Your Right to Decide

Foreword by the First Minister

Scotland is a lively democracy, and that involves healthy debate about the best way forward for our country.

That is how it should always be.

But amongst that debate there is one thing I am sure we can all agree on: that we are a proud nation with many strengths and many talents.

As we consider the future of our country, whether or not there should be a change in Scotland’s constitutional status should be a matter for the people who live in our country: it should be a decision for all of us.

Indeed, as this publication shows, figures and institutions from across the political spectrum and across the generations have supported the idea that it is for the people who live in Scotland alone to make the choice about the future of Scotland as a country.

But without action or commitment to back up those expressions of support and to make those promises real, we will find ourselves living in a Union where our right to determine our own constitutional future is not open to us. One where there is no way actually to exercise the right to decide. One where the Union is held together by the decisions of the UK Government and not by the decisions of the people who live here.

I think it would be very grave for our democracy if that were to be the case.

And it should trouble those who want Scotland to stay part of the Union every bit as much as it does those who want independence.

After all, it is through our democracy that we build the nation we want. But in my view, under the current Westminster system, the struggles that so many people have faced in recent years are set to go on—with no end in sight.

After years of painful rises in prices and, for many, little or no increase in real family incomes, it is now suggested by experts that typical UK incomes by the end of this decade will be unchanged compared with ten years earlier.^[1]

Given the failure of the UK economic model,^[2] I believe people in Scotland deserve the right to decide once again whether it is better for decisions about their lives to continue to be taken at Westminster, or whether they are best taken here in Scotland.

Of course, as a country, after hearing all the arguments, we may decide that things are best left as they are: that would be a legitimate democratic choice.

But so would a decision for Scotland to become a true equal partner with our friends in the rest of the UK, as a nation state, with all the economic and social powers that come with statehood.

I believe there is much to be optimistic and hopeful about if Scotland became an independent country. We have resources and talent in abundance.

I believe that those of us who live here, wherever we’ve come from, will do a better job of running our country than anyone else.

I think we need a fresh start with independence.

Others will disagree.

But we can only have that debate—we can only make a decision about our future—if we get a choice.

I urge everyone, whatever their views on our ultimate destiny as a nation, to ensure that the people of Scotland’s right to decide is respected: not just in words, but in actions.

Rt Hon John Swinney MSP, First Minister of Scotland