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As the right-wing media go apoplectic about what they describe as the biggest tax rise in history its worth getting a sense of perspective on last week’s budget. Increasing the proportion of a country’s wealth spent in the public realm is always a good thing. It’s a measure of just how civilised a society is.

But by their own admission less than half of Labour’s proposed £40Bn uplift in government revenues is a real increase. The real increase is more like £18Bn. That’s a big number. But it is only about one and a half percent of total public spending. Indeed, it is less than one percent of the annual turnover in the economy. Maybe best not to get too carried away.

The problem is not how much is being raised by the exchequer, but how they are raising it, and who from. The new Labour government tied its own hands in a ridiculous manner before the election by making promises not to increase income tax, NI or VAT – the things that raise most of the money.

So, it had few targets to pick when looking to increase revenues. Some changes are welcome but small beer – VAT on private school fees, scrapping non-dom status, and changes to capital gains tax.

Predictably those in the firing line are squealing unfairness and victimisation. Scotland’s millionaire landowners are joining the fightback against inheritance tax now being applied to farmland. Its hard to feel sympathy. A better question than why is inheritance tax being applied to farms might be why farmers get a tax-free allowance three times that of anyone else.

The blunt instrument of raising employer’s national insurance contributions and extending it to many more part time workers is more of a problem. Some of the reaction is hyperbole with owners of pubs claiming it’ll put 70p on the price of a pint. How could a 1.2% increase in payroll costs mean a 15% hike in prices?

It is true that hospitality and retails sectors which rely on a greater number of part timers will be disproportionately affected. An odd target given they have already borne the brunt of the Covid and cost-of-living squeezes. Harsh too to bring the changes in all at once without any phasing or with no regard to the ability of small businesses to pay.

Any reforming government ought to try to rebalance the split between profits and wages. I’ve heard some Labour spokespeople suggest this is what the employer NI hike is intended to achieve. But it won’t. Business will simply pass the charge on in the form of higher prices to consumers or reduced wage increases to their workers. Either way profits will be protected.

The way to ensure that profits serve a social purpose is to tax them. Yet that is exactly what Labour has ruled out.

Labour’s Britain is the most unequal country in northern Europe. You might have thought that in their first budget Labour might want to do something about that. Not a bit of it. The two groups of people least affected by this budget are the poorest and the richest.

People living on the breadline have seen their subsistence incomes fall sharply during the Tory years. Rachel Reeves has dashed any hopes they might have had of restitution from Labour. Not only are benefit cuts not restored, but she also talks the same talk of benefit fraud and the need to get people back to work as if they were workshy wastrels.

And Britain’s three and a half million millionaires can rest easy with this budget. Money may be tight, public services in crisis, but there’ll be no additional obligations on the rich. The absurd ruling out of income tax increases even for the likes of Chris O’Shea, the CEO of British Gas who made £8.2m last year, means others will have to pay.

Moreover, new Labour’s refusal to countenance any levy on accumulated wealth leaves the structural inequality of the UK intact and unchallenged.

There is nothing inherently bad about tax. It is the membership fee we pay to be part of civil society. But tax policy must be seen to be fair to command widespread support. One that protects extreme wealth whilst increasing pressure on the majority will ultimately fail.

Clearly, Scottish ministers will be preoccupied by the effect of this budget on public funds in Scotland. We shall have to see what is left once consequentials are given with one hand and extra costs levied by the other.

But those of us who believe that Scotland should become a new independent country need to do more than simply rail against the decisions and the indecision of Westminster. We want all of these choices about tax and spending to be made here. To win support for that we need to show how we would do it differently.

We need to make the case for an economy regulated in the public interest with a fair system of reward and obligation. For progressive taxes on income with top rate of 50% for the super wealthy and improved allowances at the bottom end. For new taxes on wealth and assets which allow the country’s capital to be deployed in the interests of us all. And for a progressive approach to business taxation too, with bands that protect small businesses with low profits and raise more from the largest corporations. 

“The smell of death is everywhere as bodies are left lying on the roads or under the rubble. Missions to clear the bodies or provide humanitarian assistance are denied.” The words of Phillipe Lazzarini, the head of UNWRA last week, describing what is happening in northern Gaza.

