Friday 22 May 2025

Today has been devoted to sourcing software required for the new website—membership management, event management, etc. This is now done. I’ll be using WordPress and CiviCRM with Zoom integration, or maybe Digital Samba for online meetings.

The domain and hosting have been moved to a company based in Scotland. All going well—which seldom happens—I’ll get started on building the website over this weekend.

Welcome to New Scotland Party — Scotland’s party of national liberation.

At present I am working on relaunching New Scotland Party (NSP) and being beset by a host of gremlins at every step. The latest disaster is with the party’s dedicated laptop. I’ll be able to get it running again, I think. But it’ll mean starting from scratch. A task I usually quite enjoy. I love the smell of a pristine operating system in the morning! But it is consuming time I should be devoting to other tasks.

This post is an introduction to New Scotland Party. Do not make the mistake of thinking this is just another pro-independence party. NSP is different. We aim to be not just a new party, but a new kind of party. We are not just a pro-independence party. We have an entirely new perspective on the constitutional issue.

The bad disruptor

It is hardly controversial to say that our political system is broken. The fact alone that turnout in the 2026 Scottish general election only just managed to keep its head above the fateful 50% mark at 53%—ten points down from 2021—tells us all we need to know. The rise of Reform UK is further proof that the system is malfunctioning.

Farage’s party is a disruptor. When people are disillusioned with and distrustful of democracy, they tend to react in one of two ways. Either they disengage completely from the democratic process, or they turn to a party which promises to eliminate all the things people hate about the system and/or restore the system to some prior satisfactory state. The disruptor appears to the voter like a reset button. A reset can be good, or it can be disastrous. It can set things to rights. Or it can destroy all the things that are important. Reform UK is the bad disruptor.

Reform UK is the party that gave us Brexit in a new guise. Brexit was sold to the public as rolling back to a ‘golden age’. Unfortunately, the ‘golden age’ is a myth, and we know only too well what was destroyed in the Brexit reset. Reform UK threatens the essential aspects of democracy that we come to take for granted. Reform UK’s ‘plan’ is just to break everything and then see what happens. The people Farage is fronting for expect that they will take advantage of the disruption to add to their power and/or wealth. The chances are they will.

Brexit was a disaster in ways that are still being catalogued. But Farage was unscathed. Instead of him being cast into the political wilderness as punishment for Brexit, he is now on the verge of becoming the British Prime Minister. The people Farage fronts for have taken full advantage of the disruption caused by Brexit. They enhanced their power. Now, they are creating further and deeper disruption in the expectation of further enhancing their power. It worked before.

The bad disruptor exploits disruption for the benefit of the few at whatever cost to the many. It stands to reason that if there can be a bad disruptor, there should be potential for a good disruptor.

The good disruptor

If the bad disruptor exploits disruption for the benefit of the few, a good disruptor would be one which exploits disruption for the benefit of the many. The bad disruptor further empowers the few. The good disruptor would empower the many. So, the question is, how do we create a good disruptor?

Good or bad, the disruptor must be bold. It must be brash. It must be unconventional, unorthodox, and uninhibited. It must be a bit outrageous. The good disruptor must have something new to offer. It must have a distinctive ‘big idea’ as well as a credible strategy for implementing this idea. It must offer a fresh perspective and have a clear objective or objectives.

New Scotland Party was conceived as the good disruptor for Scotland. The fresh perspective is a rethinking and reframing of the constitutional issue. The clear objectives are the product of this reframing.

1. Secure the means and opportunity for the people of Scotland to fully and freely exercise our right of self-determination—a referendum.

2. Persuade people to use the referendum to vote in favour of a proposal to dissolve the Union and restore Scotland’s independence.

The route

How do we get from where we are to where we want to be? What is our destination? What is our starting point? What points must we pass through, and what places would we be wise to avoid, on our journey?

The starting point is defined as follows:

• Scotland became the annexed territory of England-as-Britain with the imposition of a massively asymmetric political union (the Union) in 1707

• The purpose and effect of the Union is to afford England-as-Britain a permanent and overwhelming advantage relative to Scotland

• The Union is comprehensively deleterious to Scotland’s interests

• The Union denies the people of Scotland access to the means and opportunity to fully and freely exercise our right of self-determination

• The parliament of Scotland which was eliminated by the annexation process was reconvened in 1999 but with many essential competencies withheld

• The only way the people of Scotland can have the means and opportunity to fully and freely exercise our right of self-determination—a proper constitutional referendum—is if the means and opportunity are created by the Scottish Parliament

• The only way the Scottish Parliament can acquire the competence necessary to legislate for a proper constitutional referendum is by repossessing the competence in constitutional matters being withheld by the British state

The right kind of party

The task of getting from this starting point to the first objective is best undertaken by a political party formed for that specific purpose—a constitutional party. New Scotland Party is a single-issue constitutional party. It is not encumbered by a policy agenda and carries none of the reputational baggage carried by established parties.

I shall be adding more to this post as time allows.