Power to the People: Why Scotland Needs Energy Expropriation, Not Social Democratic Band-Aids

By Simon Hale

Picture this: wind turbines spinning on mist-shrouded hills generating enough clean electricity to power Scotland twice over, while a family in a cold, damp Govanhill tenement turns off their heating because they can’t afford the bill.

This is not a dystopian fiction. It is the daily reality of contemporary Scotland—an energy-rich colony of corporate extraction where fuel poverty sits comfortably alongside staggering renewable potential.

For two decades, Holyrood’s political class has managed this contradiction with progressive rhetoric and administrative band-aids. We are told that windfall taxes, temporary rent caps, and fuel grants will cushion the blow of a rigged market. But managing the symptoms of capitalism does not stop the disease. It is time to ask the uncomfortable question: Why are we begging private corporations for taxes on wealth generated by our own land and wind?

The Social-Democratic Trap

The Holyrood consensus relies on a fundamental myth: that devolution can build a protective wall against neoliberalism without touching the sacred cow of private property.

When the SNP or Labour talk about energy, they talk about “attracting inward investment” and “taxing excess profits.” What does this mean in practice? It means allowing multinational giants like SSE and Iberdrola to siphon billions out of Scottish natural resources, only for the state to ask for a small cut back in taxes—money that is then handed out as emergency grants to help workers pay those very same corporations’ inflated bills.

It is an absurd roundabout: public money subsidising private extraction to relieve a crisis created by the private market itself.

The same tragedy plays out in housing. Holyrood injects over £1.3 billion a year in housing benefits straight into the bank accounts of private landlords, while over 240,000 households sit on social housing waiting lists. Meanwhile, dampness and cold air ruin the lungs of our children, driving thousands into overburdened NHS A&E departments every winter.

The Closed-Loop Alternative: Energy as the Commons

If we want a genuinely sovereign Scotland, we must move beyond the timid calculus of taxation and embrace expropriation.

Scotland produces 120% of its electricity needs from renewables. If we treat energy not as a commodity to be traded on the London market, but as a public utility—the bedrock of human life—everything changes:

Power at Cost: By bringing our energy infrastructure under public and communal control, domestic electricity can be supplied at the cost of generation. Fuel poverty is wiped out overnight, saving working households an average of £1,200 a year.

The Social Fund: The massive surplus of green electricity exported to England and Europe isn’t handed to overseas shareholders. It generates a national Social Investment Fund of over £2 billion annually.

Rebuilding the Commons: That £2 billion goes directly into municipal housing—building 10,000 zero-emission social homes a year and retrofitting our historic tenements.

Rescuing the NHS: Dry, warm homes mean fewer respiratory admissions, fewer bed-blockers, and a healthier working class. The pressure on our health service is relieved not by privatising care, but by eradicating the material causes of illness.

Sovereignty as Class Rupture

The debate over Scottish independence has stagnated because it was hijacked by a managerial elite promising a “painless transition”—a tartan version of the status quo that keeps us tied to sterling, European financial markets, and corporate landlords.

True self-determination cannot be achieved by swapping a Westminster boss for a Holyrood manager. It requires a fundamental break with the logic of capital.

Independence is worth nothing if the wind above our heads and the land beneath our feet remain the private property of absentee landlords and multinational speculators. It is time for the Scottish left, the tenant unions, and the shop-floor workers to reclaim the commons.

We don’t want a bigger piece of the pie. We want the bakery.

Image Credit: Andrew Redmond Barr