The siege of the Jabalia refugee camp is now in its fourth week. The Israeli army is allowing no food, water or medicine through to tens of thousands of starving civilians. Meanwhile bombs drop daily on what shelter remains as drone footage shows desperate people scurrying like insects to avoid their blast.

On the ground Israeli soldiers empty people out of school buildings and set them on fire. Testimonies of those leaving the camp tell of families separated by the army, women and children sent south beyond the camp and the men beaten and detained. Everyone, including elderly and wounded, tells of abuse and beatings by the soldiers, including children shot in the legs for trying to pick up food.

As Israel’s latest war on Gaza enters its second year it has taken a distinct turn. Although not officially admitted, strategy and war aims have changed. This is now about much more than defeating Hamas.

The Israeli right, personified by security minister Ben Gvir and finance minister Smotrich have long advocated the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, demanding a new Nakba to displace Palestinians to the deserts of Sinai. Now this approach commands broad political and military support.

The strategy is spelled out in a document called The Generals Plan which was spearheaded by veteran army commander Giora Eiland. He has been critical of current IDF command saying “The fact that we are breaking down in the face of humanitarian aid to Gaza is a serious mistake… Gaza must be completely destroyed: terrible chaos, severe humanitarian crisis, cries to heaven…”

He is now getting his way. Under this plan Gaza will initially be split in two with the Netzarim corridor, recently fortified by IDF engineers splitting the strip to the south of Gaza city. Civilians will then be displaced from northern Gaza through an armed perimeter and those remaining will be eliminated. A massacre is being planned before our eyes which will make even the horrors of the last thirteen months seem tame in comparison.

As Blinken talks of exit ramps and the day after, those in charge of Israel are already planning their own future. It is one of occupation, settlements, and strong fortifications with no room for Palestinians. And it depends upon the genocide currently underway in Gaza being successful.

Last week a conference was organised just three miles from the Gaza border to plan this for real. Under the sound of shelling settler leader Daniella Weiss said Palestinians have “lost the right” to live there, and that thousands of Israelis stand ready to move there “from north to south.” She claimed there were six settler groups and more than 700 families looking to settle in Gaza.

This is happening before our eyes in real time. Yet it is all but ignored by our politicians and media. The BBC reports Gaza from Jerusalem through an Israeli prism and with an absence of Palestinian voice. When deaths are announced the information is qualified as coming from the “Hamas controlled health ministry” as if to suggest this might be terrorist propaganda rather than material fact.

Every time a Gazan school, hospital, apartment block is bombed by missiles the BBC report offers the Israeli explanation that they were targeting Hamas fighters. Even as they show the corpses of infants shrouded in linen.

For more than a year now Israel’s global guarantor, the United States, has supplied the weaponry of genocide on the one hand, whilst bemoaning off the scale civilian casualties on the other. With a week to go until the US election, Netanyahu is clearly taking advantage, calculating he can get away with pretty much anything. And he is.

But why is the UK still in the grip of this hypocritical paralysis when it comes to Israel’s genocide. We’ve had our election. What domestic political advantage is served by the UK’s continued complicity in continuing illegal military occupations and the war of Palestinians?

Last Wednesday, Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, called for more humanitarian aid and a ceasefire but saw fit to add “That does not change our position of steadfast support for Israel’s security.” She perpetuates the myth that what is going on are just a few adverse consequences of Israel exercising its right to self-defence. We are way beyond that. And anyone who still justifies what is happening now in northern Gaza by reference to a right to self-defence is actively trying to deflect and distract attention from genocide.

Angela Rayner was once the champion of the left. She is kept in cabinet by the new, new Labour hierarchy as a cover to appease the trade unions. That she too is engaged in minimising this humanitarian outrage and justifying British inaction against it shows just how pitiful Labour’s foreign policy is.

The truth is Netanyahu, and the dominant Israeli establishment will not stop until they see the total destruction of Palestinian capacity to create their own state in the place they once lived in peace. Not unless they are stopped. That is now clear to most countries in the world, including Spain, Norway, and Ireland. In the months ahead we shall need to re-double our efforts to make it clear to Keir Starmer’s government too.

Shelter is one of the most basic human needs. But in our society a roof over your head is far from being an established right. When Holyrood gets back to work next week it has the chance to move things forwards. The new housing bill, published in March and included in September’s Programme for Government, moves into its next stage.

