected members of the NEC or party full timers. It’s been like this since the party became the unrivalled victor in the first past the post constituency contests.

Few of those in charge of the campaign would put money on winning list seats outside of the Highlands and Southern Scotland. So, there’s no need to get animated about promoting additional candidates. Concentrate resources in the constituencies where they’ll provide the best return. Besides, the already selected candidates can just double up as the team on the list.

Looking at today’s polls this absence of a strategy for the list contests makes sense. The problem is that it does not square with the party’s stated ambition of winning a majority in the parliament. To do that the SNP would need to win additional seats in areas where it does well in constituency votes.

It is time to get an election strategy which understands and makes the best of a very user-unfriendly voting system.

A large part of any strategy will be the message, and we’ll be discussing hat in the weeks to come. But as well as convincing people to vote for you, you also need to persuade your actual supporters to do so first.

Last week’s poll showed a welcome drop in the gap between SNP support on the list and in the constituencies. But it is still there. Given that it is only the list choice that matters in allocating extra seats, the party’s number one priority ought to be to boost support on the list.

In part this means approaching the election with a new narrative about how to vote. Stop talking about two votes. There is one election, one vote, but it has two parts.

And we need to say that the most important choice is the one you make on the list, the peach ballot paper.  Do that first. That is where you decide which party you want to lead the government, that is where you decide to back independence or not. That is where you should vote SNP.

The system encourages confusion amongst the electorate, many thinking having a second ballot paper is an invitation to state a second preference. That is why many people currently will vote SNP in their constituency but think they can support that choice by putting in other pro-independence candidates on the list.

We know it doesn’t work like that. If Alba get 3% as last week’s poll suggests they will not get anyone elected, but if that 3% were otherwise to vote SNP it could see an additional pro-independence candidate win.

If we can firm up existing supporters behind the SNP team on the regional lists it will have the added effect of dragging up support in constituencies. This is simply because once a person has voted SNP on the peach ballot, they will have fewer choices to seduce them on the lilac one. To be clear, this process most definitely does not work the other way around.

It will of course help enormously if the party can present at least some candidates for the regional list who are different and additional to their constituency team. That way it will at least look as if we are trying the get extra people elected.

The list cannot just be a second chance for constituency candidates to get elected. If it is it will put people off voting for them. After all, if you’ve already decided to vote for a high-profile SNP candidate in your constituency, why would vote for them somewhere else. Electors know the same person can only be elected once, and if they don’t have another SNP candidate to support in the list it will be an invitation look elsewhere. 

With teams in place, the campaign must spend money on promoting them, using voter communication to promote the list first, and a social media campaign to educate and mobilise our support. That’s how we win a majority.

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We get enough blame without looking for it.

I have too much time on my hands. That’ll explain why I read the Programme for Government all the way through. I guess one of a tiny minority of our citizens who did.

I thought it might be useful to go to the original source in search of a strategic reassessment of how the Scottish Government, or perhaps more accurately the Scottish civil service, could make the best use of diminishing resources. Didn’t really find it. 

The report tells us the Scottish government has four priorities: eradicating child poverty, growing the economy, tackling the climate emergency, and ensuring high quality and sustainable public services. Scrolling down the considerable length of the meaty central section it is difficult to find any Scottish government operations which are not included. Every time you click pagedown up pops another policy area which seems to have been crowbarred in by an enthusiastic advisor.

Everything is there, nothing is ranked. And when everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. That’s the central problem. We need to get better at this. We don’t need an exposition of every aspect of what the Scottish government does. We do need a short sharp statement of what the government is going to do to make things better than they currently are.

And we need to be clearer with people about the things that cannot be done, and why, explaining whose fault that is. By describing the constraints and limitations of devolution we make the case for removing them through self-government. Not doing that creates the space for SNP critics, now including it seems the co-leader of the Green Party, to suggest the government is choosing to make cuts of its own volition rather than having them forced upon it.

Whilst some things could be done better, the truth is that the Scottish government cannot provide everything Scotland needs. We need to stop pretending it can. The fourth objective is to ensure high quality and sustainable public services. What, all of them? All the time? For everyone?

If we could actually achieve that, why would we need to be an independent country? How does this aim sit with our capacity to deliver it? Has the Scottish government not been squeezed year after year by the Tories with block grant funding never enough to meet the demands on services? Aren’t we making cuts ourselves just now because budgets are insufficient? Isn’t the new Labour government threatening things can only get worse? It is enormously difficult to improve the range and scope of public services in such times, and it just doesn’t ring true with people if we claim otherwise.

