> The future is here and it’s up for grabs. The protocols and ideas which dominated the West from 1945 now exist only in the minds of centrist politicians.
> The notion that a select cadre of middle-class professionals, safely ensconced for life in a handful of political parties, have the right to govern is dead.
> The people don’t care about the rules any more, because the rules haven’t worked for them.
> Since the millennium, there’s been fundamentally no difference between ruling parties in the West. Centrist governments adhered to an economic doctrine which crushed living standards for the poor, dismantled middle-class ambitions, and protected the rich.
> Astonishingly, it became the far-right, the hard-right, the populist-right, which saw the opportunity to fill the gap – and sometimes, like Donald Trump, swallowed failed governing parties. Today’s Trumps and Farages offer rage and blame. That’s worked.
> The left, which, theoretically at least, exists to help the poor, just abandoned its mission. Keir Starmer’s Government now swims against the tide of history. In an era when politics is bloody, he’s bloodless.
> Starmer took power simply because there was no alternative. Venality drained the Tories dry. So people voted in despair for insipid Starmer and his gutless manifesto
> Once he fails, where does Britain turn? There’s nowhere left but Reform.
> For an electorate desperate for change, for help – for a revolution in how we run society – Starmer merely presents a more managerial form of went before.
> Essentially, little will alter under Starmer. Corporations will still suck us dry, the poor will see living standards decline further, and the middle-class will watch their lives go backwards.
> People want action and passion. In a trajectory that historians will mull for centuries, it’s Trump and other far-right chancers providing that sense of action and passion.
> People want the status quo smashed. Far-right chancers offer to do the smashing.
> People want their grievances listened to … the far-right pretends to listen.
> Where is the left? Why is the left not full of its historic passion, why is the left not acting, not promising to smash the status quo, not listening to the people?
> The answer is this: what passes for the left was co-opted by the centre. It’s adopted positions barely distinguishable from the right on everything from immigration to economics. Traditional parties are now simply a centrist sludge.
> **All this matters to Scotland. We’re subject to the same historic tides, yet Scotland is the one western country where politics can play differently, because Scotland has a unique political dimension – called independence.**
> **Within independence there’s the same DNA which fuels public rage across the West: it’s essentially anti-status quo. Independence is a vehicle for absolute change; it’s the original disruptor ideology.**
> People don’t care how their rage is expressed or by whom; they don’t care who brings change, or disrupts the status quo. People just want their anger acknowledged, and for someone to kick in doors on their behalf. People want the status quo dead. Again, it doesn’t matter who does the killing.
> If the left could find the guts and brains to position itself as a populist movement on behalf of the people, it could neutralise the far-right.
> **The far-right promises to smash the status quo – not by changing the economic system, but crucifying migrants. That, in the end, will change nothing. The rich will get richer. The far-right pretends it’s pro-worker, but it really loves the wealthy.**
> The left needs to find its backbone and promise to obliterate the status quo on behalf of the people, by turning its fire on profiteering corporations, companies gouging the consumer, and the tax-dodging super-rich.
> Harness rage and champion the working-class, and the left can ride the wave of change. Stay the same and the left is finished for generations – replaced as a movement of the people by the far-right. If that happens, our society’s decline merely accelerates.
> **Independence can refashion itself around a populist left message. Make the Yes movement angry, an agent of real change – not an advocate of palace revolution as it was in 2014 where all that would have altered was the flag. Make it a threat to the status quo, make it stand shoulder to shoulder with the people.**
> Farage will soon be close to power. For now, Scotland remains more inclined to the left than the right. There’s time to reposition the Yes movement as the ultimate opposition to British right-wing extremism – to use Farage as the bogeyman he is. **The message from the independence movement should be: ‘It’s either us or them, Reform or Independence, vote Yes or get PM Farage’.**
> John Swinney is as insipid as Starmer. These aren’t the people which the moment demands. Swinney and Starmer will eventually be swept away by the tide of history that’s rolling around the world. We can’t get swept away with them.
> An equation can be crafted to explain the state of the West: decades of political failure by the same bunch of people, plus decades of financial agony, equals the end of the road for the status quo.
> People are angry. The only side offering to act on anger is the far-right. The left must find its own populist expression of anger; nobody wants meaningless platitudes anymore.
> **In Scotland, there’s a ready-made vehicle to express public anger: independence.**
> For the SNP to lead such a movement, it would have to collapse amid electoral defeat and then refashion itself. That could happen, but it might take too long before those historic tides beat our way.
