THE excellent letter from Alan Magnus-Bennett in Tuesday’s National got me thinking. What do we mean by a Scottish Government campaign for “Scottish independence”?

We as individuals campaign by expressing our support for the idea, writing letters, going to meetings, going on marches, joining Yes groups and so on; but how would the Scottish Government effectively campaign?

Alan gives some indication of what he means by that when he gives us the vision of the “Bonnie Prince” standing unable to make a decision on Culloden field while his army was being cut to pieces by cannon. Clearly, decisive leadership is one of the things we need from the Scottish Government in any such “campaign”.

So clear and decisive leadership from the Scottish Government is central to what we require in the independence campaign. Well, this is something which the present Scottish Government can do very well, as we have all observed. Once the Scottish Government broke away from the Westminster/SAGE leadership in the coronavirus response, they moved rapidly and effectively away from the “herd immunity” policy of the UK and the Scottish Government started to take effective control with decisive and effective leadership.

That is undoubtedly why Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Government she leads are seen as good and effective. A,lthough many of the issues are not directly related to Scottish independence, the public view of the effectiveness of Nicola’s government is playing an important role in building support for the independence campaign. If you doubt that, ask yourself why the Unionists are so desperate to attack the Scottish Government on every single thing they can.

What perhaps we need is for the Scottish Government to do as well in the economic catastrophe which is just about to engulf us. Before the end of this year, and before the market turmoil which Brexit will cause, we are about to be hit by the economic effects of the largest economic depression in living memory. In the attempt to mitigate the worse effects of that depression, the international financial system has started to release fiat currency on a massive scale. What the long-term effects of that will be I will leave to one side in this letter, but what the short-term effects will certainly be will be government investment in the economy on a significant scale.

The Scottish Government will have some role in this – not enough, but some. The Scottish Government must use its own judgements in how it makes these public investments and should not follow the Westminster pattern. They should make public investments which will help the Scottish people and the Scottish economy.

For example, industrial investment should be targeted to manufacturing such as sustainable fuel bus production in Falkirk, rather that multi-national air services, because this will bring short-term earnings to people in Falkirk and demand to local businesses while also giving long-term security to Scotland’s economic base.

We should invest what money we get in projects of that nature with the interests of the Scottish economy and Scottish people coming first, and ignore all the press objections about not being “fair” to the Richard Bransons of this world.

This will require the Scottish Government to fly in the face of powerful and persistent pressure from the BBC and all the Unionist media as well as all the opposition parties. It will require them to use Ferguson Marine to build Scottish ferries and to “bend” or ignore the objections we will get for others who have sucked our economy dry to suit their interests.

If the Scottish Government continue to lead on this important issue as they had been doing, and are not bullied by the media and the banks, then this would be the most effective independence campaigning they could do. We can do the marching and the public campaigning and we can work as a team to win over the Scottish people.

Andy Anderson

Saltcoats