Independence and Power
Is a pro-independence left populism possible in Scotland?
If we accept that “there is a fallacy about the inevitability of all of this, and the nurturing of alternative radical politics is the antidote to failed centrism, and here in Scotland we have at least the glimmer of an alternative” – and I admit that’s a big If – then what would that look like?
Carving out his analysis yesterday Neil Mackay writes (‘The Union is on borrowed time: Yes camp must prepare for indy‘): “As to the vision for independence: embrace the pain; be honest. Voters no longer believe platitudes. They want plain-speaking and emotion. Admit that independence will not be easy, but could it really ever be worse than what’s being done to the country by London? That’s the only authentic message. Most of all: be radical. Independence will only succeed if it offers real social change.”
What would real social change look like?
The argument, my argument, is that extreme social inequality and a breakdown in public services are the ground on which fascism grows. Of course, there are other factors and conditions: hostile inflammatory rhetoric; an identifiable outside threat; a culture of violence and machoism; a controlled media; and there must be a sense of humiliation or national decline. England/Britain has all of these in spades.
Admittedly just creating better social conditions in pay, housing, health and education wouldn’t wipe out racism overnight but it would undermine the fertile breeding ground of the far-right, which is, despair.
Real social change in Scotland would look like the following:
- a material change for the better for the worst off in society (such that housing, educational opportunities, health outcomes, and pay and conditions of work were radically altered and improved) that would result in a widespread redistribution (or predistribution) of wealth
- a challenge to vested interests and power (this would mean for example a substantial challenge to the authority of landed interests, landlords, extreme privilege and embedded networks of power)
- a constitutional change to being a Scottish Republic (this might not have an automatic material impact but it would be a gear change and a symbolic / mental shift away from accepting hierarchy)
- a challenge to embedded forces of control hierarchy and domination (including for example sexual discrimination, and religious and racial bigotry)
- a concerted deep and radical effort to create the conditions for ecological viability (this would include affordable renewable energy and homes, affordable transport, jobs in transition sectors, a mass natural and biodiversity programme, transformation towards eco cities)
- an ethical foreign policy
Too utopian for you? Not radical enough? Never going to happen?
The future, and our choices were predicted a long time ago by such as the Socialisme ou Barbarie group a French-based radical libertarian socialist group of the post-war era led by Cornelius Castoriadis. In other words, you can decry these sort of aims as outlandish or utopian, but the alternative is plain to see all around us.
This is Malibu – one of the most affluent places on the planet being burnt to ashespic.twitter.com/GGpTLx5tf8
— BELLA CALEDONIA (@bellacaledonia) January 8, 2025
This list may seem speculative, but in fact, not so long ago, ideas such as ‘affordable housing’ were not seen as outlandish, nor was the idea of equalising pay and inequality. In terms of energy systems we have already in play, and technologies we have available to us, the idea of affordable power and heating is not some utopian dream. In fact access to mass renewable energy should be, and should have been, an invitation to affordable energy for all. The sun, the wind and the tides are infinite and commonly owned. There is no excuse for fuel poverty.
Much of the politics of the past forty years has been about persuading you that There Is No Alternative – and the shutting down of hope and the closing down of ideas and innovation has been the defining characteristic of the neoliberal era.
In fact, most of these things are just things we need to do anyway. If we don’t we will be faced with awful social and ecological consequences, the likes of which we can already see before us. The cultures of misogyny and abuses of power, the unfolding climate catastrophe, the grotesque inequalities we see are all the result of a failed economic system that benefits a tiny portion of the population.
We know all this. You know all this.
Many of the things outlined here used to be – even in our lifetimes – considered achievable goals. Remember Robin Cook’s Ethical Foreign Policy?
“The Labour Government does not accept that political values can be left behind when we check in our passports to travel on diplomatic business. Our foreign policy must have an ethical dimension and must support the demands of other peoples for the democratic rights on which we insist for ourselves. The Labour Government will put human rights at the heart of our foreign policy and will publish an annual report on our work in promoting human rights abroad.”