> The worst possible scenario is that the SNP simply clings to power, thereby suffocating hopes of the Yes movement morphing into a left populist vehicle.
> If that happens, the hard-right will one day take Scotland too – because the status quo cannot continue. The people will not permit that to happen.
>The choice is clear for Scots – the far-right or independence
i choose option 3
Request security access. Computer, destruct sequence one, code 1, 1-A
Loopy
Federal UK
Wasn’t it already?
Threats. Yeah that’ll work. Threaten us to vote for independence.
Edit : Also Ireland have literally just rejected the far right. Where do the SNP get off with the assumption that Scotland is going to turn to them?
Just one problem, where are you going to find the charismatic leader for this?
During the 2014 campaign, I once said that Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage could become PM and also that Brexit could happen despite us voting against it. Everyone laughed.
I’ve got two out of three unfortunately right.
AHH…when persuading doesn’t work you just threaten.
I don’t know if this guy needs to get offline a bit more and speak to people outside the bubble, but Scotland isnt exactly a bunch of socialists waiting to revolt.
A leftwing populist movement would be welcome to me…why interrupt someone when they’re making a mistake
Political person, claiming that we have to agree with them, otherwise a big bad boogeyman will come.
Never heard that before.
Sorry but writing an entire article about how the centre ground left poor people behind and then ending with the solution of “populist independence campaign” is Onion article worthy.
Does the author not realise how much public funding for the impoverished will need to be cut to even be considered for EU membership? This “solution” being framed as beneficial for poor people, at least for the next decade, is as truthful as the Leave campaign.
Farage will never be PM.
Why can it not be just a sensible centrist country instead of the nonsense of left/right wing?
Let me guess, Neil Mackay is a left wing populist?
Isn’t populism pretty much what they’ve been trying already? Doesn’t seem to have done the job.
Farage it is then.
So we should rebel against a landslide for the centre left and move to momentum mark 2.
Why the fuck would we do that?
The independence movement is sounding increasingly desperate these days.
Farage is our next prime minister and anyone thinking otherwise is really just kidding themselves.
With the weight (and money) of Elon and the republican propaganda machine behind them England will vote reform and we’ll get landed with them
…and those are the only options?
Did everyone miss that Trump is more popular in Scotland than anywhere else. Leftwing doesn’t sound like a guarantee.
Advocating for populism shows how very empty this persons moral compass really is.
I cannot believe it’s being used as some sort of rallying call. Populism is not something to aspire to.
This sub overstates know right wing the uk is by a long shot.
1 we have very progressive income tax. Look it up. Low and median earners may a much smaller proportion than most of developed places.
2 overall tax burden is highest in decades on high earners and lowest on low earners. It’s about 43 percent of gdp which is pretty typical European standards.
3 the most left wing health system in the word.
4 one of the fe counties in Europe that has voted in a Center left government as opposed to moving right.
5 reform is our biggest right wing party but not far right traditionally like the gemans,i Italian, French etc. more American republicans types.
6 very liberal immigration and one of the best in Europe for integration. Still lots of problem there but remember it is relative people. I mean just l google the stats.
Or move to the moderate centre and try to engage with No voters to find out and find solutions to why they voted that way.
I’ll tell you something though, 55% of people didn’t vote No because the proposed government wasn’t left wing enough.
There’s no point in leaving the UK if you just want to continue the same bureaucratic centralism of Westminster. If this is the dichotomy then we’re between a rock and a hard place.
I thought your team hated “scaremongering”.
Unless there are serious changes in immigration Farage’s popularity will only grow.
As a socialist, I think MacKay’s talking out his arse. Yes Scotland 2.0 needs to be big tent, pan political spectrum and very… VERY loosely attached (if at all) to the SNP. If anything its inspiration needs to come from the campaign for devolution from the late 1980’s onwards.
There won’t be a referendum either till support for independence is substantially more than 50%.
Regardless of independence, Scotland needs a popular socialist movement. Unfortunately I don’t see any leaders…
Nationalist and socialist O.o I’ve heard that term somewhere.
Impossible whilst they’re embracing silly trans nonsense
31 comments
> The future is here and it’s up for grabs. The protocols and ideas which dominated the West from 1945 now exist only in the minds of centrist politicians.
