I HAVE very positive memories of discussions with young people across the country during the 2014 referendum, held when I was Education Secretary.

They recognised a unique chance, in the words of the first US Vice President John Adams to “begin Government anew from the foundations and build as we choose” and they took to it with gusto. They were prepared to plan, to work and to live as if they were in the first days of a better nation.

Now we all need to do that again as we prepare to build forward after the pandemic.

There is no dichotomy between referendum and recovery. It isn’t referendum – OR – recovery but referendum – FOR – recovery.

Without the freedom to create a new type of country recovery will actually be regression. We never voted for the aggressive, selfish, isolationist type of Tory Brexit Britain which is already being created south of the border but Boris Johnson is determined to see it imposed on Scotland.

The contrast between what Scotland could be and what the Tories want us to be is very stark.

Last Tuesday the Tory big idea was increasing the number of nuclear warheads kept on the Clyde, yet at Holyrood MSPs were incorporating the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scots Law. It was literally the difference between bombs and bairns.

Last Wednesday, whilst in Edinburgh we were passing new measures to prevent violence against women, the Tories at Westminster were making protest harder, even protests about violence against women as we had seen earlier in the week in London.

WATCH: Limmy is absolutely furious at the Scottish Tories for stealing his joke

And on Thursday, as the Scottish Government brought forward more resources to support the excluded minority that is our gypsy/traveller community, the UK Tories were preparing new measures to target and prosecute those same people.

That last issue is particularly close to my heart. I have been arguing for more money to improve living conditions for gypsy/travellers for some years, spurred on by both what I have seen at places like Dunhcolgan in mid Argyll, and by my interaction with the traveller community over the successful campaign to get protected status for the only historic monument left by the “ceàrdannan” in Scotland, the “Tinkers’ Heart” by Loch Fyne.

That campaign – which is still unfinished in terms of securing better access and interpretation – taught me much and brought me some good friends, especially Jess Smith the remarkable, wise and always entertaining traveller, writer and story teller.

A society should be judged on many things, but one of them is how it treats its minorities. It is a sad fact that the existing sites being provided, even with good intentions from councils and housing associations, need to be substantially improved to allow the traditional lifestyle of travellers to be maintained in modern conditions.

That is what the Scottish Government is trying to do. However Douglas Ross, the gracelessly pugilistic Tory branch office boss in Scotland, said some time ago that if he could be Prime Minister for a day his priority would be “tougher enforcement” of rules against this community. His party in England is now doing just that and it is therefore reasonable to assume that if he had any power in Scotland it would also be high on his list of priorities.

So would tax cuts for those who are best off (a constant Tory demand at Scottish budget time) and given his party’s vote this week to allow evictions of people who had lost their jobs through Covid, so would be a host of hard faced measures from a gang that even Theresa May, their one-time leader, called “the nasty party”.

Their recovery programme, imposed without consent, would be very far from what Scotland needs and wants.

The current Scottish Tory scorched earth, cruel, sneering and dismissive approach to politics is already damaging Holyrood but Ross’s ambitions are wider. He would damage the entire country by making it conform to his unpleasant, unforgiving view of the world.

As Tories south of the border plan even more austerity, even more cuts to welfare and even more hand outs to their mates, there is an absolute clarity about how they intend to implement what they call “recovery” there, and they hope, here.

The only way we can create the type of green, fair and inclusive post Covid Scotland that the recent Citizens Assembly envisaged and which the SNP Goverment is working towards is to choose independence.

We need a referendum FOR recovery and we need it more urgently now than ever before.