What we can do is make tangible improvements in things that we can control. Government advisors should be researching the complaints people make about services and acting on them. Sometimes that will mean doing less better.

Take the railways for example. It shouldn’t be so difficult to devise a train timetable which is matched to the staffing available, including having teams on standby to cover unexpected absences. That will require a political choice to have fewer (advertised) trains, but it would avoid having an entire platform full of people getting pissed off when one is cancelled at five minutes notice. It would also improve confidence in and support for a public train service and the people that run it.

It’s also time we stopped setting goals that cannot be achieved. We want to eradicate child poverty. Who wouldn’t? But child poverty is just a type of poverty and poverty is a feature of capitalism which by its nature places surplus in the private hands of a few rather than socialises it for all. Without the ability to regulate and control capitalism it is not possible to eradicate poverty. So, a provincial administration which has no control over the movement of capital or labour within its territory cannot do it. Something to be borne in mind by those who think the Scottish government can mitigate every Westminster cut with tax increases on earnings.

If we were an independent country, we could have a go at making poverty history. But that ambition is well beyond the scope of Holyrood. We can, of course, make poverty less. And we do. That is laudable and worthy of shouting about. So, let’s say that.

But setting an objective to eradicate poverty is only setting ourselves up to fail. Worse than that it is suggesting that we have responsibility for the problem. It means that if poverty continues to exist then it’s our fault. The same is true across the policy spectrum. The UK is becoming quite adept at devolving responsibility without the means. In effect, the causes are reserved but the blame is devolved. It’s time we stopped accepting it.

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We must take this step to independence before a citizens’ convention

First out of the trap in the race for a new strategic plan is Believe in Scotland. Even before the new Westminster parliament had been sworn in the organisation published its report on a Scottish Citizens Convention, heralding it as a new route map to independence.

Although reference is made to the election result, this report takes no account of it, and was clearly drafted well before July 4th. That’s its first problem. The report suggests that the Scottish Government’s mandate from 2021 is intact and we should move towards the 2026 elections as being a “de-facto referendum” on independence.

Hold on a minute. Didn’t the Scottish Government try to implement its mandate and get told by the Supreme Court that it couldn’t? Didn’t the SNP just fight the election asking for that mandate to be reaffirmed and for the constitution to be changed to allow Scottish people to choose their own future? And didn’t we just lose that election? We can’t pretend that didn’t happen.

Believe in Scotland is an organisation I admire. It has done a lot of valuable work is making the case for independence and coordinating disparate local campaign groups. Respect.

It styles itself as the national grassroots Yes campaign claiming more authority and legitimacy than political parties.

This anti-politics infuses this report to an unhealthy degree. Of course, we need people of all political persuasions to be involved in the movement for national autonomy. Of course, it will be bigger than any political party. But politics is how we change society without warfare. It is about making choices.

This report throws the political baby out with the bathwater stating  “politics shouldn’t be anywhere near the constitutional question.” It talks of the 2014 case being “overly politicised” and even suggests that support for “independence has not risen dramatically in the polls, due to its connection to politics.”

So, the Scottish Citizens Convention is seen as an alternative to, rather than complementary to the existing political process. At times this is dressed up in flowery quasi-academic language which is less than helpful. We are told that the convention will solve Scotland’s fundamental problems “by facilitating a more positive mindset change and socioeconomic paradigm shift.” Mmm?

The report doesn’t say exactly how the Scottish Citizens Convention should be established but in a valuable appendix it considers the lessons from earlier attempts at a similar thing including the Scottish Constitutional Convention of the 1980s, Ireland’s Citizens Assembly, and the Welsh Government’s Constitutional Commission. The implication is that the convention could borrow elements from all three.

The big difference from the 1980s is of course that the notion of Scotland becoming an independent country is way more divisive and contentious now than devolution was then. The Scottish Constitutional Convention was established with the support of every party bar the Tories and commanded massive public support.

Believe in Scotland acknowledge this difference and suggest that the way to deal with it is to be clear that a new convention will not be about independence, or the method of Scotland’s government. Instead, it will be charged with coming up for polices for a “better Scotland” centred on a well-being economy. This remit, the report rightly suggest, would allow a number of key players – trades unions, churches, charities – to get involved in a way an explicit focus on independence would not.

