I have believed in Scottish independence for the better part of my adult life. I say that at the outset because what follows might sound like the words of a man who has given up on the idea. I have not. But I have grown weary of what the debate has become, and I think honesty about that weariness is more useful than pretending everything is fine.
The independence movement in Scotland once felt like it was about something. In 2014, whatever side you were on, you could not deny the energy. People who had never engaged with politics were reading white papers and attending town hall meetings in Inverness and Dumfries and East Kilbride. My own mother, who had voted Labour her entire life without much thought, spent three weeks researching currency options. Currency options. This was a woman whose previous political involvement consisted of complaining about the bins.
Something has been lost since then. The debate has calcified into two opposing camps who talk past each other with increasing bitterness and decreasing substance. On the Yes side, there is a stubborn refusal to engage with the genuinely difficult questions about currency, trade, and the fiscal gap. On the No side, there is an equally stubborn refusal to acknowledge that the United Kingdom is not working particularly well for Scotland and has not been for some time.
I attended a pro independence rally in Glasgow last autumn. I went hoping to hear fresh arguments, new ideas, perhaps a younger generation bringing the energy that the movement so badly needs. Instead I heard the same speeches I have been hearing for a decade. Westminster is broken. Scotland’s voice is ignored. Our resources are being squandered. All of this is true, by the way. But truth repeated without development becomes a slogan, and slogans do not build nations.
The Unionist side is no better. Their entire argument has been reduced to two words: too wee. Everything is too risky, too expensive, too complicated. They point to the same economic figures and declare the case closed, as though a nation’s future can be settled by a spreadsheet. The people making these arguments seem completely unaware that the United Kingdom they are defending is itself in a state of profound dysfunction. England is lurching from one political crisis to the next. The economy is stagnant. Public services are deteriorating. “Stay in the Union” used to be a compelling argument. Now it increasingly sounds like “stay on the sinking ship because the lifeboats look a bit small.”
What neither side is doing is talking about the Scotland that exists right now, today, in 2026. A Scotland where young people in Aberdeen cannot afford to buy a home. Where rural communities are losing their post offices and their bus services and their GP surgeries. Where the fishing towns of the northeast feel abandoned by Edinburgh and London alike. Where Gaelic is still dying despite decades of supposed revitalisation efforts. Where the cost of living crisis has hit harder and deeper than many politicians seem willing to admit.
The independence debate should be about these things. It should be a conversation about what kind of country we want to be and how we get there. Instead it has become a tribal loyalty test. You are either Yes or No, and whichever camp you belong to determines not just your politics but your identity, your social circle, your sense of self. That is not healthy for a democracy. It is not healthy for Scotland.
I want to hear someone on the independence side lay out a detailed, honest, costed plan for the first five years of an independent Scotland. Not aspirations. Not visions. A plan. I want to hear someone on the Unionist side explain, concretely, how remaining in the UK will improve the lives of people in Motherwell or Stornoway or the Borders over the next decade. Not fear. Not warnings. A plan.
Until both sides are willing to do that difficult, unglamorous work, the debate will continue to go nowhere. And Scotland will continue to be stuck in a political conversation that generates enormous heat and almost no light.
I still believe Scotland could thrive as an independent nation. I also believe it could thrive within a genuinely reformed United Kingdom. What I no longer believe is that either outcome will be achieved by the people currently dominating this debate. We need new voices. We need serious thinking. We need adults in the room. And we need them soon, because the longer this goes on, the more people simply stop caring. That, more than any constitutional arrangement, would be the real tragedy for Scotland.