Groups working hard in the community
In all the excitement of the First Minister’s resignation and subsequent SNP leadership contest, it was easy to forget the Scottish budget made its way through parliament at the same time, while Renfrewshire Council set its budget last week.
And while the headlines at the moment are all about who leads the party and our country, those budgets have tried to make Scotland and Renfrewshire fairer places to live, all the while under extreme financial pressures brought about by the tory cost-ofliving crisis – but, above all, by the diktats of Westminster.
Because the vast majority of our government’s spending power is controlled by Westminster, we’re subject to the whims of Michael Gove and company.
And those whims have meant over a decade of brutal and economically-illiterate austerity and cuts to public spending even Thatcher stopped short of.
While the Scottish Parliament has some limited power over income taxation, the blunt fact is everything else is controlled by Whitehall and Westminster, and by a UK Government we didn’t elect.
Any changes in National Insurance, any introduction of windfall taxes, or attempts to tax wealth lie in the hands of the Tories, who are more interested in ensuring their donors and chums can freely use tax havens to stash their millions.
But let us be clear – Labour have promised a diet of more of the same.
Their prospectus for government – if that’s what you want to call the back of a fag packet – is designed to be as close as possible to Tory economic policy for fear of scaring off voters in Middle England marginal seats.
With a UK political system in the stranglehold of these two parties, the system is utterly corrupted, with no hope of real change in the foreseeable future while we remain part of that system.
Whoever becomes the next First Minister will have a huge responsibility, firstly to drive our public services forward and take the big decisions that will help build a better Renfrewshire and a better Scotland.
But they will also head a national movement that still needs to make the case for independence as the only sensible alternative to the madness that has engulfed Westminster over recent years.
Our most valuable resource is our people. Across Renfrewshire, people are doing extraordinary things in our communities to help each other through what is the toughest economic climate in decades.
Projects like the STAR Project, Renfrew YMCA and Erskine Arts to name just a few of the huge number of organisations working hard in our communities.
We saw through the pandemic how that collective spirit, talent, and compassion was deployed to help those unable to help themselves at a time of national crisis.
Too often that talent and commitment is wasted in a system run by a select few in London for their benefit and that of their chums.
Independence gives us the chance to unleash the potential of our own people rather than see it thwarted time after time.
We’ve seen what our people can do if given the chance – whether that is the game-changing, poverty tackling Scottish Child Payment, the Baby Box, the new benefits delivered by Social Security Scotland, the transition to a modern, net zero transport system, or keeping our health system free at the point of need.
Independence isn’t an airy-fairy concept – it has the potential to make every Renfrewshire resident’s life better and build a fairer society.
The budgets set here in Renfrewshire and for Scotland show that the will is there from our leaders to start on that better path.
But to really begin the journey of transforming our communities for the better, we need the real power of independence – and our next first First Minister will play a key role in delivering that change.