The bill aims to increase tenants’ rights in the private rented sector, and for the first time establish a regime or rent controls across the country. For those who make money from tenants these proposals are the work of the devil and are being fiercely contested by powerful interest groups.

First, let’s get a bit of context.

A generation ago, renting from a private landlord was either a legacy arrangement or the preserve of younger people starting out on their own. The sector had declined to just five percent of all households in Scotland and was widely regarded as a short-term option for a transient section of the population.

That’s all changed. Choking off public sector housebuilding and the right to buy saw social housing decline. Meanwhile rocketing house prices shut off the option of buying for many on average incomes. As a result, private renting has tripled in the last twenty years and now accounts for one in six of all households.

A lot of people have become landlords who would never have considered it before. Buying and renting property seemed like a good, even lucrative, investment. Not only do you get a return on your investment through annual rents which beats pretty much any other savings option, but the capital value of your asset increases as house prices rise. Yes, once in a while values might drop, but over time they always go up. It’s the ultimate win-win.

A home needs to provide two main things to allow society to flourish. First it must offer security, which is why tenants’ rights matter.

Secondly, it must cost an amount that means you can live a reasonable life with what you have left. This is important not just to individual quality of life but to society as a whole. If your rent is so great that you cannot afford to buy stuff, the local economy suffers.

However, when it comes to costs, the sector is unregulated, and tenants have zero protection against major hikes in their rent.

Private landlords are meant to register with their local council and have to answer a great many questions about their property. The rent they charge is not one of them. And since there is no public record of rents, there is no way to say for sure what the increases have been, or should be, on any given property.

The online rental network Canopy has just published a report on affordability of private rents. Overall, UK rents now equate to 35.7% of average incomes, over 40% in Edinburgh. That’s higher than ever. And most people earn less than the average. Try renting in Edinburgh – where average rents are now £1192 – on a minimum wage. It’ll cost two thirds of your full-time take-home pay. Simply put, it’s impossible.

This is why the central objective of the new housing bill is to create the architecture for a system that regulates rents throughout the country ensuring that landlords can get a reasonable return but protecting their tenants against exorbitant increases. It’s the sort of decent policy that many other European countries already have and yet the suggestion has been met with apoplectic fury by those representing would be investors in the sector.

We are told that even the possibility of rent controls means that pension funds will switch investment in build to rent schemes from Edinburgh to Manchester. They claim that the new bill means they can never put up rents, citing the emergency rent freeze during the pandemic as evidence.

It’s nonsense, of course. No-one has said that rents can never go up, just that they can’t rip people off by jacking them up by more than anything else. Long term controls that allowed owners of a development to increase rents year on year by the rate of inflation are not only possible, but likely under a regulatory scheme.

People with loads of money always seem to resent social controls on how much more they can make by investing their wealth.  Large investors now claim that rent controls will actually reduce the supply of new rented accommodation, because landlords will opt out of the sector choosing to sell instead. But the truth is the house is still there and someone will still live in it – overall housing supply is unaffected. Indeed, former rental properties going on sale will increase supply and put a brake on house price inflation.

The very same argument was deployed against the minimum wage. We were told it would reduce the number of jobs available because employers couldn’t afford higher rates. It didn’t. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. There are plenty of places around the world where rents are regulated, and all the evidence suggests it has no affect on the supply of homes for rent. Let’s hope the parliament has the backbone to resist the exaggerated claims and threats of a self-interested investor lobby, and base policy on the evidence.

I was in Westminster last week for only the second time since the election, avoiding the commute between our capitals being one of the major compensations for losing it. Meandering though the colonnades and corridors to make my lunch rendezvous I had a stop and chat with three former colleagues from the Labour Party.

All three are decent people I’ve worked with on cross party campaigns. None were Corbyn supporters, and they would all describe themselves I’m sure as loyal party members. And all were thoroughly fed up and depressed at the situation they have found themselves in.

They, like us cannot understand how a Labour government so quickly lost whatever way it thought it had. Admittedly, being friendly with the likes of me probably means these three former comrades are atypical Labour MPs, but nonetheless there’s seems a deep disquiet with this new government.