(‘Robin Cook’s speech on the ethical foreign policy’ 12 May 1997)
Now look at Britain’s shameful complicity in Gaza.
This isn’t to be defenceless, it just has the low bar of not being a partner in genocide, not being party to war crimes.
If you think these things are far-fetched and impossible it is because you have been conditioned to think so, to lower your aspirations, to accept endless decline, and become inured to grotesque social conditions.
To return to the beginning, I don’t think any of this would be easy, I think there are forces within society who would desperately try and prevent real social change from happening, we’ve seen that, we know that. But if you take any of these elements and ask yourself are they likely to happen under Westminster as part of the British state? The answer is most certainly no.
Given where we are historically now, there is no reason why the left, rather than the right, shouldn’t be the benefactor of populist dissatisfaction and rage.
As Neil Mackay wrote back in December 2024 (‘Scotland’s future: PM Farage or left-wing populist independence‘): “People want the status quo smashed. Far-right chancers offer to do the smashing. People want their grievances listened to … the far-right pretends to listen.”
“Where is the left? Why is the left not full of its historic passion, why is the left not acting, not promising to smash the status quo, not listening to the people?”
“The answer is this: what passes for the left was co-opted by the centre. It’s adopted positions barely distinguishable from the right on everything from immigration to economics. Traditional parties are now simply a centrist sludge.”
He’s right.
He concludes: “All this matters to Scotland. We’re subject to the same historic tides, yet Scotland is the one western country where politics can play differently, because Scotland has a unique political dimension – called independence.”
“Within independence there’s the same DNA which fuels public rage across the West: it’s essentially anti-status quo. Independence is a vehicle for absolute change; it’s the original disruptor ideology.”
All this is possible. But I don’t think Mackay is quite right, in that left populism and right populism are not the same. Nigel Farage this week was masquerading as similar to Jeremy Corbyn claiming “We’re both anti-establishment.” He’s no such thing. Farage is a far-right a privately-educated city banker taking home hundreds of thousands of pounds a year and enjoys fox hunting. He literally is the establishment. Elite Britain feels no threat from Farage’s party, indeed there is very little politically between the modern Conservative party and Reform UK.
A left populist movement would not be welcomed onto your airwaves or championed by the tabloid press. But as political decay and social decomposition intensify, the opportunity to respond to people’s feelings of anger and despair at what they are witnessing remains real. Let’s make 2025 the year to build a movement that makes that possible.
Is a pro-independence left populism possible in Scotland?
You know it is, you’ve already seen it and it scared the hell out of the British order.
This is the first of a three-part series, part two will look at the obstacles to change and part three will look at the routes to making this happen.
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German Boab wis the man tae see if wan wis ivir in need ae tickets tae the Scottish nay toe party. The party that wis hail arty. Wance ye signed the line & peyed the fine they sent ye oot a kit. & yer toe wis aff wie a snip.
“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. No sustainable solution possible to the existential crises of climate and nature now facing us all without dismantling the structures and legal systems which concentrate wealth in a false economic system run by a species that still has the genetic makeup of its survival of the fittest evolutionary origins.
Luckily we have immensely powerful brains, now further enhanceable by AI. The lesson that humanity has to learn very quickly is how to use this in a way that draws on the totality of that brain power to imagine and deliver a global ‘economy’ where power and wealth can no longer be concentrated/centralised.
The global configuration of ‘Nations’ that make up the United Nations is an accidental legacy of a history that celebrates and adulates those who win in a system which that history created. It rewards ruthless, self-interested exploitation of people and natural resources. Empires flourish. Megalomaniacs seize power and sooner rather than later will use the weapons of mass destruction they have created and continue to promote to fight one another to extinction – unless the means to do this are dismantled.
This is not Utopia. This is necessity. At ‘The Peoples COP’ in Brazil 10 months hence a vital component of achieving restorative climate justice has to be a recognition of these facts. For a start a route map has to be found for the dismantling of the UK, American, Russian and Chinese empires into their component historic nations and indigenous peoples’ identities.
“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. The choice is stark. Disaster for our species (and most others) OR fulfillment of the potential of billions of those now living and countless future generations. “See it. Say it. Sorted !”.