It is an idea worth exploring. But there’s a danger that it all becomes a bit too vanilla and ends up with everyone agreed on the type of fairer, nicer Scotland we want, but no further forward on how to get there. Believe in Scotland claim that any conclusions the convention might reach will self-evidently only be achieved by independence. But if we are not linking the two, that seems something of a stretch. Besides I can’t help feeling that whilst certainly we need to illustrate the powers that independence offers, prescribing the details of a well being economy is surely a matter of political debate to be resolved once it is achieved.

At no stage is there a suggestion that the outcome of the Supreme Court needs to be challenged, not by rejecting its decisions which are technically correct, but by rejecting the constitution which it was charged with interpreting.

The lesson that we do need to learn from the 1980s is that policy comes from principle. Before working out the details of devolution the Scottish Constitutional Convention drew up the Claim or Right for Scotland. That asserted that the people of Scotland had the right to choose their own form of government. They built a consensus upon that principle.

And that principle is currently being denied. That is the first order of business. To challenge and change the British constitution so that Scotland’s right to choose its own future is enshrined. It is in that context that the notion of a civil society convention might be best deployed.

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We need a brand new independence strategy

Welcome to my first weekly column. In the coming months I hope to use this to support the debate on how we rebuild a strategy to achieve political independence for our country. I start – as gobsmacked about the election results as everyone else – with questions rather than answers.  

I will in time reach my own conclusions and advocate them. So will you. In time. But for now, let’s take a beat. Let’s listen to each other, and to the majority of the people who are still unconvinced. And let us try to be nice, even though we might irritate the hell out of each other.  

We cannot take forever of course. But for a few months we can have a period of collective self-reflection. The more we think, and the more of us who do it, the stronger our conclusions will be. 

So, let’s hear suggestions for a strategic way forward. Let’s subject them to rigorous but respectful analysis, stress-testing each proposition to see if it might work in the real world. 

I can start by illustrating how not to do it. Two weeks ago, in the immediate aftermath of the election defeat, I wrote that those who didn’t vote for the SNP because they believed we didn’t have a strategy for achieving independence had a point. 

Within hours Alba were tweeting my words suggesting that the logical response would be to join their party – as only they had a plan to achieve independence. I can’t see that this helps anyone. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as partial to a bit of schadenfreude as the next person. But an “I told you so” response doesn’t really work unless you can provide evidence that the alternative works better. 

In Alba’s case their central strategic mission is that “every single election should be used to seek a mandate to begin negotiations for Independence.” Given the party has just paid nearly ten grand of its members money to the state in lost deposits and obtained 0.5% of the votes, it could be said that strategy is not working too well. 

In truth, I was mistaken. It wasn’t that the SNP didn’t have a strategy for moving forward to independence. It did. I know that because last year I was one of the people who spent a lot of time arguing about it and eventually getting a resolution through the party conference in October.  

The problem was the strategy did not survive its first contact with the electorate. It was a plan predicated on winning a mandate at this election, and then repurposing the 2026 Holyrood election if the new UK government continued to refuse to discuss changing the constitution. 

In the event we didn’t get a mandate, the new UK government have no dilemma, and the plan is now void. 

To go forward we need first to go back to first principles. For Scotland to become an independent country, and to be successful as one, it will require not just the consent, but the support of a majority of people who live there. That makes it a different project from winning an election. It means people who stay at home are voting against.  

A new independent future for Scotland requires not only that a majority are persuaded of the argument, but that they are mobilised into an effective political force than can achieve change. That requires a civic movement wider than any political party. But it does also require a party to win electoral contests. And that will be best created through a reformed and refocused SNP. 

The SNP, winning 30% of the vote this month, had the support of most people for whom independence is a priority. If we are to move forward, there are three broad groups of people whom we need to focus on.  

There are those who say they do support independence, but it wasn’t the main thing motivating them this time round. Many of them voted Labour, reasoning that this month’s priority was the change the UK government, rather than Scotland’s constitution. 

Then there are those who support independence but have convinced themselves that the SNP will not deliver it. Many of them will tell you that belief is fuelled by perceived failures of the party in the Scottish government. Most of them stayed at home, though more than usual seem to have spoiled their ballot.  

And then there are people who do not believe that independence is the best way to change their lives and their country in the first place. In the past few years, consumed with internal debates, we have made little or no progress in reducing this number. 

