A STATUS QUO has settled over modern Scotland in which political debate is shaped through a Glasgow-centred lens that often squeezes out the rest of the country. Glasgow’s long-running inferiority complex about Edinburgh has evolved into something wider. It colours how Scotland sees itself under the SNP and it feeds a national political culture that struggles to recognise the country as a collection of different regions with very different needs.
Anyone who knows Scotland understands that the old clan map never really disappeared. The North East, the Highlands, the Borders and the Central Belt all carry distinct cultures, priorities and economic pressures. Even language shifts from region to region, indeed, even within regions. From the Glaswegian perspective, Scotland is split into three: Glasgow, Little England (Edinburgh) and the Teuchters (the rest of Scotland).
Yet Holyrood policy has drifted into one-size-fits-Glasgow, one narrative for all. Even the national conversation is filtered through the city that dominates both media and political consciousness. Post-Salmond, the Weegification of Scottish politics peaked under the premierships of Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yusaf; Sturgeon’s trusty lieutenant John Swinney may be from Perthshire but he hasn’t dented the Glasgow mindset one iota since becoming First Minister.
Figures as different as Alex Salmond and Malcolm Offord have both acknowledged that Scotland will only thrive when it understands the sum of its parts. Their shared point is simple. Scotland is bigger, broader and more varied than the political assumptions that currently shape it.
This is where the SNP’s preferred rhetoric becomes so striking. “Too wee, too poor, too stupid” emerged in the independence debate as a caricature of what independence supporters felt was the implicit attitude behind arguments against independence. Over time the imagined insult has hardened into a central feature of the nationalist worldview, functioning as a kind of national inferiority complex which underlies the grandiose claims about Scotland made by SNP politicians.
The psychology is recognisable. It is the false bravado of a shorter man squaring up to a taller neighbour while privately convinced he cannot win unless the rules are changed. The result is a political culture that talks constantly about Scotland’s potential while behaving as if Scotland cannot succeed unless the UK falls apart.
The irony is that this mindset has weakened Scottish pride rather than strengthened it. Offord’s intervention in recent weeks, arguing that Scotland needs pride restored, resonated for precisely this reason. Many Scots feel their country has been talked down for so long that timidity now shapes how the government approaches its work. The SNP administration governs from a position of low expectations. Pessimism suffuses policymaking at every level. Much-needed radical reform of public services never gets out of the starting blocks because ministers assume in advance that Scotland cannot deliver it within the current constitutional settlement.
Devolution was meant to give Scotland the tools to shape its own success. After the 2014 referendum, the SNP had a genuine chance to demonstrate what competent devolved government could achieve. Instead, Holyrood slipped into the old pattern: it was easier to blame Westminster for every problem that proved too difficult to fix at home. A confident administration might have embraced the opportunity to show what Scotland could do with substantial autonomy. A cautious one preferred grievance over delivery, perhaps out of fear that a visibly successful devolved Scotland would weaken the case for independence.
There is a parallel here with Labour’s old dominance in my home turf in Central Fife. For years the working assumption was that unhappy voters would always vote Labour because there was no alternative – indeed, many suspected that continuing deprivation was a deliberate ploy to keep people voting Labour. Labour blamed every Scottish problem on the Conservatives at Westminster. When Labour finally held power both in Westminster and in Holyrood under Blair and Brown, nothing changed for the working classes. Health gaps widened, industrial decline continued, life expectancy stalled for the eight years Labour ruled in London and Edinburgh. Labour’s argument collapsed because the excuse no longer fitted the facts.
Disillusioned voters turned to the SNP, who could rely on a grievance that would never be tested. They knew there would never be an SNP government in London, which meant Westminster could always be used as the fallback reason for failure in Scotland. It was the perfect political shield.
After nearly twenty years in office, the SNP has run out of excuses, energy and credibility – and the shield is wearing thin. Although it remains true that the SNP cannot form a government in London, even with an overwhelming number of Scottish MPs, the SNP at Westminster has proven curiously ineffectual – crucially, the dial on independence support has not shifted since 2014 while its salience as an issue du jour has declined. The nationalists’ fallback is the familiar cry of Westminster obstruction, yet the public is tiring of it.
This fatigue is rooted in real outcomes. Scotland receives around 20 per cent higher spending per head on devolved services such as education and health compared with England, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. These are areas where Holyrood has full control. Yet outcomes in both sectors have slipped backwards. Audit Scotland has raised repeated concerns about stagnation in the NHS and declining school performance, while the Scottish Government continues to insist that the only barrier to progress is lack of constitutional power.
Voters can only be told that someone else is to blame for so long, as Labour discovered in Central Fife.
This raises a difficult but important question. Would a successful devolved Scotland bring independence closer or push it further away? Many in the SNP leadership have long assumed that failure and frustration drive support for leaving the UK.
There is an alternative view. A Scotland that works well within the current settlement, one with confident institutions and visible competence, would give voters a genuine choice rather than a choice shaped by resentment. The public should be allowed to weigh independence against a functioning devolved state, not against a deliberately underperforming one.
Scotland deserves better than a politics built on inferiority and excuses. If the country is to move beyond old patterns, it must stop pretending that Scotland begins and ends in Glasgow. It deserves a government that recognises the country as it truly is, from Shetland to the Borders, from the Outer Hebrides to the East Neuk of Fife: it must rediscover pride in its own diversity and capacity.
A mature nation should not be shackled to a political project that is determined to prove it is too wee, too poor and too stupid to govern itself within the union. If pride is to return, Scotland must first rediscover belief in its own agency. Only then can it decide its future from a position of confidence rather than self-doubt and despair.
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Photo of the Wellington statue in Glasgow by chrisdorney via Adobe Stock
