FOR the majority of us, those of us who are not essential workers and who are stuck at home for the duration, this crisis has given us plenty of time to think and to reflect.

At least when we’re not binge-watching old box series while lying on the sofa and stuffing ourselves with junk food, which is how all those resolutions to use this time to get all those home repairs done, learn a language, and read works of classic literature, have actually worked out for most of us.

However, even those of us who are currently working our way through series six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer realise that things need to change once we get through the present crisis. The Covid-19 epidemic has thrown into sharp and stark relief all the inequalities and injustices in the British economy, and even more so the shambling undemocratic inadequacy of the institutions of the British state and the utter failure of the national broadcaster to hold power to account.

Over the past couple of decades, thanks to encouragement from successive British governments, the British economy has moved away from offering well-paid and secure jobs for workers towards a gig economy. Hundreds of thousands now rely upon a form of self-employment which is self-employment in name only, many more are stuck on zero-hours contracts. At the same time, affordable housing is increasingly out of reach of many, and there has been a boom in the private rental sector.

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There are huge numbers of people, in Scotland, and across the UK as a whole, who live month to month, pay cheque to pay cheque. For those people, the economic fallout of the coronavirus epidemic is devastating. Yet we must not forget they are only in that position in the first place because of the policy decisions made by British governments which have prioritised flexibility in the labour force while removing the traditional safety nets which the low-paid and the unemployed once relied on.

The UK Government has turned a blind eye as the companies whose profits benefited from these changes squirrelled their wealth away in offshore funds and tax-avoidance schemes.

We see how the set of conventions, precedents and customs which pass for the British constitution are hopelessly inadequate for dealing with a crisis of this magnitude. The executive branch of government has been able to seize absolute power, and there are no effective checks and balances on it, and no real way in which the Government can be held to account for its actions.

There is not even a clear and transparent means for ensuring succession to the office of prime minister when he or she is incapacitated. It seems it was entirely up to Boris Johnson to nominate someone to take over his duties when he was in hospital.

And we’ve seen how the majority of the British media have dismally failed to hold power to account during this crisis. We thought the British media could never have sunk lower than it did during the Scottish independence referendum campaign of 2014. We were wrong.

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Over the weekend, almost 1000 people a day were dying. There is a desperate need to ensure that health workers receive the personal protection equipment that will keep them safe.

There are serious questions about how the UK Government squandered the head start the UK enjoyed in confronting this crisis with its dalliance with a discredited herd immunity strategy and its failure to test and trace.

Yet instead the media are obsessed with what movies Boris Johnson is watching on his laptop as he recovers. Calling the British media inadequate is itself inadequate. And that goes above all for the publicly funded BBC.

EVEN modest proposals for change have been rejected by the UK Government. The suggestion of a universal basic income scheme has been dismissed by Westminster. Scotland simply lacks the necessary power to introduce one by itself, and this Conservative government is more interested in grabbing powers back from Holyrood than in granting new ones.

We can be certain that once this crisis is over, the Conservatives in Westminster will do their utmost to resist any attempts to make them accountable to an elected body – whether that’s the House of Commons or Holyrood.

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What we can also be certain of is that those who have profited and gained from the British establishment will use all the powers at their disposal to resist radical and deep-rooted change.

There will be a concerted effort to “get back to normal”, by which it will be meant getting back to the inequalities, injustice and unfairness that have always characterised the British state.

If we want change, we need to be organised, united, and determined to bring it about. The UK Government will do its utmost to stifle and suppress the growing public appetite for change.

The political forces that will be best placed to take advantage of that public recognition of the need for change will be those who are best able to articulate the failures of the current system and best able to propose a strategy which can change it.

In Scotland, that’s the independence movement. The anti-independence parties have been too invested for too long in telling Scotland that everything within the UK works just fine, any acknowledgement from them that the UK is in need of fundamental and far-reaching reform will only backfire upon them, all the more so when the massive dead weight of British institutional opposition to change makes itself felt.

The quickest and easiest route in Scotland is through a second independence referendum. That will encourage a full and open debate within Scotland about the kind of country we want this to be, and will articulate proposals for achieving real and meaningful change.

The very best we can hope for within the UK is a Labour Party that can only ever achieve electoral success in England by aping the Conservatives, and whose policies will be undone when the English electoral cycle turns once again and puts the Tories back in power.

Scotland deserves better, it needs better. And most importantly of all Scotland can have better – but only if we press ahead for independence.

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