We are going to need a strategy which relates to all three of these groups in parallel and has realistic targets for winning people over. We won’t get them all. We don’t need to. But we do need to start convincing a lot more people than we have been recently. 

And that is what this column will be focused on in the months ahead. 

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Labour Government will only enhance the case for indy

So, we’re off. 4th July it is. In democracies elections are meant to be instruments of choice and change. A turning point in history when one set of ideas about how things should be run gives way to an alternative view, based on the popular will of those living there.

But what happens when the choice between the main alternatives is so slight as to be almost imperceptible? That is pretty much the case in this British general election.

In the blue corner, the Tory government, looking dead on its feet and waiting for the electorate to put it out of its misery. A government that will leave office with average living standards worse now than when it came in. A government that has turbo-charged inequality giving the UK the dubious distinction of the most unequal country in Europe. A government weaponising immigration to set communities against each other, whose defence secretary talks openly of planning for war. No wonder there is a longing to be rid of them.

But in the other corner stands Keir Starmer’s Labour party, a hollowed-out shell of a once great social democratic party, bereft of principle and ambition. A would-be Labour chancellor who pledges to accept Tory spending plans lock, stock and barrel, including an estimated £20bn public service cuts already baked in. A would-be Labour health secretary who openly talks of a new role for the private sector in our NHS. A would-be Labour foreign secretary who cannot bring himself to condemn serial war crimes committed by the Israeli government in Palestine.

It’s a grim choice. Little wonder that in many Labour heartlands disillusion is rife. As this month’s English council results showed, Labour is failing to win in areas it ran a generation ago. No matter, say Labour strategists, they are winning in Tory areas, and that’s where it matters.

But Labour are winning Tory voters not by asking them to consider a different world view but by pandering to their prejudices and reassuring them that they can support the changed Labour party and still be Tory-minded.

It might be a recipe for short-term success but it will have a bitter and dangerous legacy. You cannot get bets on Labour winning at the bookies now, so convinced are people that they have in in the bag. And in England they probably have. But however wide the margin of Labour victory at the coming election, its depth will be shallow. The omens are not good for how this will work out. Disillusion and resentment will soon visit itself upon a Labour government unwilling and unable to change the social and economic ills it has interested.

And in England, waiting in the wings to take advantage of this situation are the far-right, better organised and resourced than at any time since the 1980s. It’s a depressing scenario south of the border. The good news is that in Scotland it doesn’t have to be this way.

The SNP should refuse to get dragged into this grubby uninspiring contest that the duopoly of despair in London are playing. Now is a time to look the people of Scotland in the eye, invite them to lift their gaze to the horizon, and imagine the type of country this could be.

A country where the envied and bountiful natural resources are truly used as a common treasury for all rather than being a means for the further enrichment of the global elite. A country where the scourge of poverty is banished for ever by tackling its root causes. Where we establish a tax and reward system which encourages hard work and innovation but locates individual endeavour in a public interest framework which allows everyone to meet their social obligation.

A country which rises to the climate emergency, accelerating the dawn of a zero-carbon future in a way that takes the current workforce with it. A country celebrating its diversity, encouraging people to come and live with us. A country with the agency to be a force for good in the world as it punches above its weight in helping to confront the global challenges facing our species.

These are not the idealistic ramblings of an ageing lefty, but actual public policy in already existing similar European countries.

It is not difficult to build a broad consensus around taking Scotland in this direction. The argument comes in how to get there. Scottish reformers have debated strategy for more than a century, oscillating between two central approaches. Either we play our part in a much larger British polity and seek to use the power of that state to make the changes everywhere. Or we take the power for ourselves by creating a new independent Scottish state with the agency to make these changes.

I once believed in the British approach, but decades of bitter experience led me to change my mind. I became convinced that it was more likely that we could change society in a left social democratic direction if we did so first in Scotland where a majority of the population could be persuaded to the merits of that change, than to remain part of a much larger state where there are substantial forces implacably opposed to that change. Pretty much everything Keir Starmer says convinces me I made the right decision.

Where Labour governments have made changes in the past, they have been reversed within a few short years when the next Tory government comes in – and in Britain most governments are Tory. Today it’s even worse – Labour is now so wary that it doesn’t promise any significant change in the first place.

The union, even if governed by Labour, does not offer Scotland a route to a progressive future. This is not because there are bad people in the Labour party, or because they don’t want to. It’s simply that the compromises required to achieve the tolerance of the rich and powerful in Britain are so great as to render change almost impossible.