I wonder if the psychological affects of living in almost total darkness for 6 months of the year has a detrimental affect on party policy.
Probably not.
The economy is the UK’s weakest point, and needs to be hammered 24/7 by Yessers.
By contrast, the Scottish economy is (now) the strongest argument for Independence, absolutely tied to the potential for social justice. It’s not populism to make that claim.
Any economic or political argument that promises more and better neoliberalism, whether centrist, right, or far-right, is obviously self-defeating. The Thatcher-Reagan revolution has failed – it’s not even controversial to say it. Extreme inequality has pushed the UK and the USA to the point they can no longer be classed as healthy democracies but as rotting oligarchies instead.
This is not an extreme view. The amiable Jimmy Carter said before he died that the United States had become a corrupt oligarchy, de jure and de facto, in virtue of the fact that its democratic assets and processes are now legally available to the highest bidder. The UK’s descent into oligarchy is not as colourful but it is still quite strange. It combines a pain-faced managerialism with racism, stupidity, and defeat, in a kind of pathos for which it is hard to feel sympathy.
All the Scottish policy areas can be ambitious, and economically integrated with each other. In principle, this is potentially the case for the UK too but it has been categorically ruled out and it’s a stretch to imagine it ever returning to consideration.
To do it, Scotland needs its own currency, control of its own extensive resources (including human resources), membership at least of EFTA, a programme for controlling inflation that also involves one for better working conditions and reduction of under- and unemployment to the lowest it can practically go. Its foreign policy really has no need to be compromised, given that with EFTA partners Iceland and Norway it would have strategic and legal authority over the entire northern gap of the North Atlantic, a powerful asset in any international discussion or negotiation, potential or actual.
All of this is practicable and reasonable. It can be set out in detail, and needn’t necessarily be populist. The one serious challenge however has been there at least since Adam Smith described in it The Wealth of Nations in 1776, and that is the second bullet point above, the “challenge to vested interests and power”.
To get behind that challenge in a realistic sense needs more than patient planning. The UK State is indifferent to legality in pursuit of its interests, not least its internal challenges. Most democratic States are the same, although the UK has a famous track record of both public and secret abominations. We can expect a lot more of such heat than in 2014 and for that a broad, energetic and self-aware movement is unquestionably necessary.
TL:DR Yes.
You can both challenge the vested interests and make the worse off better off with an unconditional basic income. This would effectively pay the unpaid, the volunteers and home workers, as well as artists and musicians and others who earn a piecemeal living, and give an income platform which means you have a genuine, unconditional safety net from worklessness, without worrying if you will qualify or get sanctioned. An enormous well-being boost right there.
This will enable people to do their own thing, and to be able to demand better wages and conditions from workplaces, because you can leave to a definite income that provides your basics whilst you find an alternative. Or create your own work or lifestyle.
A UBI scheme would be simpler and easier to manage, and therefore implement, than anything else before it. There will be almost zero scope for fraud because everyone gets it.
And for those worried about giving rich people money they do not need, what you are doing is giving everyone survival money without being blinkered by whatever income they have. The payment will be without condition. But you can always tax back the equivalent amount of the UBI from those determined to have an income level well beyond the need for such, if you have the power to set and collect taxes to your own treasury.
A massive job creation scheme, which will require a massive bureaucracy and create jobs in itself, but will take time to set-up and is likely to suffer from bureaucracy and delays, could nevertheless be a second stage, which UBI would give the breathing space to create.
The UBI would be the platform which the scheme could build upon to give as many people as possible a better income. The UBI would be mitigation for any delays or issues that such a massive scheme is likely to suffer from, because you would still get that whilst your job of work and the payment for it is all processed.
The scheme would however far outweigh the bad of those likely issues it would suffer from, due to its size and scope, with the good it does, as it gets going.
The scheme would be a beast, but could create work by paying people for what they are doing unpaid – such as home care for family members, or anyone for that matter. For voluntary community work, and for the work that councils have stopped doing or neglected because they don’t have the money, but which could be provided by the state in order to pay people to do it.
