
A Proposal by Robbie Mochrie
Summary
Political strategies to achieve Scottish independence have achieved sustained electoral success, but have not identified an agreed path to achieving the ultimate objective. This reflects the design of the devolved institutions, which have authority, while lacking important powers of a national government. The UK government has recently demonstrated greater willingness to exploit that power asymmetry to defeat ongoing attempts to achieve Scottish independence.
The achievement of substantial constitutional change requires the clearly expressed consent of the people. Political legitimacy tends to follow from the establishment of social consensus. The emphasis on political process, specifically the question of how to achieve independence, has made it more difficult to establish that consensus. At the same time, the broader social movement is fragmented and under-capitalised. This briefing note argues that it needs substantial consolidation and recapitalisation, so that it can develop the capabilities it will need to demonstrate that as an independent country, Scotland has would be better placed.
This note proposes the establishment of a National Governance Society of Scotland. The (clumsy) name is intended to emphasise that it will be democratic, mass-membership organisation, which is concerned with developing the structures and government culture which to support Scotland’s successful social and economic development after independence.
The proposed Society would:
· Use participative decision making structures co-design and co-produce new institutions of government;
· Play a role in the design and implementation of the critical test of support for independence, which would be a prelude to independence negotiations with the UK government;
· Provide the secretariat for the Scottish representatives in these negotiations; and
· Establish the essential leadership structures for an independent country, transferring their ownership to the Government of Scotland after independence.
Introduction
Strong ties hold nation states together. Without war or political crisis, secession is rare. And without the presence of a broad social movement legitimating the demands of political parties, it never happens. Scotland’s independence supporting political parties, especially the SNP, will have an important role in the achievement of independence. But they can only be a vehicle for the expression of the wishes of Scotland’s people. Indeed, through their participation in the governance of the union state until Scotland becomes independent, they will work within the constraints of the political union. Inadvertently, they will uphold the union’s institutions, even as they argue for their dissolution.
The generational shift in the political leadership of the SNP, with a closely contested leadership election earlier this year, makes this an especially good time to broaden the base of the independence movement. Since the SNP won a Parliamentary majority in the Scottish General Election of 2011, there has been substantial emphasis on political strategies which would lead to Scottish independence, which have emphasised the process by which Scots might make the decision to establish an independent country. Partly as a result, insufficient attention has been paid to the need to establish a broad social movement to enable Scottish independence by demonstrating clearly and persuasively that the country has the capabilities needed to be independent.
With its advocates’ reliance on political processes, which are naturally adversarial, Scottish independence has remained as deeply contested, and divisive as Brexit. There is a risk that if Scots choose independence by a similarly narrow margin as in the Brexit referendum, the lack of social consensus will cause formidable challenges in setting up the new country, especially in negotiations with the continuing UK government. In this note, I assert that the best way for the country to avoid that outcome is through the establishment of a broad social movement, which would advocate independence in new ways, enabling the political decision to be taken with much less risk.
The independence movement also needs to address the certainty among supporters of the union that the UK is naturally a single country. That understanding justifies the belief that the UK Government can take almost any action to avoid its dissolution. Since leaving the European Union, the UK Government has acted aggressively in its relationships with the devolved governments. We have seen the UK Government becoming more imaginative in its arguments that the Scottish Government’s policies infringe on reserved matters, while also being willing to act directly in areas in which the Scottish Government has competence. All this confirms that ‘power devolved is power retained.’
Again, I assert that addressing these developments effectively calls for a renewed social movement to challenge the emerging asymmetry between the powers of the UK Government, and the wishes of the Scottish people – the new ‘democratic deficit,’ and to assert, through action, that Scotland’s sovereignty rests with its people. This will involve much more than convening some new assembly representing civic Scotland. The necessary actions will anticipate the achievement of independence by preparing for it. They flow from recognition that there is work which needs done to lay the foundations of the new state, which simply cannot be done within the devolved institutions. These actions would increase the breadth and depth support for independence by demonstrating that that the interests of the people of Scotland will be served well when they are able to make decisions by themselves, in Scotland. Such an approach will require a structured work programme, completed over several years, and the commitment of substantial resources. At the end of this programme, which will have demonstrated that Scotland can be independent, it will be natural for the people of Scotland to choose independence.