So, that is why we must make this election about the vision of what an independent Scotland could be like. And we must illustrate by example. Yes, the Scottish government has done what it can to mitigate and protect our public services with one hand tied behind its back. But independence would free it up to deliver what is needed.

Some of these things might happen without independence and we will certainly demand them from a new Labour government. Improved rights at work, scrapping benefit caps for the poorest, a real living wage for everyone, more money for out health service not less, accelerating a just transition which protects jobs. The SNP will aim to force Labour to be different, and for many people that will be the most important choice. Do they give Keir Starmer a blank cheque, or do they elect a representative who will hold him to account?

But when Labour resist this pressure, as their leadership already say they will, the case for Scotland having these powers will be enhanced.

We will demand that decisions on whether, when and how to consult people on their constitutional future must be made in Scotland by its elected representatives. This election will be of crucial importance to the movement for Scottish autonomy. If the SNP wins, the journey to an independent future is boosted. It the SNP lose, it isn’t. Every independence supporter should think long and hard about this choice.

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This illustrates how crazy our election voting system is

THE clocks have changed. It’ll be brighter tonight. The year moves inexorably forward towards the coming General Election.

Elections ought to be moments of change. A point in history where power transfers from one group to another, where ideas are won and the direction of a country changes. Exciting even.

But looking south across the Border to the contest between the main Westminster parties, it seems anything but exciting. It is almost impossible for Labour not to win in England. Yet you would be hard-placed to find too many citizens animated or enthusiastic about it.

In part, this is down to a deliberate ploy by the Labour leadership to promise nothing and say less. The main opposition party are seeking election precisely on the basis of not changing the incumbent Tory Party’s overall economic framework. That can only mean that the people who are being excluded and denied by the current system will continue to lose out.

For them, the election will change nothing. Indeed, that will be the case for most of us. It is hard to detect any serious difference between the two main parties.

Now, many people – and I probably include myself – believe through instinct or hope that Labour have to be better than the Tories. But in truth ,when you compare the stated policies of the parties, it is hard to make that claim. In areas such as pensions, the Tories even appear to be rather more committed to the welfare state than their opposition.

This grubby, uninspiring contest we have to look forward to is the product of wilful actions by political leaders, but their approach is enabled – even perhaps necessitated – by a ridiculous electoral system designed to ignore rather than resolve political differences.

First-past-the-post might be okay where a binary choice is to be made, but in any other context is simply not fit for purpose. It is deliberately designed to ensure that those elected are required neither to have majority support nor to represent a plurality of opinion. In the great majority of parliamentary seats, the winner represents only a minority of the voters who cast their vote.

When these results are aggregated to a state level, the distortion exaggerates. The first dislocation of results from the electorate allows political parties to form majority governments with the support of much less than half of the electorate – or at least those in the electorate who can be bothered voting.

In 2015, David Cameron won a majority of seats in the House of Commons with just under 37% of the vote. On that basis, he gave us Brexit. Shocking? Undemocratic? For sure, but nothing new.

Ten years previously, one Tony Blair got an even bigger majority with close to 35% of the votes cast.

Perhaps the most grotesque distortion of first-past-the-post is in what happens when third or fourth parties do well. Far from seeing smaller parties get some minimal increase in their representation, the system just inflicts lethal damage on the party they have taken support from. This is because the winner doesn’t need a majority; just more than the person who comes second.

The are various websites where you can play til your heart’s content by predicting the outcome of the election assuming varying levels of support for each party. You plop in the vote share and press a button.

I try not to spend too much time on this but for the current purposes and to illustrate how crazy the system is, I ran this little exercise (It’s just for England and Wales).

Let’s assume Labour can get about 43% of the votes cast at the next election, the Tories 10 points behind on 33%, LibDems on just under 10% and Reform and Greens on five each.

That’s assuming a much smaller gap between Labour and Tory than has been the case for over two years now. But it sounds sort of plausible, I think. That split would produce a Labour government with an 120-seat majority.

Now, what happens if Labour support stays exactly as it is, but some Tories switch to Reform UK – which they are currently telling pollsters they will do in their legions? If 5% switch and the Reform UK vote goes up to 10%, the Labour majority rises to 188. If a further 5% switch, then the Labour majority goes up to 274 and the Tories are left with 100 seats.

There’s a point at which the changes become almost exponential, and seats start changing hands in droves without the winning party having to do anything at all. This is the sort of thing that gives democracy a bad name.

