This article was first published on 29 July 2025 on David Gow’s substack at https://davidgow.substack.com/p/scotlands-political-orphanage.
By David Gow
We need to start thinking of a republican front of progressives at Holyrood to run the country and deliver that all-elusive change.
“We are on the precipice of a new global age and that demands a bold new path for Scotland,” proclaimed the First Minister. “Others speak glibly of a new direction or for the need for reform, but the change Scotland needs is more fundamental…To meet the challenges of this new age, we need a Scotland that is reborn.” (John Swinney, The National).
The Holyrood elections are just over nine months away or easily long enough for Labour’s declining fortunes at UK and Scottish level to get worse; Rachel Reeves’s Autumn Budget could put paid to her party’s dwindling hopes of recovery while accelerating stagflation and exposing her government to the mercies of the unforgiving bond market. Fertile ground for the SNP to boost its electoral support in Scotland – and for Reform UK to catch up in Scotland on its performance so far south of the border.
What we know so far about the SNP’s vision of a reborn Scotland is pretty slim pickings. Swinney’s three-pronged approach is axed around, yet again, independence after focussing for the past year on cost-of-living crisis (with his lieutenants going for Labour’s alleged hypocrisy, treachery, lying, shame, betrayal…). Now he’s talking about independence as a sweet alternative to a “broken” Britain, aiming to win over a million young people (who could not vote in 2014) and others; as the right to self-determination now stolen from Scots; and as deliverable only by the SNP despite polling showing a sizeable gap between popular support for independence (often over 50%) and that for his party (30-odd%).
This is such a venerable approach over the past decade it has verdigris on it. Worse, the future vision could have been peddled by Harold Wilson 60 years ago (modernisation and the like). Not only has the SNP had 18 years to deliver more than baby boxes and the child payment in the form of reformed health and education systems delivering better health outcomes and attainment, especially for disadvantaged children, and a more dynamic, productive economic and business environment. Despite almost a dozen Scottish Government papers on key issues raised by independence, now discontinued and discarded, we’re no nearer discovering how a SNP-led independent country would (like to) perform economically, socially, fiscally than we were ten years ago. Indy remains a leap in the dark.
What choice for ‘progressives’?
This liberal left ancien combattant can only feel as if living in a political orphanage called Scotland. It’s not just that the SNP is failing to deliver “the change we need,” it’s that it’s boring, vision-less, intellectually vapid, policy-lite…It presides over the parochialisation of our country and society. Its latest external policy démarche – closing down Scotland Europa in Brussels, the country’s window on the EU, after some 30 years – speaks volumes. This is a government that proclaims it is wedded to ”dynamic alignment” with Europe but is absenting itself.
On current form, the SNP will be unable – constitutionally and legally – to deliver independence nor independence in Europe. The Scottish Greens, its leadership in some disarray, is more interested in identity politics above all else (but commands as much as 15% on the regional list and could win up to 15/16 seats according to polls of polls). I remain as much in the dark about what the Scottish LibDems really stand for in the run-up to Holyrood 2026 as I did when I came back to live here a dozen years ago. Scottish Labour, hobbled by its supine subservience to Starmer’s failing government, needs to “grow a pair” over the next few months and assert a policy programme that works for Scotland. (That’s a story for another day – as is Corbyn/Sultana’s proposed answer to Die Linke).
Like many of my ilk, my main focus is to “stop” Farage’s Reform UK which is leading south of the border and could, on current showing, win in Wales next May. Here in Scotland, it is polling considerably below its levels in England where its relentless anti-immigration stance pays off among both disenchanted Conservative and Labour voters at, say, 16%. It would be self-deluding to think that’s because we’re significantly more pro-immigrant/anti-racist (though we are somewhat) and it’s a moot question whether Reform can seize on Labour’s failures and the SNP’s failings to take substantial votes from the latter.
The net effect for me is a profound sense of frustration with the Scottish polity and a growing belief, shared with some others, that faute de mieux a popular front-style government – on the lines of the French republican front in the 2024 national assembly elections – at Holyrood would be the most desirable outcome. An even more protracted stay in Scotland’s political orphanage is unpalatable.
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