OUR NEW ECONOMY

This is not in any way intended to belittle Alex Salmond’s achievements while he was first minister but rather to show that his masterstroke in the policies he introduced in those years have been very effective in gaining popular attention but cannot be simply added to except by a successive government taking more complex long-term courses of action. This has not happened. We’ve done all the cute stuff and now we need to deal with the tough stuff.

We need an industrial strategy and it has to be developed with a clear view in mind of what is happening not just in the UK but across the world.

While our 20th century history was hallmarked by strong, charismatic leaders both left and right, the situation has been completely turned on its head by now. Old-school hard-right ideologies have slowly morphed into corporatocracy, resulting in a perverted form of fascism (if we can call it that). Formerly democratic countries have turned into something completely different, irrespective of which party was (or still is) in power. It is the system which has changed, not the political parties. Nobody voted to have such a political system, yet we got one.

Instead of being run by politicians the Euro-Atlantic political-economic system is now completely governed by business corporations and corporate interests. Lobby groups, billionaire financiers and former elites (often coming from the old aristocracy) are hiding behind weak, unpopular, incompetent leaders, who sometimes reluctantly, but mostly obediently, enact laws and policies articulated by think tanks and advocacy groups — lavishly funded by corporations and headed by their loyalists. Elections in this system are for show purposes only, providing a thin veil of plausible deniability, while delivering a steady stream of scapegoats holding the bag for the many failed policies pushed by these elites.

Free from legislation and having the freedom to choose their citizens in such projects as freeports these oligarchs are already planning for a future taking a page from Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games book series. Call this the rise of end time fascism: “a darkly festive fatalism — a final refuge for those who find it easier to celebrate destruction than imagine living without supremacy”.

Scotland has lost much of its industrial capacity due to this system ushered in by the Thatcher government and some here have claimed that this was deliberately targeted at us but this belief does not stand up to careful analysis. In the last forty years English (and Welsh) regions have lost as much, and sometimes more, industry. This applies even in the south-east which appears to be comparatively wealthy but achieves that status by being the final beneficiaries of the last stage of corporate collapse – financialisation. This won’t last too long either.

The challenge in Scotland is to create an economic/industrial strategy which is fit for the challenges we will be facing. Depending on inward investment simply does not cut it and in fact makes it worse. We will just be hostages to a following stage of de-industrialisation over which we have no control.

To create an effective industrial strategy - I would prefer to call it infrastructure as it would involve such things as education, housing and transport as well – we have to be bold and, in some ways, brutal. In terms of business alone we need to focus on SMEs, some already in existence and others proposed, and a complete overhaul of the various development agencies with the aim of developing a national ideology for the purpose of creating a socio-economic structure to address the future we must acknowledge is coming whether we like it or not. And in this mix – at the very centre in fact – has to be a robust and effective structure of local democracy. A centralised top-down system will almost certainly fail.

Most of all we must, at the very beginning, research in the greatest depth all the possible influences and effects of developments internationally and design for ourselves a system strong enough to weather the storm which is most certainly coming.

I believe that a well-developed industrial and infrastructure policy should be one of the first items discussed in depth in the national convention. It would almost certainly be long and arduous but worthwhile and we at Scotland Decides would welcome a discussion forum to at least lay the groundwork.

Is anybody interested?