But if the distorted results weren’t already sufficient corruption of the electorate’s will, the first past-the-post-system conspires in other ways to undermine the expression and resolution of political differences. By its nature, the system requires the winner not to have majority support but to be the biggest minority.

That means it requires parties to form broad alliances of opinion to get levels of support above a third. In itself, this means that differences are resolved within parties rather than being matters for the general citizenry. Sometimes this leaves a party completely at odds with its own supporters, never mind the electorate as a whole.

Such is the case with Labour and Brexit where the party will not even contemplate returning to Europe even though this is the expressed wish of the overwhelming majority of their own supporters.

It cannot be healthy for democracy that not a single major UK party will commit to reviewing and reversing Brexit when this is what half of the population wants.

The toxicity of first-past-the-post for democracy intensifies as parties rooted in the centre-right or centre-left fight for the support of the same bunch of voters in the middle.

By definition, these voters will be paid more attention than those whose support is already in the bag, and by definition, this group of voters will desire a lesser degree of change than the rest.

he result is a set of less than inspiring polices and a whole lot of people well upset about that but unable to do anything about it. It’s little wonder many people will tell you: “They’re all the same.”

This frustration, the feeling of being unrepresented, festers and is destroying what passes for democracy. In England, Labour will win the next election, I’m sure. But it will be won by promising Tories they are in safe hands, by seriously alienating many traditional Labour voters, and with a huge level of frustrated abstainers.

It’s a weak base for governing and could end in disaster in a very small number of years.

Now, of course, we should note that the Labour Party at their last two conferences made commitments – by very big margins – to change the current electorate system.

But as if to illustrate exactly the problem, no sooner had these votes been called than Sir Keir and his entourage were insisting there would be no change.

The SNP support a proportional voting system where the results reflect the votes cast by the people. Given a chance, that’s what we will vote for, but in truth, the condition of parliamentary democracy in England is hardly our bailiwick and nothing is going to change until Labour say so.

Sadly, I can’t see that happening any time soon.

And in this – as in so much else – the aspirations of people who live here will be better served by Scotland becoming a new independent state with a proper functioning democracy enshrined in a written constitution.

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My column sparked major debate on need to vote SNP

WELL now, my last column seems to have touched a nerve for many.

Usually, I don’t get a lot of reaction to my musings on the topics de jour, but my suggestion last time that people who support independence should vote SNP at the coming election, and an observation that the cause will be set back if they don’t, seems to have caused more than a little excitement.

Not amongst my parliamentary colleagues and party members, it should be said, most of whom thought it was fair enough, but among opponents of independence of every hue.

The proposition was restated in similar terms by the First Minister when launching the party’s election campaign. He said that if Scottish Labour get their feet under the table, they will swiftly take independence off it. Keir Starmer will claim every vote as one for shutting down and shutting out those who believe Scotland would be better off as an independent state.

The BBC suggested that the FM got his inspiration for this from my column earlier in the week. Hardly. Humza has many better sources of inspiration than me. It’s not even a matter of great minds thinking alike. It is, frankly, just a statement of the blindingly obvious.

I like to think that my political arguments – although nurtured by an ideological credo – can be backed up by evidence. So here goes. I present exhibit A. Last Tuesday, the Alba MP Neale Hanvey introduced his Scotland (Self-Determination) Bill to the House of Commons which sought to change the law to allow the Scottish Parliament to legislate for a referendum on independence.

Much as I agree with the sentiment behind Neale’s case and I firmly believe in the principle of self-determination, I don’t think conferring a specific power on Holyrood is the best way to achieve it. I would have preferred changing the schedule of reserved powers to remove or qualify Westminster’s exclusive right to deal with constitutional matters, thereby creating a competence for the Scottish Parliament to act within the constraints of existing constitutional law.

But that’s not the point. The vote on Tuesday was not on whether people agreed with Neale’s proposal but whether he should be allowed to introduce the bill for debate. And of course, we should have. Which is why my SNP colleagues and I voted for it.

Not surprisingly in a chamber where Scotland’s interests are at best peripheral, the vote was 228 to 48 against discussing the matter further. But what’s instructive is to look at who voted in which way. Most of the Tories didn’t bother; two even voted for the bill. But every Labour and LibDem MP present was instructed to vote against. Strange behaviour, this. The nature of these private members’ bills is that very few are opposed as they are unlikely to get anywhere in the legislative machinery of the parliament anyway. On this occasion, however, Labour went out of their way to vote against it.