Perhaps the despair is compounded by an apparent impotence when it comes to doing anything about it. The majority is massive, enough to withstand another round of suspensions of anyone kicking against the traces. Meanwhile, the Tories continue to self-destruct having got rid of the affable Cleverly from their leadership race.

So, it looks as nothing is going to change anytime soon. Perhaps in time what’s left of the left in England may repurpose themselves, but for now all they can do is suck it up.

We are witnessing the excision of social democratic influence on public policy by this new new Labour government. And the process has more urgency and purpose that it did with the old new Labour government. At its heart is an assault of the notion of universalism.

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” wrote Karl Marx. In truth he nicked the first part from the bible where the idea of living and survival being a shared human endeavour underpinned Christian morality. How to put that dictum into practise, and specifically whether it can be achieved by the regulation of capitalism as opposed to its abolition, has divided the left for generations, but the objective has been widely shared.

The idea that we all pay for stuff society needs and each of us get the services we require underpinned the growth of the post war welfare state, its apotheosis being the NHS. Apart form doing the right thing, there are a range of practical reasons why this approach works.

For starters it is a much more efficient use of money and talent to organise services within a single system, allowing an economy of scale not possible if we all fend for ourselves. It also means that more, maybe even all, members of society can access services, whereas large swathes are left behind when you get only what you can afford. This matters for social stability with mental illness, violence and crime all diminished by the erosion of inequality.

Crucially, allowing everyone access to what they need means everyone has a stake in the system, which builds political and philosophical support for being asked to pay for it. It is important that rich people can use libraries and travel on buses for free as well as the poor. If only some people received these social benefits the case for collectively paying for them is undermined.

The alternative to universal provision of services is to ration them so that people who are deemed to have the means to do without them are excluded. Under this system social provision becomes not a system of social solidarity, but a safety net to catch the very poorest who are unable to help themselves.

Those in favour of means testing argue that scarce resources should be targeted at those most in need of them rather than being given to those who do not. But it is entirely possible to recoup universal payments from wealthy people through the tax system – which is exactly what happens in the case of child benefit.

Applying a means test allows government to set the level above which support will be withdrawn and as we have seen with the winter fuel payment for pensioners this is an arbitrary rather than scientific judgement. Unless people are living below the basic subsistence level at which pension credit is paid then their support is withdrawn. And whilst it is true that rich pensioners will have no great difficulty with this, there are millions of households with a fixed income between the pension credit level and the average income where real hardship is the result.

Shifting the proportion of our wealth which is deployed in the public realm rather than reserved for private consumption is a pretty fundamental yardstick by which we can measure just how civil our society is. That objective now seems to have been abandoned by all major players in the UK political firmament. It is time we brought that ideal home and made it a central tenet of our ambition for self-government.

At the weekend it will be one hundred days since the election of the new Labour government. It’s usually a milestone where a new administration can point to immediate achievements and exciting plans for the future. A chance to remind the public of the differences with the past and how right they were to make the change.

Dear oh dear. I don’t think anyone could have thought it would be this bad. As MPs shuffle back to Westminster after a dismal round of party conferences, they’ll find a government elected with low expectations has driven them down further. Things can only get worse now the official mantra.

Labour’s fall from grace has been spectacular. Elected with just over a third of the votes in an abysmal sixty percent turnout, it has even fewer supporters now. Starmer is less popular than Sunak was when he called the election.

Most of this is of their own making. Inexplicably the first two targets were low-income families with more than two children, and the majority of pensioners not on income support. With the first, at least they promised no different. Labour were clear they were going to keep the Tory two child limit. A different story with pensioners. There was not a peep about cutting the winter fuel allowance before the election.

To compound matters these choices are defended with a bullish machismo that exudes arrogance by the governors and contempt for the governed. Cabinet ministers behave like Masters of the Universe and dissident voices are trampled and marginalized.

Anyone hoping for at least a more enlightened foreign stance will be equally dismayed. Starmer doubles down on support for Israel, even after a year of continuous slaughter of innocent civilians, as they are portrayed as the victim not the occupier.

For a government elected on a slogan of change they have remarkably little appetite to make any. Expect it to get worse as austerity formally returns in the budget. Labour loyalists, what few remain, insist they have no choice, the economic rules dictate how they must act. This is nonsense. Always has been.