Devolution as a barrier to be overcome
As an integral part of the UK, Scotland is not a colony, which could expect to acquire its independence as an imperial power weakens. Nor is it likely that the UK will experience sudden political or economic collapse, so that Scotland might find an opportunity simply to proclaim its independence. The examples of Quebec and Catalunya confirm that it is extremely difficult, even for a region or nation which has substantial autonomy, to find a democratic route to independence.
The devolution settlement prevents the Scottish Government from exercising several of the core functions of a modern state. National defence, relationships with other countries, including the management of trade, and migration are all responsibilities of the UK Government. While important, in the debate on independence, these are of less importance than the limits placed on the Scottish Government’s powers over economic management, banking and financial services, and taxation. Such restrictions have been carefully set to ensure that the Scottish Government can legislate on a wide range of domestic matters, such as education, health, local government, and rural development. The result is that while its activities have a substantial impact on the daily lives of people in Scotland – for which the Scottish Government is rightly accountable – it is still primarily a spending authority, which has a very limited ability to fund its expenditure directly. Facing a much harder budget constraint that the UK Government, the Scottish Government faces important limits on its ability to develop and implement distinctive policies designed to meet the country’s needs. The way in which the current Conservative government has implemented the devolution settlement has strengthened the argument that being part of the Union means that there will always be a democratic deficit in Scotland. Such political factors help to explain why support for independence remains buoyant, while support for the SNP, as measured in voting intentions, has fallen after 16 years in Government at Holyrood,
The careful choice of powers allocated to the Scottish Government allows supporters of the Union to argue that Scottish independence would be a very risky experiment, which would almost certainly go wrong. In purely economic terms, the data published in the annual Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland report contribute to this perception. In the absence of high quality, disaggregated national accounts, these rough estimates have repeatedly shown that public expenditure in Scotland is funded in part by taxation raised in the rest of the UK, supporting the argument that without ongoing subsidy, Scotland would be much poorer.
These arrangements put the Scottish Government in a very difficult position. It cannot attempt to take on these powers incrementally without the agreement of the UK Government. Indeed, Scottish political parties, including the SNP, agreed to work within these restrictions through their participation in the Smith Commission, which was set up after the 2014 Referendum. While the Commission granted more authority to the Scottish Government, for example over the design and administration of social security benefits, and income tax rate bands, it ensured that the UK Treasury continued to have substantial control over the total funding available to the Scottish Government. It is entirely plausible that it was the intention of the UK Government to place the Scottish Government in the invidious position of having responsibility to implement policies reflecting the distinctive social priorities of the people of Scotland, but without being able to raise the funding required to do so. The UK Government’s intention would then have been to wait for political failure to sap support for independence supporting parties. To that extent, the strategy appears to have been successful. And it will continue to be successful while the independence movement continues to concentrate on political strategies.
What is needed for independence?
This is not intended to be a comprehensive listing.
There will be a consensus among the people of Scotland that independence is desirable. The people will agree upon a mechanism which will demonstrate that consensus, in a way which will be recognised by the government of the United Kingdom.
There will be negotiations between the UK Government and representatives of the people of Scotland, which lead to a final declaration of independence. Given the complexity of these negotiations, it will be important that the Scottish representatives have a clear mandate, so that they do not end up like the Brexit negotiations, in which UK ministers simply made agreements so that they could reach a conclusion. In doing so, they failed to secure any of the promised benefits of the process.
There will be recognition that achieving Scottish independence is not an end in itself. The people of Scotland, through their representatives, will develop a programme for improving the governance of the new state. As an independent country, Scotland will take on a distinct character, consistent with its history, and traditions. This will involve the creation of new public institutions, and the repurposing of existing ones. Such work should start now, as part of the process for developing the broad consensus about the desirability of a specific form of independence.
Opinion polling and academic research suggest that the electorate is currently divided into three groups of roughly equal size. As well as those who strongly support independence, and those who wish to retain the Union, there is a large group of voters who, in principle, might be persuaded to vote for independence, but who have substantial doubts about it. The design of the devolution settlement, and the limits which it places on the Scottish Government’s powers, makes it difficult to address these voters’ concerns through political processes.
It follows that providing reassurance to this key group cannot simply be a task for political leaders. Instead, it will require the engagement of a broader, civic movement for independence. If the design of devolution has made the pursuit of independence seem like a risky leap into the dark, then this social movement will illuminate the well-made, solid path which leads to it.
