UK is beyond change - Scotland needs independence to protect democracy

One of these is an issue which scarcely registered in 2014, but which now looks to be one of the most important arguments in the independence movement's arsenal. That's the quality of British governance and British governmental institutions.

In 2014 it was the proud boast of the Better Together campaign that the UK represented the gold standard in democracy and that Scotland relied upon Westminster in order to ensure democracy and properly representative and accountable government.

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Even in 2014 this claim was threadbare, but after a year in which we saw three Prime Ministers, cabinet ministers being reappointed to post within days of being sacked for breaches of the ministerial code, the PPE scandal, partygate, the continued bloating of the House of Lords, and the naked contempt expressed by both Labour and the Conservatives for the democratic will of the people of Scotland, anyone who still insists that Scotland depends on Westminster to ensure democracy probably also thinks that sectarian marches are a quaint folkloric custom that has nothing to do with toxic British nationalism.

They will also have a social media account festooned with flags and symbols of the monarchy and a tag line declaring how much they detest nationalism.

From the perspective of the fag end of 2022, the British state makes Italy with its far-right government seem like a paragon of stable and moderate government. British politicians compete with one another to be creatively cruel to desperate asylum seekers, at least when they are not fending off allegations of bullying, cronyism, or inappropriate behaviour. Yet even when they are found to have broken the rules, there is no accountability or responsibility.

We now have the second unelected Prime Minister this year, after the first imploded in a matter of weeks, crashing the economy in a fit of free market ideological hubris promoted by shadowy far right think tanks which even now are cited by the British media as “independent” sources of authority and whose dire warnings will most certainly be cited at length when Scotland votes on independence.

The fight for indy is now the fight for Scottish democracy

We have also seen the Conservative Party abandon any pretence of respect for democracy, both in Scotland, and also in the UK as a whole. Aided and abetted by their Labour Party fellow travellers in the “we're not nationalists, we're British” delusion, the Conservatives have refused to accept that the Scottish Parliament has a mandate for a second independence referendum even though the electorate chose to vote for a Scottish Parliament with its largest ever majority of pro-independence MSPs elected in an election campaign in which the question of another independence referendum was the defining issue.

Instead of accepting the verdict of the people as judged by the normal rules of every democratic election in the UK in modern times, the Tories and Keir Starmer's Tory-Lite party have resorted to a variety of goalpost shifting excuses, excuses which both parties would rightly reject out of hand if they were used to cast doubt on a mandate either of them had won at Westminster.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the British parties will only accept the verdict of the electorate of Scotland if that verdict is one that they happen to agree with. Had the vote gone the other way in 2014, it seems clear from what we know now that the Westminster parties would have found some way of undermining or side-stepping the outcome. They don't call it perfidious Albion for nothing.

Westminster has become a by-word for boorish and barracking behaviour. There is not even a pretence of answering questions at what is laughingly called Prime Minister's Questions.

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The Conservatives appear hell bent on bringing this toxic masculinity as politics into Holyrood too, that is when they are not filibustering and trying to block the operation of the Scottish Parliament so that they can still get their way even though they are a minority in the chamber.

The Tories have always had this tendency, but it has got much worse under Douglas Ross, who seems to be trying to compensate for his political weakness with performative machismo. Now a group of female MSPs is considering what action to take against aggressive and disruptive behaviour from the Conservative benches, behaviour which they feel is misogynistic and deliberately intimidatory.

The First Minister was quite correct when she observed recently that the campaign for Scottish independence is now a campaign for democracy itself.

Westminster corrupts and perverts all that come into contact with it. A healthy and respectful Scottish democracy is only possible once we escape its malignant influence.