“Faced by the humiliation of Scottish democracy, we can choose either to hope that the Tories and the central British state will fail to press their advantage, or we can demand change in Scotland.”
David Jamieson
“Chillingly, body-bags for those lost to Britian’s world-beating excess mortality rate were being flogged to this Conservative dinner party set at 14 times the market rate.”
Analysis: Epic grift at the heart of the UK pandemic response has Hancock squirming
“Little to nothing hinted at in Starmer’s speech – or more concretely asserted by Conservative leaders – could even be countenanced by a new state without its own central bank or control over monetary policy. These are ideas for the wrong century, and the gulf is widening.”
Analysis: The coming UK Budget could be a blow to the austerity-mongers – and the left
“The Catalans have been both talking and acting, with mixed and confusing results. But even their confusions are more fruitful than baseless certainties, and unexamined problems.”
Analysis: The ‘western independistas’ are yet to win their battles, but the Catalans are trying
“A more defensive and authoritarian stance from the US and UK states against the anti-bomb movement is growing.”
Analysis: The fight against Trident has gone global, and so has the repression
“There’s no evidence so far that the contradiction between the need to win back dozens of Scottish seats and the hope that a Union Jack will somehow reconstruct the torched bridges to former Labour strongholds is causing any friction in the minds of Starmer or his immediate circle.”
David Jamieson: Starmer’s ‘national’ turn makes little sense in a fractured Union
“What should really worry us, is that the current plan for an independent Scotland would leave us in a position of supplicancy even more grovelling than those small debtor nations during the European debt crisis.”
David Jamieson: The Irish debacle is proof of EU contempt for small nations
“Not only has the leadership of the independence movement not developed an economic prospectus, it hasn’t developed a social prospectus for people who won’t be fooled any longer. For a movement which was an anti-austerity insurgency, fuelled by anger over decades of de-industrialisation and yawning inequality, this is a heinous mutation.”
David Jamieson: The independence movement needs an economic prospectus for the age of #GameStop
” As in the 2003 global anti-war protests, internationalism from below contrasts sharply with an international conspiracy of powerful states and their clients.”
Analysis: As the world protests the slaughter of Yemen, Scotland has a special responsibility
“Free trade regimes – either EU or UK – are incompatible with environmentally sound and socially just economic development, as the fishing communities know only too well.”