THE UK is more broken now than it was in 2014 – and Westminster’s two main parties are only offering a “miserable” outlook for the future, a Scottish Green MSP has said.
Lorna Slater, one of her party’s two co-leaders, spoke to The National ahead of a Holyrood debate on a motion she has tabled marking 10 years since the first independence referendum – and 10 years since she and many other Scots became involved in politics.
Although she said that Westminster and austerity presented “almost impossible” constraints for the Scottish Government, Slater suggested that the last decade had seen the SNP prefer to lean on UK funding rather than creatively use devolved tax powers.
“We've accumulated a few more bits of broken constitution since 2014, Brexit, the Internal Market Act, the disrespect for the Sewel Convention,” the Green co-leader told The National. “We've accumulated more problems.
“The Union hasn't gotten better since 2014. This is a chance to highlight that. We were frustrated in 2014. Look how much worse the situation is now.”
The Green co-leader said it remained to be seen whether Labour could improve the Union, but warned that the new UK Government was “not already off to a great footing” by giving the Scotland Office funding with which to bypass Holyrood.
Slater went on: “Independence is a live issue for us every day and it certainly was when we were in government.
“Every single day you’d come across issues where you say, well, why can't we do this. ‘Oh, it's not devolved’. Why can't we do that? ‘The Internal Market Act will be invoked’.
“It's always why we can’t do something. The barriers you hit up against every time. The Westminster government won't allow it. Because the constitution doesn't allow it. Because the Internal Market Act doesn't allow it.
“Every single one of those problems would go away with independence.”
"My feeling from the Unionists, from the Unionist parties, at the moment is that they hope if they can make us stop talking about independence, that it will go away," she said.
"They keep hoping, ‘oh, we just have to lose the referendum’. ‘Oh, we just need a Labour government’. ‘Oh, we just need this or that and they'll stop talking about independence’."
However, the Green co-leader said there had been a “shyness” from both the SNP government and local authorities across Scotland about using the devolved powers they do have “because nobody wants to raise taxes, they would much rather get a hand out”.
She went on: “The local authorities say, ‘oh, we don't want to use the workplace parking levy, we'd much rather the Scottish Government just gave us more money’.
“And the Scottish Government says, oh, we don't really want to raise a carbon land tax. We'd much rather Westminster give us more money.”
She said that, over the last 10 years, she thought the SNP “could have changed Scotland more to further mitigate the harm” from cuts made at Westminster.
However, Slater added: “The SNP could have done more, but it wouldn't be possible to mitigate all of that.
“If Westminster is doing austerity, then everybody's doing austerity. All roads do indeed lead to Westminster.”
But the Green co-leader cautioned about letting politics become “so miserable”, saying that the hope of a better future should be the focus of Yes campaigners – in contrast to the messaging from Westminster.
“The story that we're getting from the Tories and Labour, and to some extent from the SNP, is the future is going to be dreadful,” she said.
“It’s miserable, always cuts, always suffering, hungry children and there's nothing we can do. There's this sort of learned helplessness that we have from government, as if they are somehow powerless.
“I think the positive message from the Greens is we're not powerless. We can change how our economy works. We can change how our constitution works. All of these things are within our power. We just have to grasp them.”
She said it was important to show the Unionist parties that those people – and the idea of independence – had not gone away.
“It marks, for me personally, 10 years since I got involved in politics, 10 years since we lost that opportunity to build a new country, and 10 years is another generation of young people who wildly support independence,” she said.
“As you will remember, in the two weeks after the independence referendum, far from losing killing independence stone dead, which I think some of the Unionist parties hoped, both the SNP and the Greens kind of quadrupled their membership overnight,” Slater said.
“It’s an interesting case with the Greens that many of what we called at the time our ‘surge members’, like myself, are now in positions of influence, many of them are elected, they're active within the party.
“Those surge members who were inspired by independence are now the people who are operating our party and representing us in politics. So it had a huge impact.”
