Does Scotland understand the world has changed?

The US-Israeli attack on Iran is as reckless as it is illegal. It is also exposing the failure of the western alliance to come to terms with what this means at a pace appropriate to the risk. Almost all commentators agree the global order has been changed fundamentally and permanently but the European powers in particular appear to be struggling to accept the implications fast enough.

This is even more true here. The 'political 20th century' is clearly over yet there is no evidence this is filtering seriously into domestic politics in Edinburgh or London. This poses significant risk to us, but not in the way that is being talked about most (it still isn’t primarily a military threat).

Even the early-century norm-breaking of the Iraq War paid at least lip service to those 20th century norms; the Trump administration has shredded them. The response on these shores appears to be Keir Starmer and John Swinney united in denial of reality, the hope that this will all just go away and leave them alone. We are outliers in the world in this.

Here are some of the shifts which are taking place just now. In each case you can add 'except Britain and especially not in Scotland'. Almost every European country is as a priority examining its exposure to US technology platforms which underpin our society but which can be weaponised from Washington. There is a race away from US tech across Europe.

Most of the world – including Europe – is looking with concern at the global financial system and the way the US has relentlessly weaponised that too. There are two trends worth noting. First, there has been a 'drift away from the dollar' for a while now and there are clear signs this is accelerating. The dollar cannot both be the global reserve currency and a coercive tool of US foreign policy.

Second, there is a rapid move away from reliance on US payment systems. In Europe about 95 per cent of card payments go via either Visa or Mastercard (depending on how you calculate, this may be up to 90 per cent of all payments).

Both are proprietary US systems and both are being weaponised – International Criminal Court prosecutors are under US sanctions and so their access (personally and professional) to these payment systems has been entirely blocked. This is a massive economic risk if it were to be imposed at a national level. This is also true of the Swift interbank payment system which accounts for 50 per cent of the world's cross-border currency transactions.

The EU is not ditching Swift altogether but it is diversifying its options so it cannot be blocked from global financial markets if the US became hostile. It is also developing a European payment platform to replace Visa and Mastercard. Even Britain is exploring this (but given our subservient mindset we are including Visa and Mastercard in the planning...).

None of this is touching Scotland at all. It appears that no-one takes the SNP's policy on post-independence financial arrangements seriously or all of this would be a subject for debate. Common Weal has produced a policy paper on how to set up Scotland’s own payment system (which it's author describes in today's National). The SNP did not consider this.

Nor has it ever presented a coherent plan for producing financial reserves (Common Weal's plan is here) so there is nothing serious to revise given current events. Its official policy is currently not to have a currency at all but to use someone else's. This looks increasingly unhinged in the current geopolitical climate. There is no debate about our software infrastructure at all and there has never been a post-independence plan (Common Weal's is now out of date but is here).

So the SNP has no coherent policy in a wide range of crucial areas (if it is serious about independence) which means it cannot update them in the face of current events. That is not a serious approach to nation-building.

But perhaps the biggest impact of what is happening will be gauged on our economic policy. At the moment our primary economic policy is to sell Scotland's assets to largely US-based wealth funds (though we're diversifying into unsavoury Gulf State wealth funds as well). We are currently selling Scotland cheaply to a nation which is acting increasingly hostilely towards us.

The First Minister is currently following a strategy of taking a position on current geopolitics which is precisely the same as Keir Starmer's. He appears to think this reduces political risk when in reality it is a major source of political risk. Yet if our behaviour after the attack on Iran remains the same as our behaviour before, we are very clearly in denial.