I have been asked to republish this piece. It was first published in July 2017. Things have changed since then but I believe that it is still largely relevant.

Why we need a Constitution

When I voted Yes in the Scottish Independence Referendum in 2014 I was voting not so much for myself as for my children, not so much for my children (well established now) as for my grandchildren, not so much for the Scotland that we are, as for the Scotland we could become.

 

My vote had little to do with GERS and the current price of oil. It had a lot to do with the failing UK political and economic system that Scotland is still thirled to, built as it now is: a house of cards on foundations of sand. An economy that immediately after WW2 still produced the world’s largest share of manufactured goods, transported across the globe in the world’s largest merchant navy. An economy that thanks to generations of engineering expertise and ingenuity still produced world leading machinery and goods of all kinds.

 

It takes a special kind of incompetence to flush all that away so very quickly.

Scotland bore the brunt of this as our preponderance of heavy industries didn’t lend themselves to diversification. If you build ships it’s not easy to start building something else instead. By the early 1970s as I was first becoming politically aware, Scotland’s industrial base was in its death throes. As I came of age Margaret Thatcher brutally finished off what remained.

 

I grew up on the Clydeside witnessing this badly managed decline. It was a cataclysmic clash of bitterly antagonistic opponents, locked in a death struggle that ultimately brought both sides down. Even to a young teenager the political incompetence was obvious. There was no credible leadership in this contest and no creative solution.

 

Leadership demands vision. There was no vision and no plan beyond fire fighting and the pragmatism of political opportunism.

There is still no vision and no plan.

 

What passed for a plan was full of ephemeral concepts like ‘invisible earnings’ and ‘post-industrialism’; the language of smoke and mirrors!

The palpable sense that the Empire was finished paved the way for the impulse to loot its remaining treasure. The growth of middle management and the service economy, fuelled by unlimited credit, partially hid the ensuing transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, the transfer of public goods into private hands, the democratisation of losses and privatisation of profits.

 

We knew back then in the Seventies about the baby boom generation, about an ageing population, about increasing longevity and yet insurance companies merrily sold pensions on the unrealistic prospects of impossible arithmetic, without thought, without qualms and without any Government effort at regulation.

We knew back then about the dangers of eternal house price inflation, about the damaging effect of unregulated credit, of mortgaging ourselves beyond our means, of living on credit cards and yet Governments of the Left and the Right were the cheerleaders for an increasingly deregulated and over inflated banking sector.

 

We didn’t yet know about globalisation, the rise of the multinationals and the consequent offshoring of jobs to third world economies. We hadn’t begun to guess about how communications technology, artificial intelligence and robotisation would so quickly loom on the horizon and threaten so many more jobs or that this next revolution would not just threaten blue collar jobs but middle class, white collar jobs.

 

And still, even yet, there is no plan.

 

Jeremy Corbyn at least offered hope in the recent election but in reality it is a false hope, devoid of vision; a tepid diet of borrowed SNP policies and the reheated rhetoric of 1970’s socialism.

 

One factor apparently, in the postponement of the Queen’s Speech, was that the speech itself had to be written on goat skin, a process which takes several days! There is almost nothing more that needs to be said about such an archaic system stumbling further into decline. A system that is failing so badly that even the Tories couldn’t envisage supporting their elderly voter base. A system designed to deliver ‘strong and stable’ Government that has once again failed to do so.

 

What can our response in Scotland be in such a visionless vacuum?

 

Firstly, I would suggest, we must dare to dream. All processes of improvement start with a dream, whether the hope is for a new house or a new country. When I dream of our new Scotland, I dream of a democracy that is built from the ground up, on the solid foundations of a written Constitution. There is no need for this to be a tyranny of this generation over the next. We are capable of conceiving something cleverer and more flexible than that.