It is not a rule that rich people cannot pay more tax. It’s a policy. It is not a rule that Covid debt must be paid down over a fixed term. It’s a policy. It is not a rule that a country cannot borrow more for public spending. It’s a policy. The sad truth is that Labour is making the same choices as the administration it replaced.

This matters. Real people will suffer real hurt. But the effect on the general psyche of the public will be even worse. Trust and confidence in politics was already at an all all-time low in the run up to this year’s election. Instead of addressing that alienation and disillusion Labour are making it worse.

I worry at the effect of this in England. If what was once the mass party of social democracy fails so badly what comes next. The far right is better organized, funded  and supported than for a generation. They are waiting to capitalise on Starmer’s inability not just to change things, but to offer hope and inspiration that it might even be possible.

Here in Scotland, disaffection with Labour has seen their support drop and the SNP recover its position as the country’s most popular party.  Whereas a year ago the party was losing council byelections now they are winning the latest crop created by Labour councillors heading to Westminster. Suddenly all bets are off on Labour winning Holyrood next time round.

The problem is that all this represents is movement within the two thirds of the electorate who could be bothered. It shows some people who switched allegiance from the SNP to Labour in the forlorn hope that we might get a change have switched back again. And that’s not enough.

The pro-independence voters who held their nose and voted Labour in July were part of the reason for the SNP’s massive defeat. But not the main part. Far more important were those who’d voted for the party before and decided to sit this one out.

To get them back we can’t just wait for Labour to fail and hope people will pick us by default. We have to be better than the least worst option. So that means all the hard work we talked about in the election aftermath is still to do.

We need to get better in government, picking things where we can deliver and rebuilding confidence through competence. We need to reimagine the case for independence and illustrate what it means by pointing out the constraints of devolution which prevent Holyrood delivering what people want. And we need to re-assert and widen the consensus behind the principle of the Claim or Right; the Scottish people’s right to choose their own future.

This gives us the framework on which to build for the 2026 election. Most of all it means re-asserting the hope that things can get better if we take control of them ourselves.

As regular readers will know this column usually contains Monday morning musings on the state of the SNP and the Independence campaign. Not this week.

The King deigned to visit his Scottish subjects this week. It’s an event that happens rarely and deserves to be marked.

To make a personal contribution I got myself to the foot of the Royal Mile at 10am on Saturday morning to join a small but purposeful protest against the monarchy. The event was organised by the Edinburgh branch of Republic.org.uk and drew a couple of dozen people who made themselves highly visible and vocal.

One or two onlookers were clearly upset by our presence. But very few. And then it struck me. Actually, most of the assembled public were neither republican nor royalist but visiting tourists anxious not to miss out on a promised royal spectacle.

Typical was a group of five French visitors standing beside our protest with whom we got chatting. They explained they had been told the King was visiting and were simply on a celeb hunt. They supported our stance, they said, adding with just a hint of national pride, that they had dispensed with their own monarchy some time ago.

The royal visit was ostensibly to mark the silver jubilee of the Scottish Parliament with a special event. There were plenty of MSPs in attendance, a goodly few of whom probably wished they could be anywhere else. But the constraints of office mean you have to take the fun events with the ones the make you boak. I don’t envy my colleagues the task.

This was also an exercise in the Palace making it clear who’s top dog. That the devolved Scottish parliament exists as part of a constitutional framework that has the UK firmly in charge – and at the head of that sits the Royal Family, the ultimate vestige of Britain’s empire. 

This does not mean we should not exploit every opportunity that devolved powers give us. On the contrary, we must. But it does mean we need to have our eyes wide open about the potential and limitations of the Holyrood assembly. Indeed, making afresh the case for political independence means explaining how those limitations will always constrain the aspirations of the people and the capacity of their representatives to act on their behalf.

Back to Charles III. His visit took place at the end of a week which saw the publication of a new report on the cost of the royals. When the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall are added in, and massive security costs covered, we now have a half a billion pound monarchy. The British royals are now by far the most expensive monarchy the world has ever seen, with even some loyal supporters arguing it’s time to slim down the firm.