A National Governance Society
The name is functional, and no doubt would change were anyone to develop this proposal. Such a society could play an important role in reassuring the people of Scotland that independence is not just feasible, but desirable. It could also provide expertise during negotiations over the terms of independence. It might not take on the active campaigning for independence, concentrating instead on developing the structure and leadership of the emerging Scottish civil service, and related governance institutions, which will be needed to take on responsibility for the powers denied to the Scottish Government during devolution. However, in the example at the end of the paper, it does take on a political role at the point at which a proposal for independence is put to the people of Scotland.
Beginning from a concrete example, which is likely to be important in the process of achieving independence, such a society could enable the rapid establishment of a Scottish central bank after independence. Since currency, and the regulation of financial services are reserved powers under devolution, it is very unlikely that the UK government would allow the Scottish Government to take any preparatory steps to establish one before the start of negotiations over independence – and that seems to be the basis of the Scottish Government’s analysis in designing a macroeconomic framework. However, it would be very difficult to prevent a private society from establishing a Monetary Institute as the precursor to a Central Bank. Indeed, it might even be possible to establish a National Bank, whose charter would allow it to lend to the Scottish Government, were that power to be available, but which would provide financial services within the UK.
Were establishing a central bank the only challenge of building institutional capacity which the people of Scotland will face in choosing independence, it might be possible for a small group of relatively wealthy independence supporters to undertake a such a task. Addressing the asymmetry between the existing powers, and prestige of the UK, and its government, and the aspirations of the people of Scotland, is a much larger task.
Perhaps the easiest way of thinking about the problem is the concept of overtrading, which is used in banking and accountancy. Overtrading occurs when an organisation is too small to achieve its purpose. The classic example is a sole trader, who has not raised enough capital to buy the physical assets needed for her small business to prosper. Often, people in this position work desperately hard. But without having enough capital, their hard work does not enable them to trade profitably. Without raising more capital, the organisation will slowly fail. Much of what is going on in the broader independence movement, which consists of tiny, voluntary organisations, is consistent with this problem. The movement is the home for too many underfunded ideas.
In economics, there is a similar idea that projects can be indivisible, or lumpy. They have a minimum scale, and we cannot break them down into smaller components. Government is certainly lumpy. There is no Western democracy in which the government’s share of the production of goods and services is less than 25%. In Scotland, we might expect the government to generate about one third of the total economic value created in the country. This will require organisations which employ hundreds of thousands of people.
These ideas explain much what has been happening within the independence movement. It contains people with considerable expertise, talent, enthusiasm and vision, but they are spread across micro-organisations, which are competing for resources, and attention, so that they all lack the necessary capacity to begin the transition to independence. The members of these organisations – among which we should include the SNP – do not simply need to work harder. Instead, they need to be given the opportunity work together more effectively. Almost certainly, that will involve restructuring of the movement to enable new forms of cooperation within it, but also an increase in the scale and ambition of its activities. In this analysis, the problem is not having enough people, or enough ideas. It is having the necessary funding streams for talented people to turn good ideas into reality.
Recognising the risk of over-trading, the proposed National Governance Society would address that challenge by raising substantial capital. Operating at scale, and established to improve the governance of Scotland, the society will itself need to have exemplary governance. I say more about that at the end of this note. Here, it is probably enough to note that while it is reasonable to expect that the running costs of the society will be met initially by members’ subscriptions, larger projects, especially those required in taking the last steps towards Scottish independence, are likely to require a separate stream of funding. Effective governance would mean raising that funding on capital markets, most likely through the issue of bonds. This capital would be repayable – but only by the government of a newly independent Scotland.
The Society would oversee the formation of the necessary institutional capacity of Scotland, as an independent country – the work which the Scottish Government cannot begin now by virtue of being part of the Union settlement. It would carry on this work until the people of Scotland choose independence, when it would provide advice and guidance to the political representatives who end up with the task of negotiating Scottish independence. Finally, some of its projects would be handed over to the government of the new country, providing it with the ability lead Scotland well. Throughout its existence, the Society would be an integral part of the broad social movement which will legitimate – and animate – the political campaign for independence.