It could you to do the things you always wanted to do. Even adult study and education, to better educate or to train yourself or to get and do that work or vocation you really want to do but never could. Which in turn will need more teachers.
This would all become possible with an independent Scotland with its own central bank, which would pay for it then reap the economic benefits of it all.
Paying binmen a bit more than doctors involves an authoritarian country that you’re not allowed to leave. That was socialism. What I saw of communism involved people getting paid with copper plumbing pipe.
Yes, good points, thanks.
Indeed in Britain there is genuine hope, as Britain has always been a multinational state (uniquely, as both England and Scotland were independent sovereign states for over 800 years before 1707, unlike Spanish communities or Quebec and Canada) and therefore a potential three new independent states – England, Scotland and Wales (plus a united Ireland) – all (as new states out of the old husk) with more progressive structures.
This break up needs to be fought for – and is being fought for – in Scotland and Wales (I support the excellent work of YesCymru the grassroots movement for Welsh independence). With Scottish independence (and Wales following), ‘Ukania’ and England itself can be liberated from the ‘lure of greatness’ as Anthony Barnett describes it.
Keep up the good work! From an English based indy supporter in Suffolk!
Thanks Duncan, agree YesCymru do great work, all the best
the 90s wis good, most of which were pre-devolution & since then everything has been shite, particularly cruel at the moment is the ridiculously steep cost of things people cannot live without which obviously means those with least money suffer the most, this is unacceptable in my humble opinion & nay cunt should vote until it is sorted
The Scottsh curmudgeon, aka wearisome auld scunner, has a venerale history in music hall, newspaper funny pages, variety theatre, radio and television comedy and pointy-heided literary debates. Your contributions are right up there with the worst.
sorry to hear of your venereal trouble, may I advise that you be more cautious in future, many thanks, Mark.
Oh for the guid auld days when we had direct rule Fae London! Us jocks knew oor place then.
Oh! Are you and Mark by any chance related, or perhaps even joined at the hip?
Is a pro-independence left populism possible in Scotland?
Of course it is. Populism (the exploitation of popular discontents for political ends) is the basis of all ‘grudge-and-grievance’ nationalism.
I think the question is not so much whether a pro-independence leftwing populism in Scotland is possible, but whether it can gain sufficient support to have influence. I think it can, but to do so it will need to engage with existing progressive forces, so as to create a basis for unity rather than division.
In an earlier era, it was what the popular fronts tried to achieve. Something like those, with a green dimension and a focus on self-determination, is what is needed now. And like the popular fronts, it needs a transformative ambition. I agree with the programme you set out, and look forward to the next two parts!
I am wondering what populism means here. The list of aims is laudable but what is ‘populist’ in the modern sense?
One thing I have noticed about so-called left populism elsewhere is that it is generally quite socially conservative, supposedly mirroring the people’s sensibility, rather than trying to change that (arguably what the current progressive left is about). So populism, to some extent, gives the people what they want, in order to be popular, by definition, and that means embracing some things that much of the current progressive left do not. This still leaves most of the all-important things on the list, a list that nevertheless does omit other crucial things. I don’t think populism is only about a charismatic leader who appeals to people’s emotions, or even a challenge to vested interests.
Was Corbyn populist? I never saw him as such; to me he was a socialist and a progressive, with a strong foundational ideology that essentially did not change over many years. He wasn’t charismatic except on the stump, where I saw him being very effective.
But maybe the goalposts of what is popular can be moved? Can you have progressive left populism given it does not seem that the people like some of the progressive aspects of the current left in enough numbers? That would rely on a very charismatic, persuasive person.
My feeling is the progressive left cannot simply re-package what they already espouse in order to be populist. They have to change some of it.
Good question.
Someone forwarded me the Oxford definition: “Populism: a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.’
I think this is useful.
That’s the definition of democracy, not populism. Chew that over. Democracy is populism and is also, according to politicians and people who like to think they can change what words mean, “bad”.
