What do we want? Independence was partly about democracy and self-respect, but it was also about building a better, fairer Scotland, that gave equal opportunity to our young, and looked after our vulnerable. We lost the referendum, but we must not lose our focus on building a better future. We must use the current powers of the Scottish Parliament to more effectively reduce poverty and inequality. Amongst other things we should also pursue serious land reform and give renewed focus to community owned renewable energy. We must also engage in the discussion on further powers, and press constructively for whatever we can use to start to build the better Scotland that is our purpose. [Read more…]

We have been defeated and it is hard to take, but the result was clear and we need to respect the decision of the Scottish people. We should celebrate the high turnout and the extraordinary, vibrant, creative movement that came together in support of independence. There has been a huge investment and engagement in hopes of building a better fairer Scotland and we need to try and sustain that in spite of the result. [Read more…]

Business leaders are entitled to their opinion, whether they are paid up Tories, or whether they just visited Cameron in Downing Street out of curiosity. But we know the kind of political opinions business leaders, with some noble exceptions, tend to have. They mostly opposed the introduction of a minimum wage with warnings of cataclysm. Many opposed equal pay legislation and continue to oppose workers rights. I once saw a poster in the US that said, “organised labor, the people who brought you the weekend.” Business leaders resisted such changes each step of the way. [Read more…]

There is a long way to go, and there may well be a few twists and turns before we count the votes, but the last 48 hours in Scottish and UK politics has been quite remarkable. The trigger has been the opinion polls catching up with the shift in the mood of Scottish voters. [Read more…]

Better Together have announced that they love their families more than we do, but the real question is whether we can love Better Together.

I was in Chile in 1988 a few months before the referendum which signalled the end of Pinochet’s dictatorship. One of the surprising things for me, as we met with the youth organizations of all the political parties, from Communist to Christian Democrat, was how much they were concerned with the one third of Chileans who supported Pinochet. [Read more…]

The first British diplomat that I met was Her Majesty’s Ambassador in Paraguay who was rejoicing at the “re-election” as President for the 8^th time of General Adolfo Stroessner and praising his “free-market zeal.” Stroessner was of course a brutal dictator and notorious for providing refuge to Nazi war criminals, and his free-market zeal was largely centred on smuggling. Paraguay in the 1980s was officially a huge consumer of Scotch whisky amongst other things. The Ambassador lamented that Thatcher could not be persuaded to fly in for a visit. [Read more…]

We have won the first phase, Scotland can be a successful independent country. Even David Cameron says so, though Alastair Darling can’t bring himself to admit it. The challenge in the next six weeks is to articulate what we can do with that to make Scotland a fairer, more prosperous country. [Read more…]

My first reaction when I saw the gleeful tweets of unionists about the Michael Ignatieff article on separatism as a moral sin was to ignore it. As someone who has worked in international human rights for 25 years I have never had a lot of time for Ignatieff. He supported the war in Iraq and tried to construct a human rights argument for military adventurism and torture. [Read more…]

Lets welcome Murdo Fraser coming out in favour of federalism and the sovereignty of the Scottish Parliament. Lets put to one side the absurdity of Ed Miliband wooing anybody. Lets consider for a moment what a progressive case for reforming the UK to make it more attractive for Scotland to remain might be. [Read more…]