That is the concept. Early versions of this briefing note then considered lessons from the recent past, and from history, arguing that to acquire independence, the people of Scotland will need to act as if they have already achieved that goal. In this version, I simply reiterate the claim that this is a task for the people of Scotland themselves, and not their political representatives. The lesson which we should take from the success of the previous Scottish Constitutional Convention what that it allowed the leadership of the Labour Party to insist that devolution was the settled will of the people, so that political success followed on from the work of the social movement.
From critical test to independence
The independence movement faces the problem same problem as in 1990, Even if we, the people, say, “Yes,” the UK Government considers that the Crown-in-Parliament is sovereign, and will continue to say, “No.” At the moment, there does not appear to be a route to independence which would come through agreement between the UK and the Scottish Governments. We should also expect the UK Government to refuse to accept the outcome of any election – or any other form of test, which does not have its explicit approval. While the Supreme Court has already indicated that it would not intervene in a political process, as noted above, the design of the devolution settlement does not easily permit its subversion.
It is also unclear that there would be any possibility of an appeal to any form of international court. Such a court would firstly have to be persuaded that it had jurisdiction – and powerful states, such as the UK, have a habit of refusing to accept that they can be bound by the decisions of international courts if they are unlikely to be in their interests. The UK could simply declare that this is a matter of the internal governance of a democratic state, and a political dispute, into which no court can insert itself.
Turning to the UK’s political processes, it is difficult to see how these could easily be used. From time to time, the suggestion comes up that the next UK General Election could well throw up a result in which the only way to form a government would be with Scottish votes. That seems to be a counsel of despair. Firstly, the probability of such an outcome is very small. Such a once in a century event also has a very unfortunate precedent. The Government of Ireland Act of 1914, the price which Asquith’s Liberal Government paid to secure the votes of the Irish Parliamentary Party for reform of the House of Lords, never took effect.
All of this suggests that the people of Scotland will need to decide, by themselves, that they want the country to become independent. Whatever form this critical test of Scottish public opinion takes, it will only be the start of a process to compel the UK government to engage with the people’s determination to acquire their independence. Votes for independence will be meaningless unless the subsequent actions are carefully crafted – before the critical test takes place. After such a vote, Scottish elected representatives to Westminster will truly have a mandate to ‘settle up’ rather than to ‘settle down’ on the green benches of the House of Commons.
This note assumes that the achievement of independence will be the result of the exercise of popular sovereignty. A sufficiently strong statement of intent would secure the (grudging) acceptance of the UK Government that the political reality has changed. Such a statement need not rely on the goodwill or the involvement of the UK government. Even if they were to be available after the critical test, the UK government will try to reduce support for independence before any decision is made.
It also assumes that since the devolution settlement prevents the Scottish Government from developing and implementing policy in the areas over which it will acquire competence after independence, such work could usefully take place within the independence movement, with the proposed National Governance Society the obviousl vehicle. This could be the beginning of a truly civic, rather than political, nationalism, in which political leaders would trust the wider movement to take on a much larger role in strategic leadership.
Involving Scotland’s people
The name, National Governance Society of Scotland, is entirely descriptive. That it should be a voluntary association, with a broadly based membership, and its own democratic governance structures, is important for its legitimacy. Having as its primary concern the development of the structures and processes by which Scotland will be managed after being independent, such an organisation should address the weaknesses of a politically focused strategy for acquiring independence.
Realising the desire for Scottish independence will be challenging – and quite different from the process of winning elections. However, democratic states exist on the basis that the citizenry have collectively agreed that the state has a monopoly of coercion. Given the challenges of obtaining the prior agreement of the UK Government, a declaration of Scottish independence may involve having to dare the UK Government to use its presumed authority after a clear demonstration that Scottish voters have withdrawn their consent to the Union.
I do not much like where this argument takes us. It seems to require the people of Scotland, presumably through their political representatives, declaring unilaterally that Scotland has decided to leave the United Kingdom. The intention of such a declaration would be to change the political reality. But it can only be meaningful if it is followed up with actions – specifically the negotiations needed to give effect to that decision. This paper differs from others which have appeared recently, including work by Robin McAlpine, because it ignores the decision making process, and concentrates on making preparations for success after the decision has been made (believing that such preparations are essential for securing the confidence of the Scottish people that independence is the right choice for the country).
