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Throughout the Western world, right-wing populist politics are on the rise. In the UK, Reform is gaining ground taking votes away from the Conservative party by running the proto-fascist political playbook. America was kind enough to recently demonstrate what happens when a centrist government tries to run on a boring message of competence in government in the new political environment - it’s political suicide.

The new political environment

There are two key factors that are radically changing the political environment, providing fertile ground for the new-right. The first is the inequality and unfairness built into the neo-liberal economic structure adopted by most in the west, including all the Westminster-based parties.

Capitalism is dead, poisoned by greed and growing corporate power and replaced with neoliberalism which entails the worship of wealth and consumerism. When the banks crashed, an inevitable outcome of unfettered greed being the underlying economic motivation, rather than blaming this contaminated version of capitalism, people only lost trust in the establishment. People (justifiably) feel that political and economic elites are out of touch or just don't care about their everyday difficulties.

So populist proto-fascist leaders were able to claim to be outsiders who will ‘sweep away the political and corporate elites’. Trust in the mainstream media has also diminished (also justifiably). This enabled the new radical figures of the last decade to say whatever they want and no amount of fact-checking, or counter-argument is effective, as voters are getting their news and political thinking from social media bubbles.

The trouble with social media

The second enabling factor is the dominance of social media in the political debate and whereas in 2014 social media was a positive influence on the Scottish independence campaign it has now turned toxic, here, throughout the rest of the UK and especially in America.

Social media’s problem is twofold, firstly it’s designed to make people argue, generating engagement. They need people to be emotionally triggered, so the content promoted by the algorithms is the emotionally triggering stuff.

Secondly, having identified peoples’ interests, the algorithms feed more and more similar content and suggest following people promoting the same groupthink. That was initially a good way to create communities of interest but in practice it created social media bubbles which lack dissenting voices and the application of critical intelligence.

This creates party-tribalistic and identity politics bubbles within which social capital is generated from likes, shares and follows. The more reasonable you are, the more you apply critical intelligence, rather than blindly follow, the less social capital the social media platforms will give you.

The UK has moved exponentially to the right

UK voters getting rid of the Tories at the last election superficially suggests some leftwards movement, but the demise of the Tories was due to the rise of Reform, splitting the right-wing vote. Were Reform and the Tories to agree an electoral pact, Labour would be wiped out at the next GE - note that Starmer got a landslide with 9,708,716 votes but Corbyn gained 10,269,051 votes in his dramatic loss in 2019. The right also wanted rid of the Tories, for not being right-wing and racist enough.

SNP are wrong-footed

The message coming from the SNP hierarchy right now is that they need time to sort things out and then run on competency at Holyrood 2026. Sorry, but that leaves me cold and completely misreads the new political environment. Recently, the SNP have moved away from the Wellbeing Economic Approach, back to the outdated economic orthodoxy of growth and investment and running on competence in government but that doesn't work. We only have to look at the recent US election to see why.

The polls will pick up and make it look as if they are reviving but it will overestimate SNP support (just like the polls told us the US presidential race was too close to call) because if you give your supporters nothing to get excited about, your supporters don't vote.

So, what's the remedy?

To stop the rightwing drift, we have to offer a compelling vision for an independent Scotland that will allow people to emotionally reconnect to the cause. Move it away from competence in government (people just assume that’s a given) and ditch the 80-page boring policy documents and refocus on the shared values of our nation.

Create a new positive identity politics that's inclusive, engaging, unifying and progressive. We need to give independence an inspiring purpose and oppose proto-fascism by championing the alternative Wellbeing Economic Approach.

Where to start?

As Believe in Scotland’s billboards pointed out, Labour's own research claimed that as many as 4000 pensioners could die if the Winter Fuel Allowance (WFA) was cut. Then Labour cut it - that's an attack on the wellbeing of Scotland’s pensioners. However, The WFA was devolved before it was cut (a political ploy) and so in the new political environment the SNP will not be able to avoid the blame for any cold related deaths this winter.

The SNP welcomed Labour's austerity-lite budget and although a lot of it is smoke and mirrors, there is more funding for Scotland than they anticipated. The SNP must use those additional funds to mitigate the WFA cut.

Under Labour's draconian winter fuel payment cut, anyone earning more than £11,343 no longer qualifies. That means some pensioners living in poverty will lose their payment. The Real Living Wage equates to an annual income of £23,400 and if the Scottish Government wants an element of means testing for the WFA then the Real Living Wage is the level to mitigate up to. The Wellbeing of Scotland’s citizens must be core to the operating principles of the Scottish Government and the core value of the cause of independence.

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp is the CEO of Business for Scotland, the chief economist at the wellbeing economics think tank Scotianomics, the founder of the Believe in Scotland campaign, and the author of Scotland the Brief.