 

Yet, some rights need to be carved in stone. Like many Scots I lack the forelock tugging gene. I am simply unable to tug it whether I am standing before aristocracy or officialdom. Either one is capable of being a tyrant. The aristocracy no longer have much sway but we do have a continuing hangover of Old Labour, ‘Big State’ socialism, where the State and its institutions are always right and the individual is always wrong. Where public institutions are always good and private enterprise is at best a necessary evil.

Our Constitution, as the basic contract between Citizen and State, has to value all of Scotland’s Citizens and strike a fair balance between the rights of the individual and the State.

 

All Citizens of a new Scotland should be treated, as of right, with respect and dignity. The ends must never justify the means when it comes to the squashing of human dignity and the squandering of human lives, and life chances.

 

The Clearances and Thatcher’s brutal decimation of our industries had one thing in common. They were justified in their day on the grounds of economic necessity. The poor axe wielders, it was claimed, had no alternative but to dismember their victims.

 

A decent society, one founded on the principles of Citizens Rights, that treats those Citizens with dignity and respect, could no longer justify such atrocities on these, or any other grounds. We often say in Scotland that the people are sovereign. That must mean, in the 21st century, that our rights are not just safeguarded collectively but also individually, and that those rights are enhanced, beyond the eighteenth century imaginings of Thomas Paine.

 

The greater good should not be an argument that is marshalled against either minorities or against individuals. That does not preclude economic or social change. It means that we have a duty to manage change in a way that respects the dignity and the rights of those affected by it and this should apply equally whether it is farmers, fishermen or factory workers who are affected.

 

We might talk also in this constitutional conversation about free education, about redefining company law to adequately protect the rights of workers and consumers as well as shareholders, about a fair and progressive system of taxation, that is simple and understood, unlike the current UK tax code, which runs to over a thousand pages of complexity, replete with its many loopholes. We might talk again with conviction about free healthcare and about decent pensions for our older folk. We might think about the right to work but also the right to enjoy a work life balance.

 

If we are boldly civilised we might assume that each and every one of us in this sparsely populated country should have the right to a decent home. If we are really creative we might imagine and lead the way into a post-consumerist age. We might think about a Citizens Income. We might think about reinstating quality in terms of our relationships, our services and our manufactured goods. Our economic redemption might lie in the increasing appetite, for machines and gadgets that just work; that work well, keep on working and don’t become obsolete the day after you buy them. There is still a small Scotland sized place in the world for quality goods.

 

We might place this conversation in the context of what it means to be a Social Democracy in the 21st Century, what it means, not elsewhere, but for us here in Scotland. We, who sit with Adam Smith on one shoulder and Burns on the other might redefine our politics, not according to older notions of Right and Left but in terms of who we are today and who we want to be. That is a narrative worth developing and articulating. It could and should be an inclusive narrative that recognises, that actually, we are all in this together, the State, the Citizen, small and big business, recognising the absolute truth that when one party loses we all lose, the corollary of this being that when we do things well, we all benefit and that the whole does become greater than the sum of its parts.

 

The most noticeably missing ingredient in our political system is that of trust. We should hardly be surprised at this, as time after time, Governments let down voters. Trust has recently been greatly eroded most notably in the EU referendum campaigns where politicians were prepared to say anything in order to further their agenda. There is a huge prize to be won in regaining trust.

The more turbulent and uncertain the times are, so the more important trust is. It has been the basis of all of our progress as a species, for without trust co-operation becomes impossible and without co-operation none of mankind’s progress would ever have happened.

 

We in this small country of Scotland who all, more or less, know each other, are well placed to redevelop trust.

 

Trust can be regained when we talk and listen in genuine conversations which explores what we have in common and what our common aims should be. Trust can be regained when we admit what the failings and shortcomings of our current system are. Trust will be regained when we carve a new set of aspirational Citizen’s Rights immutably in stone in a document called a written Constitution.

 

It is in developing this document that we begin to put clothes on the skeleton of our dream; on the possibilities of Scotland’s Independence, and begin next to consider how we might make this work in practical terms.

 

This could yet happen in Scotland, but first we must describe that dream.