For example, I propose that following such a decision, independence supporting MPs at Westminster would cease to play any role in the House of Commons, and would instead accept appointments as Commissioners of the Scottish People. Their mandate would be restricted to negotiating with the UK Government. Accompanying these political commissioners would be a secretariat, which the National Governance Society would already have recruited to support negotiations. In preparing for this moment, the Society might even have found offices in central London, which would become the Commissioners’ base for negotiations.
There is the question of who would appoint these Commissioners. For democratic legitimacy, this may have to be done by the Scottish Parliament. In my more romantic moments, I imagine the Presiding Officer convening a meeting of the Scottish Parliament immediately after the decisive test of support for independence, at which MSPs would sign a declaration of intent to declare independence. The declaration would not take immediate effect, but it would put the UK government on notice that unless it were to reach an agreement with the Commissioners of the Scottish People within a suitable time frame (perhaps 24 months), the people of Scotland would act unilaterally to form their own state. Continuing to work within the devolution settlement at this point, the Declaration would give a mandate to the National Governance Society to develop the institutional capacity needed for Scotland to become independent. Such a declaration would give immediate effect to the expression of the will of the people in the decisive test.
That declaration would be a direct challenge the UK state, and so it would have to be very carefully worded. It should recognise that the National Governance Society had created the conditions in which it had become possible for the (devolved) government to plan to merge with the Society and form an independent government. It would also give the Society some political authority to act as if it were a sovereign, and so negotiate with the UK Government, allowing the Scottish Government to continue to work within the devolution framework. It would conclude that the Government of Scotland after independence would be established by merging the activities of devolved government, and the Governance Society.
My concern that the decisive test must lead to rapid action is pragmatic. Any delay will lead to a reassertion of UK sovereignty, and the moment could be lost in confusion. Using a popular mandate to declare provisional independence quickly – effectively seeking to force the UK government to recognise a fait accompli – would challenge the natural advantages enjoyed by the sovereign state in this process. The objective should be to ensure that decisive popular action changes the basis of the subsequent negotiation.
By issuing a provisional declaration of independence, the people of Scotland, through their democratically elected government, would circumvent the need to ask permission to form a Scottish state. Instead, they would defy the UK Government to prevent them from exercising their democratic choice. The objective is to change the framing of the problem – making Scotland’s independence the status quo, not the continuation of the Union.
Implementation
Throughout the last decade, the achievement of the right to hold a second referendum has been an important focus for the independence movement. With polling suggesting that support for independence was largely static, and at the same level as in the 2014 referendum, this approach presumed that in a referendum campaign, there would once again be a substantial increase in support for independence.
Such a strategy had the advantage that it could be implemented at any time. It had the weakness of treating independence as being primarily a political process. Treating it instead as a social process, it will take time to build the necessary support. Despite the First Minister’s eager embrace of the prospect of the next UK General Election being a critical test of public support, in this approach, it will be necessary to wait some time to build broader, and deeper support for independence.
Separate from the efforts of the SNP to refine its political strategy, there are at least three organisations which appear to be contemplating the development of some sort of national structure to develop a social campaign for independence: the Scottish Independence Convention, Independence Forum Scotland, and Believe in Scotland. Some of the work which is set out here could perhaps best be done within the National Convention, which the Independence Forum intends to establish.
The initial activities of the Society would be designed to explore what changes the people of Scotland wish to see with independence through such means as citizens’ assemblies. This would involve a relatively small staff team. That preparatory work would lead into another two workstreams, which would involve ensuring that the Government of Scotland had the capacity to take on its new responsibilities after independence, and preparing for the negotiations for the dissolution of the Union. There is perhaps one further workstream which will be necessary – providing some services to the Scottish Government during the transition to independence, should the UK Government refuse to provide them.
The scale of these tasks may seem daunting, but I suggest that it would be possible to begin work with an initial budget of around £400,000 – which is similar to the income of a small political party. This would need to increase rapidly after perhaps 2 – 3 years, assuming that the Society’s work – and the work of other organisations – proves to be effective. The year after Scotland decides to be independent, the Society would need a budget of tens of millions of pounds, making it much larger than any UK political party. To achieve that level of funding, small donors might be encouraged to give conditional pledges of increased funds, but it would probably also be necessary to follow the practice in the early days of the Irish Free State, with the Society’s activities being funded by borrowing, which would only be repayable by the Government of Scotland after independence. (The Irish bonds were issued in New York; and there are two possibilities here – they could be issued on a newly established Scottish stock exchange, itself a project for the Governance Society, or else they could be issued on a European exchange.)