It was to make a point.

My suggestion that if the SNP lose the election then the debate on indy stalls was predictably seized upon by hardline Unionists. From Brian Wilson to Douglas Ross (below), they leapt on it with glee to suggest this was the way to deny and defeat the aspiration to control our own affairs.

But not so fast, guys. I wasn’t suggesting this was going to happen, just warning of the dangers that it might, particularly if many indy supporters stay at home. It works the other way around. If we don’t lose the election, our ability to prosecute the case for independence is enhanced and energised. I trust Messrs Wilson and Ross will accept that.

I firmly believe we can win this election. Now, I know many people are getting mightily pissed off at the fact that voting for the SNP in the past hasn’t produced independence. That is principally because the Conservative government at Westminster has been determined to deny our mandate in the hope that it will go away.

Our determination must be to not let it go away. And that’s the thing about mandates – each one only lasts until the next. So that is why it matters. That is why anyone who supports independence – or even the right to have a choice on independence – should vote SNP.

I seemed to have provoked a reaction from some elsewhere in the Yes movement too; shot by both sides. Alba’s Ash Regan commented that “the independence movement is bigger than one person or one political party”. If she had actually read the article, she would have found me agreeing with her.

Of course, different parties and many voices must build our movement. But 2024 isn’t the final vote to declare our independence – it’s an election for members of the Westminster Parliament. There will be several steps yet to becoming independent, this is just the next one. Given the corrupt first-past-the-post system, only the SNP can win seats for the movement in this election. The movement should take advantage of the party to make that happen.

I even got taken to task by my old friend Iain Macwhirter. Iain is extremely vexed at some of the policies of the Scottish Government, and he writes these days for a different demographic. Nonetheless, he is guilty of several unforced errors of logic in his recent Times column.

He quotes me stating my central proposition and says: “If this is so, the great constitutional debate may be over because the latest opinion poll suggests the SNP are on to a loser.” Leaving aside the wisdom of basing a political argument on one opinion poll, he has just made a great leap from me suggesting an election defeat might halt progress towards indy to him implying the matter is closed. Woah!

The debate will only be over either when independence is achieved or when everyone stops wanting it. Every SNP MP elected – even if only one – will argue the case for Scotland’s independence. I’m only saying that if we don’t win a majority, we cannot claim a national mandate. If that happens, you can be assured, we won’t be shutting up and we will set about the task of getting that majority next time round.

The “SNP bad” brigade, including some influential commentators, repeatedly decontextualise the actions of the Scottish Government. Ignoring the good, highlighting the bad. Leaving no dysphemism unused, they believe the party needs to get a kicking and they’re happy to hold the coats.

And some of our hitherto supporters will even go so far as to explicitly endorse the principal party of the Union in Scotland. How else can we explain Iain’s statement: “It has long been accepted that the road to Number 10 runs through Scotland.” Does it? Does it really? Didn’t Tony Blair win three elections in a row, each one with a bigger majority than the total number of Scottish MPs?

The only thing voting Labour in Scotland will achieve is stacking up a bigger majority for the least radical, least ambitious opposition party in history, giving Starmer a blank cheque and setting the cause of independence back until the next time. I mean, do that if you want – it’s a free country – but don’t claim you’re supporting independence when you do.

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Why independence supporters must vote SNP at the next election

It’s 2024. Election year. And it really is all to play for.

Under the UK’s unfit-for-purpose constitution, the incumbent gets to decide on polling day. Opposition parties talk up a May election. They will claim the Tories are running scared if they don’t call it then. But unless the gap between the Tories and Labour gets close to single figures, it’s difficult to see why the Government would go early.

It doesn’t really matter, the result is already clear. Labour are so far ahead in England as to be uncatchable. Pollsters predict that if a General Election were held tomorrow, Sir Keir Starmer would romp home with a majority of between 100 and 200 seats. It won’t be held tomorrow, and the majority won’t be that big, but even with their track record of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, Labour cannot lose in England.

The reasons for Tory oblivion are pretty clear. There’s been no Brexit dividend, and the unified right which made it happen is splitting down the middle. Although Reform aren’t quite inflicting the damage Farage did in 2017, they are getting there. Real incomes are falling; most people feel worse off. Westminster’s catastrophic management of Covid continues to unfold with questions mounting as to why they spent so much more than comparable countries only to preside over many more deaths.