This level of public funding to the wealthiest people in the country would be a matter of concern at the best of times. But these aren’t the best of times. The new Labour government is cutting heating support to all but the very poorest pensioners this winter. It is no exaggeration to say that many will face extra hardship and the risk of hypothermia as a result. And why? Because they say the public purse cannot afford it. You could almost forgive King Charles a quiet smirk when he hears Keir Starmer say we are all in this together.

A chunk of that taxpayer support was spent on Saturday on what seemed a pretty over the top security operation. There were a great number of police officers at an event that attracted only a few hundred. Surrounding roads were closed with no inconvenience spared to allow the royal visitors an uninterrupted drive the 200 metres from the palace to parliament in armoured vehicles. Snipers on the roof of the parliament seemed a particular piece of overkill given the royal personages never were exposed to the actual public. As an aside though, the PCSOs delegated to watch our protest were courteous and professional. 

There were remarkably few people present on Saturday to demonstrate support for the monarchy. And if that’s the case in Edinburgh, you’ve got to assume it would be even fewer elsewhere. Which somewhat explodes the myth of their popularity.

This is not the 1950s. The deference and uncritical compliance of loyal subjects can no longer be taken for granted. Public opinion towards the monarchy in Scotland is turning with a majority favouring abolition. And little wonder. It represents with knobs on a class-ridden unequal society most of us want to escape. And it is a constitutional outrage that the head of a state in what purports to be a twenty-first century democracy should be unelected by and unaccountable to its citizens.

The times are they a changin’.  The monarchy won’t last for ever. The only question is if Scotland will get rid of it first.

On Wednesday it will be 10 years since the referendum on whether Scotland should be an independent country. I woke that morning believing it was going to happen.

In the south Edinburgh Yes campaign centre the mood was buoyant. We knew by lunchtime the turnout was unprecedented. By teatime, people were coming back saying it was pointless knocking up as everyone had voted.

During those 15 hours of voting the people of Scotland were determining their own future. It really did lie in their hands. We felt as if we were standing on the brink of something momentous.

Just after 11pm, I got to Dynamic Earth where Yes campaigners were assembling to watch the count. On arrival, the mood was sober. Exit polls were saying we had lost.

As the Clackmannanshire result was read out, disbelief turned to despair. Soon afterwards, I went home. My mate and I drowned our sorrows with a bottle of 12-year-old malt as the dawn brought no change.

In the 48 hours that followed, a strange sort of telepathic solidarity emerged in the despond of defeat. Tens of thousands joined the SNP.

I was one. We knew that this was not over.

Ten years on, it’s a good point to assess what sort of fist we’ve made of going forward. In fairness something like half of that time has been disrupted by Brexit and Covid, with the execution and aftermath of both derailing and delaying progress.

That said, the report card for the Yes movement is not great. Three things stand out for me. First, the dial has not really been shifted since 2014 with support for independence more or less where it was then.

OK, I know that for periods Yes has been in the lead, even getting over 50% during lockdown.

But for most of the time we’ve been in the minority – and that’s where we are now.

Some will contend that this in itself is a result. After all, these figures have been maintained with little active campaigning and with a hostile and belligerent Unionist opposition. Well maybe.

But is it not strange that given Brexit, war, cost of living crises and the palpable corruption of the British state, more people have not embraced the alternative of independence?

For me this statis suggests that for much of the last decade we have been talking to ourselves.

Time and energy have been expended in mobilising our existing supporters rather than going after new ones.

Even with Brexit we missed the opportunity. Yes, some new people switched to our cause, distraught at the prospect of leaving the European Union, and convinced that independence offered a way back.

But the manner in which we pegged the case for a second referendum on the changed circumstances of Brexit failed to convince most Europhile

No voters and put the backs up of many who just thought we were bad losers. I wonder what would have happened if we had focused on developing a vision for Scotland in Europe rather than becoming fixated on process.

I’m not blaming anyone. I’m as guilty as anyone. I made the speeches, wrote the articles, did the interviews, all claiming the question needed putting again since the goalposts had changed. I’m just saying it didn’t work. And those who do not learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

The second big change in the last 10 years is that the character of support for independence has changed. By polling day in 2014, the ranks of the solid quarter of the population who have always supported Scotland’s independence were swelled by hundreds of thousands of people attracted by the possibility of change it offered. It was new and exciting. And they were enthusiastic.

