The Missing Scotland, the Need for New Stories and Embracing Post-Britain
What would the future stories of Scotland be and who should tell them? The first is the easiest to explore. Such ideas should not be led by politicians or political parties, but instead come from artists, cultural practitioners, and creatives: the people who can make cultural self-determination real, and an array of people living and leading the self-organising, DIY Scotland beyond the official state.
The content of this future Scotland would be the sum of millions of interactions. But some of its contours are clear. It is not centred on Holyrood. It is not about ‘the normal powers of a normal Parliament’ as SNP politicians frame independence. Rather it would be centred on a Scotland where power, authority and legitimacy was dispersed across the country, where the bonds, connections and social contract which make us more than individuals but rather members of a civilised society would be central, acknowledging that we live together not just in a political, but ethical community.
This would be a vision of Scotland more about interdependence than independence: inter-independence both as a community and society, and about our place in the world. At the same time, it would celebrate the principle of self-determination not just as an abstract or one-off event about statehood but instead defining how we exercise power as individuals, communities and a nation.
Scotland needs to build on the shifting sense of itself, ‘the quiet revolution’ which made 2014 possible, and dare to tell new stories which create our future and a self-governing Scotland. This would be an empowering, open-ended project creating a Scotland of the imagination, linking it to everyday life and how we govern and see ourselves. As a first step we have to recognise that the big changes will not come from party politics on its own or via top-down processes. Rather they will only come from creating the spaces, institutions and stories which can nurture and encourage the revolution already underway – one centred on different ideas of power and authority which have autonomy and self-determination at their heart.
As we live in the shadow of the twilight of the British state and the insipid, undead Starmer government comes to its predictable end, Scottish self-determinists will need to mobilise a set of national stories which aid us planning our future road map. This would speak to the many Scotlands, embrace our diversity and multiculturalism, and work with others across RUK in Wales, Northern Ireland and England to fashion a modern, outward-looking post-British set of identities and institutions to break with the atavistic, anachronistic English nation-state at the core of the present UK.