Why Scotland’s political class keeps us circling the same drain
SCOTLAND doesn’t suffer from a lack of politics. It suffers from a surfeit of politicians and a crippling shortage of honesty.
Every few years we’re offered the illusion of choice, as though rearranging the puppets on the constitutional stage might finally produce a different ending. But the play is always the same: one party promising independence, another pretending to oppose it, both colluding in the fine art of doing nothing slowly and very expensively.
If you’re still clapping along, you’re not watching closely enough.
The SNP shouts “Independence!” like a toddler in a supermarket demanding sweets. Labour smiles like a tired substitute teacher trying not to swear in front of the school inspectorate. The Tories… well, let’s be generous and say they are working on their mime act.
Meanwhile, Holyrood operates like a well-upholstered waiting room for those who couldn’t make it in Westminster but do enjoy writing five-year plans and attending strategy briefings about how to hold more strategy briefings.
And all the while, ordinary Scots, you know, the people who aren’t on advisory boards, are left to watch their communities hollow out.
We’ve got the highest drug and alcohol death rate in Europe . Public services run like a fax machine in a thunderstorm. And instead of answers, we get initiatives. A “National Mission,” no less. Because if you can’t fix the problem, rename it.
And still, we’re told that the real problem is that Scotland isn’t independent.
Now let me stop there and say something I know might not sit well with everyone.
I wanted to share where I’m at with the independence question, because I know we might see things differently and that’s okay.
I’m no longer in the “Yes” camp. Not because I’ve suddenly become a Unionist or developed a fondness for the old boys’ club at Westminster – far from it. It’s just that I’ve stepped away from the identity framing altogether. The constant tug-of-war between nationalist and unionist feels tired and, frankly, a distraction. I’ve come to care less about where power sits on a map, and more about how it’s being used.
When I supported independence, it was because I believed more localised government would mean more democratic, responsive leadership. That principle still matters to me deeply. But what we’ve ended up with in practice is a Scottish Government that’s just as remote, unaccountable, and self-serving as anything at Westminster, in some ways, even more so.
After years of devolved control over health, education, justice, and drug policy, what do we have to show for it? An NHS on its knees, schools in decline, a broken justice system, and the worst drug death rate in Europe. These aren’t Westminster’s failures, they’re ours. And yet, instead of facing them, we’re fed constant constitutional theatre and blame game politics. Independence has become a kind of political escape hatch, always promised, never delivered, to cover for policy failure.
So no, I’m not picking the other “side”. I’m stepping off the battlefield altogether. Scotland needs something better than this endless binary. We need competence, honesty, and genuine local accountability, not another round of flags and slogans while the basics fall apart.
I respect why people still believe independence is the answer, I really do. But for me, it’s stopped being a route to change and become a way of avoiding it. And that’s why I’ve changed my mind.
Let’s be honest. After the 2016 EU referendum the Yes movement mutated into something unrecognisable, a Europhile cult with a saltire filter. Its leaders now spend more time praising Brussels than standing up for Bridgeton. Nicola Sturgeon seemed far more comfortable taking selfies with Alastair Campbell in London than marching with her own grassroots at all under one banner.
Brexit wasn’t the calamity the elites claim. It was the last time many working-class people felt they had a say in anything. And the response from our betters? To pretend it never happened, or worse, that it was a sign of mass psychosis from thick people who don’t really get it.
Which brings us to the other parties. The Scottish Conservatives, nominally the opposition, have treated the largest democratic mandate in UK history like an embarrassing relative who shows up drunk at weddings. They mutter something about the Union, try not to mention Brexit, and then ask if we can all just move on.
No, we can’t. Because this country, this tired little simulacrum of self-rule, is in crisis. Not because of too much nationalism, but because of too little democracy.
We need to stop pretending this is a question of Yes or No. It’s a question of Enough.
Enough of the elite’s obsession with symbols over substance. Enough of careerists treating parliament as a revolving door between NGOs and think tanks. Enough of the politics of managed decline, where the job of the government is to narrate your despair, not alleviate it.
The truth is this: the real battle in Scotland is not Unionist versus Nationalist. It’s the people versus the permanent class.
We need radical decentralisation, not more middle managers. We need real localism, not another “national conversation” moderated by people who’ve never used a foodbank or waited for a rehab bed.
Let’s talk about councils with teeth. Community budgets. Citizen assemblies that aren’t PR stunts. Let’s talk about power, and giving it back to the people who pay for it.
Because if we don’t change direction soon, we’ll end up exactly where we’re headed, back in the same lecture hall, listening to the same people, proposing the same solutions that already failed.
So no, I’m not interested in another referendum. I’m interested in a reckoning. In a reformation. In reminding the Scottish political class that democracy means more than a press release and a branded pop-up tent.
Because the truth is, Scotland doesn’t need another conversation. It needs a recovery.
We’ve turned national decline into an art form. Not with chaos or revolution but with strategy documents, “stakeholder engagement,” and PowerPoints presented to rooms of people paid not to notice the rot. We are drowning in consultations, and nobody’s been saved yet.
Chronicling the decline is no longer brave. It’s a cottage industry.
That’s why I’ve written Twelve Steps to National Recovery – not to join the choir of managed despair, but to break the hymn sheet in half. Inspired by the recovery tradition that saves lives from addiction, the series calls for something deeper than reform: Repentance. The kind that begins with honesty, the kind that can still save a nation from itself.
You can keep polishing the mirror. Or you can pick up the scalpel.
Read the essays. Share them. Argue with them. But don’t pretend you haven’t heard the call. The time for conversation has passed.
Read the first essay here. https://annemarieward.substack.com/p/steps-to-national-recovery-a-civic?r=2io0u9
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