Labour just need to stand aside and let the Tories fall apart. That is precisely what those around Starmer will do. Every one of the 44 red wall seats is already toast. You can see it in the eyes of the incumbents; the likes of Lee Anderson and Jonathan Gullis know they are well past their sell-by date. But Labour will oust more than 100 Tories from their own heartlands too.

Now you might argue that with the Tories in such disarray, now might be the time for Labour to champion a revitalised British social democracy. Comparisons are made with 1997.

Say what you want about New Labour – and I could say plenty – they did at least have a bunch of stuff – devolution, tax credits, international aid – that added up to a different vision from the tired John Major government.

But today’s new, new Labour have given up on pretty much everything the party ever stood for. There’ll be no attempt to make the wealthy pay more. Even those at the very bottom subsisting on state pensions and benefits can’t be sure Labour would be more generous. Inequality will remain the scourge that it is without any conviction or plan to change it.

There’ll be no new money for the NHS. No acceleration to green energy. No return to Europe. Every hare-brained right-wing populist idea the Tories come up with is top trumped by Labour.

The Labour strategy isn’t pretty but as a short-term device to win seats, it is effective. I feel for the many lifelong Labour activists in England now abandoned by their party. Some will stay at home, some will vote Green, but most will go along with it. Turnouts will be low, disillusion will be high, feeding a dangerous legacy of alienation and apathy. That’s the price Labour seem content to pay to win Tory support.

This is Labour’s strategy for England. But it won’t play well in Scotland where desire and demography are different.

Against that backdrop, we should consider how this election campaign is fought here. A generation of Labour activists – of which I am one – made a conscious decision to embrace independence as a political strategy not because we were nationalists, but because we believed it offered a better prospect for achieving the social and economic change we desired.

A medium-sized European country north of Britain seemed just more able to deliver a just and equitable future than a vestigial imperial power avoiding coming to terms with its past. And the very idea of running our economy in the public interest sat well with the character and psyche of the Scottish electorate whereas it grated against England’s small C conservative majority.

Every statement Starmer makes, every abandoned promise, every reassurance to the rich and powerful demonstrates that we were right. This is not to say that the right has taken over Labour – although that is clearly the case. It’s more that for Labour to win electorally in England, they must compromise so much that they cannot achieve real change. Independence offers Scotland the chance not to have its ambition thwarted by another country’s political reality.

Given that the prospect of the Conservatives winning this year is practically inconceivable, two things follow. Firstly, what is the best way to influence an alternative UK Government into being something better than a low-calorie version of what it replaces? Secondly, how can we make sure this country’s journey to having autonomy over its own affairs and resources does not stop after two decades of remarkable progress?

There are many decent people in Scotland contemplating voting Labour simply because of a desperation to get rid of the Tories. I understand that. But the Tories have already lost, and the SNP are a more anti-Tory party than Labour. I have lost count of the number of times we have voted against proposed Tory legislation whilst Labour sat on their hands for fear of upsetting some swing voters somewhere.

More to the point, on pretty much every social and economic policy you can think of, the SNP will press for the things that Labour used to believe in and have now abandoned. So, anyone wanting real change at a UK level would do better to send representatives to Westminster who will force Labour to be different, rather than give Starmer a blank cheque.

There is a bigger question for Scottish voters. Will they simply be ignored by a Starmer government? If the SNP lose this election, the answer is yes.

Around half of the population believes that Scotland should be an independent country. The desire has not – and will not – go away. At some stage, we will vote to establish a new independent country – and the campaign to win that vote must be broad and diverse involving every party and organisation in the movement for national autonomy.

But that is not where we are now and that is not what we are voting for in this year’s General Election.

We need to be very clear with the electorate – this year’s vote is about whether the journey continues, whether we can create circumstances to move towards our independence. And with a corrupt first-past-the-post system, the only way to do that is to vote SNP.

The Daily Record, in a hardening of its editorial stance against the party, last week questioned whether the SNP can still represent the political ambition of independence. The point is we don’t have a choice. If the SNP lose the election in Scotland, the debate on independence stops. That is why we must put aside our differences and unite.

If we win, we will use every means to press that mandate against a British state under new management. Crucially, we will demand that this decision must be made in Scotland and that the UK constitution is changed to respect that principle. That is why anyone who believes Scotland should become independent, or even that we should have the choice to do so, ought to vote SNP.

The stakes are high. We must win. It will not be easy. But it can be done.