Thu, 14 May 2026 17:56:17 GMT

Our Ane... Cast your mind to Ireland for a second. They're sitting there, watching Westminster, not with anger, not even with pity, just a quiet, knowing smile. Ireland watched the Tories implode repeatedly, each replacement somehow less convincing than the last. From Dublin it looked like a docusoap. Compelling viewing, happening to someone else. Then they watched a man who treated the highest office in Britain like a personal inconvenience stumble through years of it, and Ireland, who remembered when that country ran theirs, thought simply:

we got out just in time.

Then Ireland watched Labour arrive. The party of the working people. The party that built the NHS, and then they heard "island of strangers" and watched austerity return wearing a different coloured tie, families still choosing between heating and eating while the press releases just got longer. Ireland changed the channel, it wasn't their problem anymore.

They watched the NHS, built by the people, for the people, quietly handed to people whose primary interest was never anyone's health. Ireland remembered what it was like to have no say in any of it. They knew that things like this don't break by accident.

But Ireland had done something about it. They built a civil service, embassies, economic frameworks, infrastructure... all of it, from scratch, against the odds, with every reason to doubt themselves. Was it hard? Aye. They're now one of the wealthiest nations in Europe and they haven't looked back once. Now they watch Westminster the way you watch a documentary about a country you used to live in. Familiar, occasionally alarming, no longer their circus.

Now cast your mind to Scotland. Watching the same programme. Except we can't change the channel.

Scotland watched all of this knowing these are the people making decisions about our lives, people we didn't elect, policies we rejected, Values that have never reflected ours. This isn't democracy, it's an arrangement nobody here agreed to, sustained by the same tired argument... too wee, too poor, too stupid, that was never really about our capacity.

Scotland has world-class universities, renewable energy that could power a continent, cities people cross oceans to visit, and resources that filled someone else's treasury for fifty years, the argument was always about their appetite, not our ability. We've been told to get back in our box so many times the box has got wallpaper. And yet Scotland hasn't gotten worse for having a government that actually focuses on Scotland. Westminster hates that. It rather proves the point.

The Claim of Right states that sovereignty lies with the Scottish people. Not Westminster! Not Whitehall! Not whoever currently occupies Downing Street! Us. That's not a radical position. That's just what it says.

So imagine it. Energy policy designed for where we actually live, housing built for communities, not portfolios. Social policy that reflects what Scottish voters have said, clearly and consistently, for decades. Decisions made by people with genuine skin in the game. And imagine the jobs alone: the civil service, the diplomatic corps, the regulatory bodies, the entire infrastructure of a functioning independent nation, built here, staffed here, serving here. The shot in the arm that Westminster either took for granted or simply never gave.

Ireland did exactly this! They sat where we're sitting & now they watch Westminster like we watch a particularly chaotic foreign election, gripped, grateful it isn't us. But it is!

It doesn't matter what colour comes next. The parties were never ours. The priorities were never ours. The vision (such as it is) was never built with us in mind. So walk away from all of it. Walk toward something that is actually ours. Fight for our ane.

And the next time Westminster burns itself down, and it will! We won't feel that hollow, trapped feeling of watching someone else's chaos shape our lives. We'll be Ireland. Watching. Unbothered. Running our own country.