Scotland’s future is now clear; ambition or subordination

Over the devolution years Scotland’s leaders have become more and more cautious and have internalised more and more doubt about Scotland’s ability to try big things. In a world in turmoil, we either shake this affliction or we suffer.

Last week I was bemoaning Scotland's stultifying governing class orthodoxy and outlining the ways in which it is holding Scotland down. Since then I have found myself facing that orthodoxy again more than once, and actually I don't think it is holding us down, I think it is cutting us to shreds.

The various examples that I have encountered in under seven days don't really matter; what does matter is that you understand this overriding orthodoxy and that it angers you enough that in some near, foreseeable future you join the fight to get rid of it.

The governing orthodoxy I want to slay is that Scotland can't do anything. Nothing Scotland tries could or will work and in any case it is all illegal and that is that.

Well let me give you a different perspective, because this is a code red, seven bells emergency on multiple fronts. Geopolitically, democratically, socially, environmentally, Mark Carney couldn't have put it better – this is a rupture not a transition. The old is gone so if you can't build the new, you're fucked. You really are.

Just like no-one believed us when we were saying this five or six years ago (the Mark Carney speech at times sounded like he'd lifted his thinking from Common Weal), soon no-one will not believe that this was a moment when serious, radical, bold action was needed. So why is Scotland so against it?

You might be amazed just how much effort Scotland's rulers put into this. They have wall after wall of highly paid officials whose job seems to be to prevent things happening, just in case. You get promoted for saying what is impossible and for imposing that nihilistic certainty on everyone who foolishly believes they might be able to do something.

This is a case of becoming what you say; officialdom in Scotland has been trying to block change for so long that it has slowly morphed into a superstructure of failure. It is no longer just trying to block change, it has come to believe change is impossible.

Some of this is corruption. I have been told so many times that something or other is illegal under EU law that I just glaze over, knowing full well that the thing which I'm being told is illegal is common practice in other EU countries. And it is always something which would have challenged the interests of a corporation with a close relationship with those telling you it is illegal.

I have been told that reforming procurement to give Scottish businesses a chance was illegal. I was told that a state-owned shipbuilder was illegal. I was told that land reform was illegal. I am still being told that public ownership of energy is illegal. It's like if you challenge corporate interests or the interests of the powerful, someone just shouts 'illegal'.

But it's not just 'you're not allowed', there is also a lot of 'that could never work here'. We cling to outdated public sector software systems because we're afraid to develop fit for purpose ones. We never start big initiatives like National Energy Companies or National Care Services because we don't really have the courage to try, and we bottle it if it challenges a vested interest anyway.

In fact there is an entire framework of failure built into the system, so many sceptics littered all over the policy landscape and empowered to slow or stop new developments, so many would-be 'village elders' who owe their position to sucking air through there teeth with a world-weary sigh.

And then of course there are all the external forces who want public policy to serve them and their clients by making sure nothing ever replaces them. Among the worst of those are the big consultancies that control policy development and specifically want us to 'buy' goods and services from their corporate clients. All roads always lead back to yesterday, that decade when they all made themselves rich. They want it to last forever.

For them the process is the outcome. For them another round of commissioned powerpoint slides and target operating models is how government is done. Delivering something isn't the point; the working group to discuss the thing being delivered is the point. And eventually it will all (and I really do mean all) lead to the private sector. We don't build, we issue contracts.

Let me quote the excellent Carney speech again; this is not sovereignty, it’s the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination. Hear hear. Scotland has been performing sovereignty since devolution – look at our big parliament! Watch as we do nothing just in case doing something doesn't work! Marvel at our working groups! Our targets! Our performance-unrelated pay bonuses!

“I really have had enough of our addiction to pre-emptive failure and I’m becoming deeply concerned about how far behind we are being left”

Now dolly out (which is when a cinema camera rolls back on tracks to reveal a wider picture). What is towering over Scotland as Scotland cowers? Big Things. Big, Important Things. Like climate change. Like the breakdown of the world order. Like unstable US technology platforms. Like potential global trade disruption. Like internal rebellion from scunnered citizens. Like AI.