It doesn’t feel new any more.

Now many of the people who tell pollsters they support independence believe it to be desirable but unattainable. They are forlorn and sullen. They blame the SNP and others for not delivering and have lapsed into a fatalism which renders them inactive.

More than ever this movement needs to get its mojo back.

The third – and related – development of the last 10 years has been the deployment of an assertive Unionism determined to reject the very notion that Scotland could be an independent country.

The assault has been both legislative and political. The post-referendum 2016 Scotland Act devolved responsibility without means. The Internal Market Act and others severely constrained the operation of Holyrood. The increasing exercise of Section 35 orders made it clear who is boss.

Perhaps most of all, the Supreme Court ruled that the reserved matters in the 1998 Act meant not only that Holyrood did not have responsibility for the constitution, but that it could not even consult its electorate on changing it.

That has been used politically not just to deny mandates but to create the impression that there is no longer any point in seeking or obtaining them. The right of self-determination inherent in that vote 10 years ago is now denied.

So, it’s not been a great decade. But we are still here. And we know what needs to be done. A reimagining of what independence looks like, a new route map to allow people to choose it, and most of all a reassertion of the Claim of Right of the people of Scotland to determine the form or government they want. The next 10 years starts now.

The mildly irascible Robin McAlpine berates himself for Cassandra-like tendencies as he predicts what’s in store for the SNP. His eve of conference scene-setter is indeed laden with warnings of doom. Not for the first time he exaggerates to make his point. And not for the first time there’s something in what he says.

So, I was keen to catch the mood and tone of the conference to test whether his assumptions were accurate. Is the SNP capable of learning from the bruising experience of this year’s election and making changes sufficient to regroup in 2026?

There’s something of a paradox in Robin’s prescription. He critcises those in the party arguing we need a new charismatic leader, saying that the SNP has for too long relied on able communicators and now needs someone focused on systematic reform of policy and practice. Yet a few paragraphs later “I believe that means changing the leader now to at least try to give the impression that a new generation of the SNP is ready to take over”.

He is right, of course, in saying that parties often react to defeat with denial, citing examples aplenty where those responsible investigate their own performance before concluding that things are basically okay.

But on the evidence of this weekend’s discussion, I’d said that’d be an unfair conclusion to draw about the response of party leaders and activists to what happened on 4th July.

This was a smaller conference than those in recent years. The vestigial delegate entitlement in the SNP constitution from the days before it was a mass party means there’s never a full complement of delegates at these events. But there were fewer than before. Signs that some previous volunteers are demotivated. There were even a few who stayed away in protest at the own goal of a government minister meeting the Israeli government whilst it prosecutes genocide in Gaza (an error corrected by the conference by a robust emergency resolution in support of Palestine).

So, it might be the case that if the people who are most pissed off decline to attend, the mood of those who do turn up might be skewed in a more uncritical direction. If so, that was not obvious on this weekend’s showing.

Conference began with a half day internal discussion on the election. The media and observers were excluded, leaving delegates free to be candid with each other without worrying their every syllable would be misinterpreted by commentators determined to put a negative spin on their narrative.

I expressed the hope last week that we could strike the right balance between a robust, reflective discussion and staying wheest for fear of rocking the boat. That we could find a way to be honest and frank without degenerating into fractious division and taking lumps out of each other. I think we made a good start.

John Swinney struck a thoughtful balance, fronting a collective mea culpa on behalf of the leadership, and eschewing the self-pity that can lead to inertia and inaction. He looked to me like someone who knows things have to change and who is prepared to do it. He might well be the man to perform the role Robin says is now required.

And most of the delegates echoed this frank assessment. Not all, in fairness. A few still clutching on to the hope that it wasn’t really as bad as it looked, that at 30%, our vote share was one of our best ever performances in the history of the party. This is delusional of course and most of the others know it.

2024 was our worst electoral setback ever, and 30% is piss poor when you consider that four out of ten people abstained. Moreover, the people who did vote for us included not a few who had to have their arm twisted hard and who are hanging on to the party by their fingernails. Don’t think for a moment this is as bad as it gets.

