Five lessons we must learn from decade of independence campaigning

I maintain, however, that this is precisely the time to break with such reactionary thinking and promote progressive solutions to the problems facing working people. This Labour government will face profound challenges in the years ahead. This then is the time to learn lessons from the way Scottish independence was pursued over the last decade.

Lesson One

THE 2024 election was dominated by the desire to get rid of the Tories. Labour virtually monopolised this mood by attacking the Tory brand mercilessly, while they absorbed its ideology. That’s Keir Starmer’s Achilles’ heel right there!

Prime Minister Keir Starmer beat the Tories at election, but absorbed many of their tenets

Lesson Two

THE SNP were no more serious about combating Tory attacks than Labour. It was they who privatised the sick kids hospital in Edinburgh, for example, using a version of Thatcher’s discredited PFI scheme called the Scottish Futures Trust. Those type of decisions damaged the Yes cause and didn’t go unnoticed by the 25% of Yes supporters who opted for Labour on July 4.

Lesson Three

IN 2012, when support for the SNP stood at 37%, support for Yes was at 27%. Today, the SNP is at 30%, Yes is on 45%. That turnaround is highly significant. It tells the SNP that they can no longer take the rest of the independence movement for granted.

Lesson Four

THE success of the New Popular Front in France in holding back the far right shows what can be gained from working together. Scotland also needs a collegiate new liberation movement, with fresh ideas.

Lesson Five

THE Scottish Parliament celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. Its most welcome achievements have been the abolition of tuition fees, the introduction of free personal care for elderly people and scrapping NHS prescription charges. While not much to show for 25 years’ work, these reforms nonetheless improved the quality of life here compared to south of the Border.

It’s time Holyrood stepped up to the plate again. And in that vein, I offer three further progressive and winnable suggestions to campaign for and rejuvenate the independence movement ahead of 2026.

(Image: Jane Barlow/PA Wire)

Introduce a national care service in Scotland

THE pandemic exposed the poor state of social care provision in Scotland. Thousands of people died premature, solitary deaths in largely private facilities not fit for purpose. Moreover, the lack of social care is the primary cause of the delayed discharges that so inhibit NHS facilities from the Solway to Shetland.

Scotland needs a standalone national care service which complements the NHS and is also free at the point of need, publicly owned and run, universally available and fit for the 21st century. The idea enjoys huge popular support as an SSP poll in 2022 exclusively revealed. Nicola Sturgeon’s mangled plan at the height of the pandemic merely proposed another layer of bureaucracy that left social care provision itself in Scotland unimproved.

The estimated cost of this new service would be £4 billion per annum. That is a lot of money. But the cost of not reforming social care in this way will be greater still both financially and in terms of the misery inflicted on many seniors. Scotland needs social care standards of which we can be proud, not ashamed. This proposal does that.

Housing

IT’S also time to face reality as far as Scotland’s housing crisis is concerned. Owner-occupancy is increasingly beyond the reach of most people and the private rented sector is much too expensive.

Affordable housing is becoming a rarity denied to the majority. The housing charity Shelter insists we need 100,000 affordable new homes built annually in Scotland. So how can it be provided?

The private sector has shown it cannot solve this problem. The Scottish Government must therefore intervene. How, you might ask, did John Wheatley manage to solve it in the 1920s? As housing minister, he brought forward a bill giving local authorities a 40-year subsidy to build decent houses for working people. Therein lies the answer.

Scotland’s housing stock is valued at £1 trillion. The total value of all homes across the UK now stands at £8.678tn, according to research by property firm Savills. That’s three times the size of the UK economy. Clearly, then, it would be folly, as Labour plan, to pursue the high-cost PFI-style financing of social housing. Governments can always access low-cost, long-term, asset-based funding which meet real needs and provide returns to lenders. Wheatley’s model must be replicated by building a powerful coalition of support to leverage that equity to build the 100,000 new homes necessary.

Clean Energy/Climate change initiatives

AMID a sea of missed targets and renewed climate denial it is clear that and idea of a just transition cannot be approached without large-scale state intervention.

The actions needed from massive home insulation, new home heating and transition from fossil fuel driven vehicles all involve costs well beyond the pockets of individuals and have to be shouldered by the state.

This vital approach directly challenges both Holyrood and Westminster, which remain wedded to reliance on private finance at immense cost and making the people pick up the tab for the climate crisis.

One of our major polluters is road transport and the SSP’s idea of free public transport – alongside moving freight from road to rail – can slash transport pollution and boost social inclusion.

Sales of electric vehicles – touted as the way out of the climate crisis – have slowed worldwide endangering targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This slump is based on the high cost of EVs and is likely to be worsened by the US and EU tariff wars with China, the world’s largest electric car maker.

Another block on the use of EVs is “range anxiety” where again the private sector has failed in supplying a robust charging network. The Scottish Government should take this problem head-on and build a publicly owned charging network across Scotland guaranteeing its efficiency and availability.