I don’t think it is the definition of democracy
In that case I can think of two good practitioners. In England Mick Lynch who does excellent takedowns of pontificating interviewers. And our own Mhairi Black who has talent for clear challenges. If that’s left populism – or anything that involves speaking truth to power – we need to foster it.
Neither Mick nor Mhairi is charismatic enough to be a populist leader.
In any case, Mick at least (I don’t know about Mhairi), as a trade unionist, is a champion of deliberative democracy, which is incompatible with populist politics.
Deliberative democracy is a form of democracy that involves citizens in the decision-making process through discussion and debate. It’s characterised by:
a) Inclusive participation: Citizens are encouraged to participate equally and reach a consensus.
b) Respectful listening: Participants listen to each other’s reasons and justifications with an open mind.
c) Non-coercive communication: Participants reflect on their preferences without coercion.
d) Informed discussion: Citizens consider relevant information from multiple perspectives.
Populism (the manipulation and exploitation of popular discontents for political ends) is hardly compatible with deliberative democracy and its ‘ideal speech situation’.
Lynch is excellent and I agree about his popular appeal. Sadly he has just announced his retirement.
The goalposts of populism have been moved by Farage cos-playing as a renegade : )
uhuh.
There are two broad definitions of ‘populism’.
The first defines it as a range of political stances that emphasise the idea that the ‘people’ as a morally good force in contrast and in opposition to a corrupt, self-serving ‘elite’.
Populists differ in how ‘the people’ are defined, but that definition’s most usually based along class, ethnic, or national lines. Populists in this sense typically present ‘the elite’ as comprising a political, economic, cultural, and media ‘establishment’ that places its own interests above the interests of ‘the people’.
Such populism never appears in a ‘pure’ state; it’s always combined with other ideologies, such as nationalism, liberalism, socialism, capitalism, or consumerism. Thus, populists can be found at different locations along the old left–right political spectrum, which makes a ‘progressive left’ populism no less possible that a ‘regressive right’ populism.
All populisms, under this definition, left, right, and centre, rely very much on demagoguery and charismatic leadership for its manipulation and exploitation of popular discontents and resentments.
The second broad definition defines populism as an engagement of the population in political decision-making. This definition was pioneered by the recently deceased, self-styled ‘post-Marxist’ political theorist and philosopher and co-founder of the so-called ‘Essex School’ of discourse analysis, Ernesto Laclau. Ernesto presents his populism as an emancipatory social force, through which marginalised groups (including young, white working class men) can challenge the dominant power structures in society.
The seminal text of this second kind of populism is Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, which Ernesto co-wrote in 1985 with his long-term partner, Chantal Mouffe, currently a professor of Politics and International Relations at Westminster and a member of both Westminster’s Centre for the Study of Democracy and its Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture. (Incidentally, Chantal published a pamphlet back in 2018, ‘For a Left wing Populism’, which is worth a read in the context of this discussion.)
Basically, Chantel and Ernesto argue that social movements, attempting to create real social and political change, need a strategy that challenges neoliberal and neoconservative concepts of democracy. The strategy they propose is an expansion of liberal democracy, based on freedom and equality, to include difference.
To this end, Chantal and Ernesto (along with Nicholas Rescher in the US) have been highly critical of both the Rawlsian and Habermasian versions of deliberative democracy. They propose instead a conflict-oriented form of radical democracy that Chantal’s called ‘agonistic pluralism’. Agonistic pluralism emphasises the [potentially] positive aspects of conflict between ‘countervailing powers’ and envisages a permanent place for such conflict in the political sphere of pluricultural societies.
The idea is that both liberal democracy (the sort of democracy we have in the West) and deliberative democracy (the sort of democracy that critics like Rawls and Habermas advocate), in their attempts to build consensus, oppress differing opinions, races, classes, genders, and worldviews. In the world, in a country, and in any social movement, there are many (a plurality of) differences that resist such consensus-building.