Just as the Scottish Parliament and those in it have sought to make themselves small lest anything hits them, so the threats and challenges have grown and grown. It is all out of proportion now. The performance of sovereignty means John Swinney is offering to send troops to Ukraine when the truth is that we can't get a ferry full of passengers across to Arran.

Corruption, low quality leaders, convoluted policy structures, quangos that act like speed bumps to slow everything down, corporate lobbyists who undermine change, consultants who deliberately undermine good government, a general lack of national self confidence – choose your reasons but accept the reality.

Novelist Tomassi di Lampedusa said of his home island “In Sicily it doesn't matter whether things are done well or done badly; the sin which we Sicilians never forgive is simply that of 'doing' at all”. Likewise, in Scotland the only true sin is to try, and the only true sinners are those with an idea.

I rather fear that if the current Scottish regime had been in power in 1939 it would simply have surrendered. Britain's leaders back then managed to increase coal production by five million tonnes a week in the course of two or three months, yet if I ask a policymaker to at least consider rationalising Scotland's public sector data or to start a National Energy Company, they dismiss it with derisory laugh.

If you think I exaggerate any of this, go and try and find someone who has tried to do something in Scotland and tried to get Scotland's public sector to support them or act as a partner and ask them how they got on.

I've been thinking about this a lot this week because of a conversation I had at the weekend. The subject really doesn't matter, but the tone of the conversation does. I was asking someone I know about how to go about doing something that I think is now pretty urgent, but is fairly large in scale. She kept telling me every reason it couldn't be done.

Then I pointed out that it was being done just now in another European country. Oh sure, she replied, they could do it there. And yet there is no fundamental difference in the two nations being discussed other than in their heads. Because it comes back to that absolutely spot-on quote from Henry Ford; “whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right”.

Because fundamentally there is nothing wrong with Scotland – quite the contrary. Scotland has enormous resources, a phenomenal track record of innovation, discovery and creation (if you go back a bit), a highly educated population, a developed economy and a relatively stable democracy. We have some skills gaps and we lack a proper domestic industry based, but none of the fundamentals are 'missing'.

The problem is us, our expectations of ourselves. We have vacillated between politicians who were scared to try big initiatives and politicians who wanted to talk about big initiatives without having the nerve to push through delivery in a risk-averse system.

It needs people to step forward and say not 'we can't' but 'we will'. And by 'we will' I mean setting out a bold and ambitious plan because we believe it is needed and making it happen without watering it down to a fraction of the original ambition. I mean a leadership class who will say 'no, properly, try again' not 'oh, that'll do then I guess'.

We 100 per cent know this can be done because it happens every time there is a war (both Ukraine and Russia have absolutely innovated their economies because they were left with no choice). We know that people who have unlimited money and little fear of failure can do it. We know that China can do it. We know that we used to be able to do it.

I really have had enough of our addiction to pre-emptive failure and I'm becoming deeply concerned about how far behind we are being left in this 'best small country leading the world in an arc of prosperity' (to mangle the catchphrases of three First Ministers). Because we're not the best small country if measured by outcomes, we're not in an arc of prosperity and we're leading the world in very little.

I don't doubt Scotland, but I have enormous reservations about its gatekeepers. They are like succubus, seducing us with their self certainty then sucking the life force out of the nation as they roll over and let corporations run our lives.

Let me offer a final warning on this; in ten years from now the world in which we are living is likely to be pretty unrecognisable from the one we are in now. Little is going to stand the test of time, much will be replaced, rebuilt and rethought. None of that is going to happen all by itself.

It's a rupture, not a transition. We have to start believing we're the kind of people who can. We can’t perform sovereignty any longer and pretend it isn't subjugation. The worst thing of all is that our first surrender has been to ourselves. This cannot be allowed to go on.