> The notion that a select cadre of middle-class professionals, safely ensconced for life in a handful of political parties, have the right to govern is dead.
> The people don’t care about the rules any more, because the rules haven’t worked for them.
> Since the millennium, there’s been fundamentally no difference between ruling parties in the West. Centrist governments adhered to an economic doctrine which crushed living standards for the poor, dismantled middle-class ambitions, and protected the rich.
> Astonishingly, it became the far-right, the hard-right, the populist-right, which saw the opportunity to fill the gap – and sometimes, like Donald Trump, swallowed failed governing parties. Today’s Trumps and Farages offer rage and blame. That’s worked.
> The left, which, theoretically at least, exists to help the poor, just abandoned its mission. Keir Starmer’s Government now swims against the tide of history. In an era when politics is bloody, he’s bloodless.
> Starmer took power simply because there was no alternative. Venality drained the Tories dry. So people voted in despair for insipid Starmer and his gutless manifesto
> Once he fails, where does Britain turn? There’s nowhere left but Reform.
> For an electorate desperate for change, for help – for a revolution in how we run society – Starmer merely presents a more managerial form of went before.
> Essentially, little will alter under Starmer. Corporations will still suck us dry, the poor will see living standards decline further, and the middle-class will watch their lives go backwards.
> People want action and passion. In a trajectory that historians will mull for centuries, it’s Trump and other far-right chancers providing that sense of action and passion.
> People want the status quo smashed. Far-right chancers offer to do the smashing.
> People want their grievances listened to … the far-right pretends to listen.
> Where is the left? Why is the left not full of its historic passion, why is the left not acting, not promising to smash the status quo, not listening to the people?
> The answer is this: what passes for the left was co-opted by the centre. It’s adopted positions barely distinguishable from the right on everything from immigration to economics. Traditional parties are now simply a centrist sludge.
> **All this matters to Scotland. We’re subject to the same historic tides, yet Scotland is the one western country where politics can play differently, because Scotland has a unique political dimension – called independence.**
> **Within independence there’s the same DNA which fuels public rage across the West: it’s essentially anti-status quo. Independence is a vehicle for absolute change; it’s the original disruptor ideology.**
> People don’t care how their rage is expressed or by whom; they don’t care who brings change, or disrupts the status quo. People just want their anger acknowledged, and for someone to kick in doors on their behalf. People want the status quo dead. Again, it doesn’t matter who does the killing.
> If the left could find the guts and brains to position itself as a populist movement on behalf of the people, it could neutralise the far-right.
> **The far-right promises to smash the status quo – not by changing the economic system, but crucifying migrants. That, in the end, will change nothing. The rich will get richer. The far-right pretends it’s pro-worker, but it really loves the wealthy.**
> The left needs to find its backbone and promise to obliterate the status quo on behalf of the people, by turning its fire on profiteering corporations, companies gouging the consumer, and the tax-dodging super-rich.
> Harness rage and champion the working-class, and the left can ride the wave of change. Stay the same and the left is finished for generations – replaced as a movement of the people by the far-right. If that happens, our society’s decline merely accelerates.
> **Independence can refashion itself around a populist left message. Make the Yes movement angry, an agent of real change – not an advocate of palace revolution as it was in 2014 where all that would have altered was the flag. Make it a threat to the status quo, make it stand shoulder to shoulder with the people.**
> Farage will soon be close to power. For now, Scotland remains more inclined to the left than the right. There’s time to reposition the Yes movement as the ultimate opposition to British right-wing extremism – to use Farage as the bogeyman he is. **The message from the independence movement should be: ‘It’s either us or them, Reform or Independence, vote Yes or get PM Farage’.**
> John Swinney is as insipid as Starmer. These aren’t the people which the moment demands. Swinney and Starmer will eventually be swept away by the tide of history that’s rolling around the world. We can’t get swept away with them.
> An equation can be crafted to explain the state of the West: decades of political failure by the same bunch of people, plus decades of financial agony, equals the end of the road for the status quo.
> People are angry. The only side offering to act on anger is the far-right. The left must find its own populist expression of anger; nobody wants meaningless platitudes anymore.
> **In Scotland, there’s a ready-made vehicle to express public anger: independence.**
> For the SNP to lead such a movement, it would have to collapse amid electoral defeat and then refashion itself. That could happen, but it might take too long before those historic tides beat our way.
> The worst possible scenario is that the SNP simply clings to power, thereby suffocating hopes of the Yes movement morphing into a left populist vehicle.
