A Plan to Change Britain
Our Scottish Future Chair Professor Jim Gallagher delivered a key note lecture last week on the proposals by the Commission on the Future of the UK, published by Gordon Brown in December. The plans drew
For the Scotland we deserve
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News
Health Gap Leading to NHS Crisis
The poorest people in Scotland are 72% more likely to end up in hospital emergency beds than the richest, according to a major new study today which reveals the impact of Scotland’s health inequalities on the NHS.
Scotland Needs to Find a Better Way Than The SNP’s Brexit-Style Referendum
As the Scottish Parliament debates Indyref2, Prof Jim Gallagher says Scotland needs to find a better, more consensus-driven, way forward
What we believe in
Radical Change: Scotland has everything it needs to be a leading country in Europe – coming out of COVID it is time to recover our NHS, restore our education system, end child poverty, and ensure a just transition to a more fair, prosperous green economy
Urgency: Scotland deserves better than another decade of political, economic and social stagnation. We cannot afford for politics to continue to focus on what we could do tomorrow at the expense of what we can do today
Devolution:The power and resources to make change happen should be in the hands of our communities, not hoarded in Westminster or Holyrood. Scotland and Britain’s devolution journey is still its infancy – our governments in Edinburgh and London must do more to empower and embolden local democracy and local decision-making
Co-Operation: We believe in a Union of cooperation, founded on the sense of solidarity and empathy that people across these islands share with one another. We can get the Scotland we deserve more quickly and more safely through co-operation between Scotland’s governments than through independence
Mutual Respect: Whatever happens over the next decade Scotland will continue to be shared by all of us – we believe that it is only by listening to each other and finding common ground between people of different backgrounds and beliefs that we can bring about lasting change and a happier country
As Covid recedes, the idea of a new Britain has more resonance and credibility than the talk of a new Britain in 1997. It will be a Britain whose unity evolves out of our diversity and is built on a shared belief in equal rights guaranteed to all, with personal responsibility the duty of all. The next step is to reconstruct our institutions to reflect that better Britain as a force for good.
We deserve a politics in Scotland that deals with the massive challenges that face my generation - climate change, inequality, social justice. Sticking us in camps marked Unionist and Nationalist isn't going to get us anywhere. If we want to build a better Scotland, right now, we have at least try to find a way forward together.
In Scotland, and internationally, ours is an age of crisis: climate crisis, drugs death crisis, poverty crisis, housing crisis… I could go on. The scale of our response must match the urgency of our emergency. We cannot wait. In Scotland, we can be radical and we must act now.
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