In a strange way this collective understanding and admission of defeat created a positive and supportive atmosphere, making the 90th annual conference a weirdly pleasant event to be at. There were packed fringes, energetic debates, and a series of policies adopted reaffirming the party’s social-democratic credentials. So, things are moving, and in the right direction. We shall see if this self-reflection is sustained and if we can go far enough and fast enough.

Various factors make this more unpredictable. The level of distrust and abstention amongst the people, and the ever-increasing transience of their political affiliation mean things happen much more quickly than before. The speed of Labour’s betrayal of electoral promises has taken even its harshest critics by surprise and the disarray and rupture of the right mean that the recent political turbulence is far from quietened.

That will present threats and opportunities for the SNP. But on this weekend’s showing we look as if we might see them coming.

The SNP conference will begin the postmortem this Friday. What just happened is too big to ignore. Things won’t get better of their own accord. We need to put them right. Hopefully, we can have an honest and candid discussion.

We need to tread a line between indulging in fractious and divisive acrimony and feeling that any criticism and self-refection weaken us further.

This is possible. We can have a robust and serious debate for which we will be the stronger. But we will need to engage with each other with civility and respect. And to accept that no-one is blameless.

There is much to discuss and there is no one reason for the worst electoral setback in the party’s history. But some things are easier to reset than others. We can improve our performance in government. We can develop policy and relate it better to the here and now. We can, with a will, change our organisation.

The hardest part is agreeing a strategic assessment of where we are now and what we need to do to achieve our central aim of leading this country to self-government. This is the most important thing we need to fix, because it is central to winning back the support and participation of those who are already convinced of the merits of the case for independence but refused to vote for it on 4^th July.

To do this we need to go back to first principles. The people who live in this country have the right to decide how they are governed and what happens here. This centuries old notion of self-determination underpinned the Claim of Right for Scotland in 1989. That document, signed by all political parties bar the Tories, provided the ideological backcloth for the campaign for a Scottish parliament.

The right of people in Scotland to decide how they are governed was also recognised by the Cameron UK government when they agreed to the 2014 referendum. Indeed, following the election of a majority in the Scottish parliament committed to giving people a choice on their future, there was no suggestion that the UK should do anything other than facilitate it. And for 15 hours on the 18^th of September that year the people held their sovereignty in their own hands.

That was then. The situation now is vastly different. The policy of the UK government has since 2014 been to deny the right of the people to choose how they are governed, even when they elect a majority of representatives demanding that choice. The UK Supreme Court has determined that under existing constitutional law (principally the 1998 Scotland Act) the UK has every right to deny that claim and the Scottish government no power to press it. Moreover, a majority of people in Scotland have effectively just consented to that interpretation by voting for parties who also now deny that right.

This is the situation we need to change. Some argue that if the right is really a right then we exercise it anyway and simply ignore the Supreme Court and the UK government. The Scottish government should simply pass a bill to organise a referendum. If prevented from doing so by whatever measure then the next election should be fought as a de-facto referendum and if won, Scotland’s independence proclaimed.

I understand why people argue this. Indeed, I have an emotional attraction to it myself. But it won’t work. The first problem is that the right to self-determination is held by the people, not the party, not the government. And the people are very much not on board. It is not what they voted for in 2021, and definitely not in 2024.

But even if we the SNP were to win a majority to declare independence in 2026, the immediate question is us and whose army. Let us not pretend that the agencies of the British state will acquiesce in our enthusiasm. They will not. And they will use the full might of that state to block, and criminalise our attempts to change it, including the suspension of Holyrood and the imposition of direct rule.

Some argue that if we do not reject the authority of the UK in these matters that we are accepting it. That is just not true. It is possible to acknowledge a reality and still wish to change it.

There is a way to achieve self-government by popular consent even if the UK government is hostile to the objective. It means we agree that our central objective is to assert the Claim of Right and that therefore our principal demand is to amend the 1998 Act to remove the reservation of the constitution to the UK parliament.

Amongst other things this is what we should present to the electorate in 2026. If they give us a mandate, we should then build a two-year civic campaign to support the Scottish government when it presses that case on the UK. This is the first stage in a timeline that with a fair wind would take us to a referendum in the early 30s. And to be clear, if a majority are elected in 2026 denying the Claim of Right it will take even longer. No quick fixes. No just one more heave. Serious, determined, patient work.