> If that happens, the hard-right will one day take Scotland too – because the status quo cannot continue. The people will not permit that to happen.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/24766029.scotlands-future-pm-farage-left-wing-populist-independence/#comments-anchor
this is similar to [this one](https://np.reddit.com/r/Scotland/comments/1h3zhuv/the_choice_is_clear_for_scots_the_farright_or/)
>The choice is clear for Scots – the far-right or independence
i choose option 3
Request security access. Computer, destruct sequence one, code 1, 1-A
Loopy
Federal UK
Wasn’t it already?
Threats. Yeah that’ll work. Threaten us to vote for independence.
Edit : Also Ireland have literally just rejected the far right. Where do the SNP get off with the assumption that Scotland is going to turn to them?
Just one problem, where are you going to find the charismatic leader for this?
During the 2014 campaign, I once said that Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage could become PM and also that Brexit could happen despite us voting against it. Everyone laughed.
I’ve got two out of three unfortunately right.
AHH…when persuading doesn’t work you just threaten.
I don’t know if this guy needs to get offline a bit more and speak to people outside the bubble, but Scotland isnt exactly a bunch of socialists waiting to revolt.
A leftwing populist movement would be welcome to me…why interrupt someone when they’re making a mistake
Political person, claiming that we have to agree with them, otherwise a big bad boogeyman will come.
Never heard that before.
Sorry but writing an entire article about how the centre ground left poor people behind and then ending with the solution of “populist independence campaign” is Onion article worthy.
Does the author not realise how much public funding for the impoverished will need to be cut to even be considered for EU membership? This “solution” being framed as beneficial for poor people, at least for the next decade, is as truthful as the Leave campaign.
Farage will never be PM.
Why can it not be just a sensible centrist country instead of the nonsense of left/right wing?
Let me guess, Neil Mackay is a left wing populist?
Isn’t populism pretty much what they’ve been trying already? Doesn’t seem to have done the job.
Farage it is then.
So we should rebel against a landslide for the centre left and move to momentum mark 2.
Why the fuck would we do that?
The independence movement is sounding increasingly desperate these days.
Farage is our next prime minister and anyone thinking otherwise is really just kidding themselves.
With the weight (and money) of Elon and the republican propaganda machine behind them England will vote reform and we’ll get landed with them
…and those are the only options?
Did everyone miss that Trump is more popular in Scotland than anywhere else. Leftwing doesn’t sound like a guarantee.
https://news.stv.tv/politics/scots-are-donald-trumps-biggest-supporters-in-western-europe-survey-finds
Advocating for populism shows how very empty this persons moral compass really is.
I cannot believe it’s being used as some sort of rallying call. Populism is not something to aspire to.
This sub overstates know right wing the uk is by a long shot.
1 we have very progressive income tax. Look it up. Low and median earners may a much smaller proportion than most of developed places.
2 overall tax burden is highest in decades on high earners and lowest on low earners. It’s about 43 percent of gdp which is pretty typical European standards.
3 the most left wing health system in the word.
4 one of the fe counties in Europe that has voted in a Center left government as opposed to moving right.
5 reform is our biggest right wing party but not far right traditionally like the gemans,i Italian, French etc. more American republicans types.
6 very liberal immigration and one of the best in Europe for integration. Still lots of problem there but remember it is relative people. I mean just l google the stats.
Or move to the moderate centre and try to engage with No voters to find out and find solutions to why they voted that way.
I’ll tell you something though, 55% of people didn’t vote No because the proposed government wasn’t left wing enough.
There’s no point in leaving the UK if you just want to continue the same bureaucratic centralism of Westminster. If this is the dichotomy then we’re between a rock and a hard place.
I thought your team hated “scaremongering”.
Unless there are serious changes in immigration Farage’s popularity will only grow.
As a socialist, I think MacKay’s talking out his arse. Yes Scotland 2.0 needs to be big tent, pan political spectrum and very… VERY loosely attached (if at all) to the SNP. If anything its inspiration needs to come from the campaign for devolution from the late 1980’s onwards.
There won’t be a referendum either till support for independence is substantially more than 50%.
Regardless of independence, Scotland needs a popular socialist movement. Unfortunately I don’t see any leaders…
Nationalist and socialist O.o I’ve heard that term somewhere.
Impossible whilst they’re embracing silly trans nonsense
Comments are closed.