So, in our political practice as radical democrats, we should:
a) accept difference, dissent, and antagonisms as ‘natural’ and ‘healthy’ in society;
b) recognise that our societies are constituted by oppressive power relations (‘establishments’);
c) work to make those relations visible and to challenge them through criticism ‘in word and deed’;
d) regrow our democracy, from the grassroots up, around pragmatic negotiations of difference and dissent rather than around a demand for consensus;
e) accept that the agreements we negotiate are only ever tentative and provisional and are never set in stone, that democracy is forever an unfinished, inclusive, continuous, and reflexive process of negotiation and renegotiation.
wonder what folks think re: Creative Scotland’s plans to have all Scottish books from now on written in German with English translation on the facing page
Bilingual editions would be a good idea. Might help us get over our inability/reluctance to learn ‘foreign’ languages and discover worlds beyond the anglophone one.
indeed yes, German on one page, English on the other & nay mair Jockanese pish would seem to be the order of the day, I’m sure those Broch of the Edin intelligentsia at Destructive Scotland shall unanimously & vigorously applaud such news & swiftly request that the graphic design team drum up a new logo or possibly dust off a few old favourites from the late 1930s
As they say in Yorkshire: ” ‘appen”.
We’re tinkering around the edges here and trying to frame a future Scotland as some model of what we have now. There are a few fundamentals here.
Firstly, we’re skint because we’re a colony and we’ve been getting thieved from for over 300 years; never going to improve until we get rid of the colonial yoke.
Secondly, we have a Scottish constitution that enshrines Scottish Sovereignty lying with the Scottish people which is a million miles away from the feudal English model
Thirdly, the free Scottish Replublic that’s on its way, will be fundamentally socialist to the core; unless we’re stupid enough to hand things over the the colonial chancers that run Scotland today.
This Scottish Republic hus bin oan its wey fur a fair while noo. Mony huv drapt deid whilst waitin oan its arrival. Ony chance ye could gie us a rough idea fan we can expect it so’s we kain how lang we’ve tae hing oan fur.
A bulleted list falls far short of a model, though, and is vulnerable to the kinds of pledge-dropping of political manifestos, future editing as in Orwell’s Animal Farm, or erasure like Shakespeare’s aside on the pirates who went to sea with the ten commandments but scored out ‘thou shalt not steal’.
I can pretty much agree with the six bulleted items presented here, but there is no sense of priority or informing principles. Which a political constitutional preamble is designed to provide. For example, I would preface a biocratic constitution with something like:
Life is a value-generating phenomena*
(*not to prejudge the discovery of extra-terrestrial life, Life is neither singular or plural)
then develop the concept of our core ethics coming from our shared biology, then the concept of planetary health as our prime concern (benefiting all planetary life), and then the appropriate proxies for measuring this. This then simplifies your list-writing, informed by the straightforward demand for a healthy living planet and healthy human society.
And I would drop the concept of ‘left’ altogether, as a humanism unfitted to the non-human world, and a hangover from the worst aspects of Cold War ideology.
This is an article. I’m not a political party.
@Editor, indeed, but if you are arguing for an Independent Scotland, are you not also proposing a new political constitution, which is beyond mere partisan scope? And I would argue, beyond popular scope. I’m not disagreeing with your vision here, but saying its development and formulation is essentially incomplete.
It is essentially incomplete, there are parts two and three to follow but it will still be essentially incomplete. I’m not sure of the point you’re making.
@Editor, you write:
“In fact, most of these things are just things we need to do anyway.”
Can you rewrite this as a preamble to your list saying why? I mean, I presume you don’t mean “Because God Wills it So”, but if you’re intending a secular constitution, why not make that plain (bearing in mind that republics can be theocracies too)?
I appreciate that this is something alien to British subjects who don’t have a codified Constitution (and if it was codified, it would presumably have to justify its contents based on people being obviously unequal, Nepotism being the chief virtue, and the Head of State being elected by a committee of whichever Archdukes of Hell have the current portfolios for aggressive war, loot accumulation and draconian secrecy).
Maybe if your preamble takes up more than a paragraph you’d be better rethinking it. Here are some examples:
https://blog.oup.com/2013/10/10-constitution-preambles-usa-france-russia-india/
If you think about the reason that constitutional documents are structured this way, perhaps that will speak for itself.
I thought Dave Spart was fictional.