This approach draws on many ideas about what constitutes good civic governance. The first years of its activities will be critical. The Society will be very open that it wants Scotland to be independent. But it will demonstrate that it wants independence to work for the whole population – even for those people who are strongly opposed to it. Its objective will be to reassure even the opponents of independence that Scotland’s government will be effective, and that choosing independence will mean careful management of the inevitable risks and uncertainty. Instead of asking what Scotland will do after independence, it will concentrate managing upon the process of achieving independence. And by answering the questions of what it means for Scotland’s governments to have to make all its own decisions, it will bring independence within reach.
A further note on funding
At the heart of this proposal is the belief that if Scotland is to achieve its independence, then its people will have to behave in some ways as if the country is independent, without expecting any support from the UK government – and only the most limited engagement of the civil service in Scotland. The National Governance Society for Scotland would not be a provisional government. Developing the functions which the devolution settlement prevents the current Scottish Government from acquiring, it would enable the rapid formation of the Government of Scotland after independence.
The list of reserved powers in the Scotland Act provides a useful checklist for the capabilities which the Society would need to develop during the period in which it would complete the independence negotiations with the UK Government. Without the ability to spend money, a government cannot function. Scotland will therefore require an exchequer function (to manage the collection of taxes), a debt management office, and a central bank. With the negotiations over Brexit, we have seen the importance of Scotland being able to manage its borders. That means having the ability to manage migration, but also to inspect goods and services so that they can easily cross borders. Being able to secure borders implies the development of both a diplomatic corps, and armed forces. All governments have a substantial regulatory role, and here, the obvious starting point, which will provide organisations with the greatest possible certainty, would be to adopt the UK rulebook, and have a programme for its systematic reform (as was supposed to happen with Brexit).
This proposal differs from others circulating among independence supporters with ideas about how to change the nature of the campaign for independence. It is much more insistent that the challenges of independence should be achieved through popular participation. The National Governance Society would probably be a company limited by guarantee. It would aim to have a large membership, aiming for a standard membership fee of about £50 per year, but allowing people to become members for, say £20 per year. Aiming to attract 15,000 members in its first year, the Society could establish local members forums across the country to provide member development and representation.
With its initial objective being to identify solutions to problems of governance which command widespread popular support, the Society would run a broad programme of participative problems solving events – taking particular care to reach communities which are often excluded from decision making whether because of poverty, location, or social status. (Ideally, it would be an inclusive successor to the Select Society of the Scottish Enlightenment, which no longer defended the interests of white, male, property owners.)
In addition, if the Society were to become involved in a political campaign around the time of the decisive test, then it would need to raise perhaps ten times as much as its previous annual budget, and have a well-defined route to substantially more funding afterwards, assuming that it succeeded in moving to the final step of supporting negotiations, and building institutional capacity.
While it may be possible to generate a small number of large donations, the ideal method would be for members to make conditional pledges for extraordinary political funding for the moment when it is required.
In the last stages projected for the Society’s work, the funding requirements will need investment, rather than donations. Its objectives would be much easier to achieve were there already a structure within which the fiscal capability of a government could develop. The key private sector institution here is a Scottish stock exchange – necessary for the primary market in Scottish government debt. As noted above, this could also be a route by which the Society could generate debt finance in the period before the critical test of support for independence, so that it would have the capacity to expand quickly, when required.
More speculatively, having mentioned a Scottish Monetary Institute as a precursor to a Scottish Central Bank, the Society could establish such an organisation at low cost. A much larger undertaking would be to create a ‘National Bank’ for Scotland, formally a private sector organisation, allied with the Society, possibly with its structure modelled on Scandinavian public trust arrangements. The National Bank would have a mandate in its charter to promote the social development of Scotland. Prior to independence, it would operate on a ‘for profit' basis, demonstrating the potential for Scottish solutions to problems. Housing the SMI, after independence, it would spin off those activities into the Central Bank. Such a National Bank could provide funding for the Society as it takes on activities which are more typical of government during the negotiations over independence.
By establishing such institutional capacity, the independence campaign would be able to address the problem that it is operating below the minimum efficient scale to achieve its objectives. Scotland could then chart a route to independence by uniting many of the micro-organisations which have done interesting and important work, and equipping them so that they can collaborate effectively.
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