It’s time. It’s time to stand up. It’s time to say enough is enough. It’s time to seize control of the political agenda from the British press and say loudly and clearly that Scotland will be the mistress of her own destiny. It’s time to say that Boris Johnson and Alister Jack don’t get to be the arbiters of what Scotland can or cannot do. It’s time.
It’s time for Scotland to make a choice, a choice between assertion or submission, between confidence or fear. It’s time that this cold damp country of ours learned to see what the rest of the world sees, a place of beauty, of talent, of incredible potential, of natural wealth, of friendly people who are open and welcoming. It’s time that we realised that this land is not defined by narrow lipped closed minded British nationalism, fearful and resentful, projecting all its own shortcomings onto Scotland.
There’s an election coming. In the rest of the UK this will be an election of liars and chancers, of opportunists and deceivers. It’s an election that will be dominated and deformed by the vile lies of Brexit, by a Nigel Farage pulling the Tories ever further to the right, ever further away from the values that Scotland holds dear. Ever further from those values that moderate opponents of independence have always insisted were British values. Only in Scotland do we have the opportunity to choose a different path, a path that takes us away from the Nigels and the Borises, a path that leads to a better, kinder, gentler country, a path that leads to shelter for the homeless, food for the hungry, dignity for the poor. That’s the path that leads to independence.
This is an election where Scotland will vote but risks seeing its vote ignored and traduced by those British politicians who insist that they and they alone get to decide what the democratic will really is. Scotland is too stupid to know its own will. Alister Jack has had the utter audacity to declare that even if the SNP win a resounding majority in this coming election, with a manifesto commitment to demand another independence referendum, that he believes they still won’t have a mandate for one. Because in the eyes of our Westminster rulers, who are becoming increasingly indistinguishable from colonial masters, they and they alone have the right to decide what the people of Scotland want. Voting doesn’t matter. They want us to learn that elections don’t matter. The people of Scotland don’t matter. That’s what this so-called union has come to.
They tell us that we’re a valued and much loved partner in a family of nations, but only if we remain silent and cowed. This farce that they tell us is a union is the angry twisted face of the wee gaggle of scared fascists at the back of George Square, screaming no. It’s the hatred of Scottish political distinctiveness. It’s the terror of loss of privilege. It’s the contempt of Westminster for Scotland’s choices. It’s the destruction of the devolution settlement. It’s the very real threat of privatisation of the NHS.
But the Tories still want you to vote for them. Because poppies. Or something. The truth is that they have nothing to offer, nothing to give us, so they demand our silence and order our compliance. Of course Westminster is going to refuse. Of course they’re going to say no to Scotland’s rightful demands. They say that because they seek to discourage us, to make us downhearted and cause us to lose ourselves in hopelessness. They’re afraid of us. They’re afraid of what Scotland will say when that referendum does come, as it surely will. So they desperately thrash around seeking reasons to prevent it happening. But you can’t dam a river in spate, you can’t hold back a people in motion, you can’t prevent the tide from rising. There comes a time when the clamour can no longer be ignored. That time is coming soon. We can make it come sooner by ensuring that there’s a landslide of pro-independence MPs after this election in December.
Our voices do matter. Our opinions do count. And we shall shout and sing them loudly and insistently until the chorus deafens and we can no longer be ignored. Scotland doesn’t want a Tory Brexit. Scotland doesn’t want Boris Johnson. Scotland doesn’t want austerity, tax cuts for the rich, a bonfire of the regulations and rules that keep us safe and allow us to work with dignity. We have to say that loudly on 12 December, we have to say that today, and tomorrow, and on the election day, and on every day afterwards. We have to keep saying it even after we achieve Scottish independence. But we cannot forget that we won’t get our independence by asking for it once. We have to keep demanding, keep asking. An independence campaign is not a sprint, it’s a long hard slog. And we’re winning.
Scotland demands fairness. We are the children of the Highlands and the Lowlands, of those who stepped off a plane from Pakistan, a boat from Belfast, a coach from Krakow, we are Jock Tamson’s bairns. We insist upon equality of opportunity, of respect for migrants, for tolerance and openness. We assert our right as the people of the rainy hills and the windswept lochs, the people of the sandstone and the granite, the people of the muddy bogs and the bustling streets, to determine our own future, to choose our own path, to decide our own priorities. And we choose a Scotland that is open to the world, that makes friendships and alliances with other nations as an equal. We choose a Scotland that speaks for peace, not a land that’s merely a quiescent subordinate of a Westminster that treats us as a possession, a bonny bauble to prettify the British crown, a convenient parking place for the nuclear viagra of an impotent empire. This is our Scotland, not Boris Johnson’s.
The truth is that the issues in this election are very simple. Everything can be boiled down to one simple proposition. There’s only one thing you need to remember when you cast your vote on 12 December, and that is if Scotland doesn’t choose its own future, Boris Johnson will choose it for us.
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