Source: Scottish National Party
Read John Swinney’s speech on independence at Scotland 2050 below:
Thank you for that warm welcome. It is encouraging to see so many people here today, invested in the future of our country and keen to work together to build it.
This is not only about the future of our country. It is about our future. And that of our children and our grandchildren.
I am up here speaking as a father, and grandfather, as well as First Minister. This is about the world we build for Scotland’s next generation. And how we make our nation – and, as much as we can, our world – the best it can possibly be.
I spend a great deal of time thinking about this – about what we want our shared future to look like, and what we must do today to create it.
But first, before turning to the Scotland we seek and the Scotland we have the ability to make, I want to share some details of a new analysis the government has published, Future Trends for Scotland.
Drawing on a wide range of practitioner and other expert views, and shaped also by insights from young Scots, it sets out the trends we think are most likely to shape Scotland in the next 10 to 20 years. I hope that it can in some way shape your thinking, as it certainly will ours.
It is about challenges as well as opportunities, and both are important. The challenges facing Scotland, known in the present and possible in the future, are many, but the opportunities are more. We must never forget that reality.
Each generation faces its challenges, many as great, greater even than the ones our generation faces today, and, let us remind ourselves, we have always found a way through.
With the Future Trends horizon scan, we have the best available Scotland specific analysis to inform our decisions, both now and for the future.
You will recognise some of the trends the work has identified.
A growing risk to our democracy because of mis- and disinformation, with trust in institutions falling.
Conflicts more frequent.
Climate change impacting soil quality, biodiversity, food supply.
Global progress on inequality stalling.
And, as a result of these and other global trends, increasing voluntary and involuntary migration.
No guarantee living standards will increase, but a real risk of ongoing wealth and income inequality at home and significant budgetary pressures as we struggle to meet the demands of an aging population.
But also, growing success for Scotland in fields such as space and life sciences, new opportunities in energy, and widespread adoption of AI alongside the emergence of quantum technology.
Both hurdles and new horizons for our society and economy. Warnings where we need to change, or up the pace, but also doors opening, if we have the courage to walk through them with confidence, with boldness and self-belief.
And it is by shaping strategy and policy towards achieving long-term outcomes that we will be ready for this new world as it evolves.
That is one of the reasons we are reforming the National Performance Framework so that it can provide us with a clear north star, with ambitious, citizen-centred outcomes to guide our choices and actions as we navigate this emerging new world.
A reformed NPF will help reshape government in Scotland. It will enable us to better focus budgets, to reduce compartmentalisation and encourage collaboration between spheres of government, and with partners in the third sector and the business community.
It is one part, but an important part of focusing government on delivering on the priorities of the people of Scotland as we build towards our vision of a Scotland that is more vibrant, more successful, more ambitious even than the Scotland of today.
But before looking forward, I wish to first look back.
As others have observed, the Scotland of 2050 is as far removed from us today as the Scotland into which our parliament was born.
Over the past quarter century, much has changed but the Scotland of today is not some alien land compared to the Scotland of then.
We can see clearly the threads connecting our reality now with choices made in the years between.
Yes, day-to-day life in Scotland has been fundamentally altered by technology – from the iPhone and the internet to emergent AI – and by geopolitics – from the rise of China to the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. By climate change, globalisation, deindustrialisation.
Changed also as a direct result of our disastrous withdrawal from the EU and by the wholly negative impacts of austerity in the UK on the vitality of our public services or on people’s living standards and quality of life.
But it has also been shaped, and changed for the better, by the Scottish Parliament’s ban on smoking, by minimum pricing on alcohol, or by our decisions to rapidly expand early learning and childcare, introduce HPV vaccination and modernise our school estate.
Yes, the Scotland of 2050 will be shaped by a series of unpredictable forces, by new technologies we have only half-imagined in the pages of science fiction, by conflicts now only simmering, by people who are only just born.
But it will also be shaped by us. By the decisions we take, the policy choices we implement, the vision and path forward that we set out.
That is a great responsibility, but for me it is also exciting, inspiring, and a he privilege to shape it as First Minister.
So how do we get from where we are to where we want to be?
A big part of the answer is ensuring that we are in charge of our own destiny. That we have our hands on all the levers we need to make the biggest difference.
A fiscal squeeze, better dealt with if we are fully in charge of our nation’s finances.
The complexities of navigating climate change, much easier if we are in charge of energy policy and our vast energy resources.
Making sure we have a big enough working population to meet the demands of an aging population, more options, more solutions possible, if we are in charge of our immigration policy, or members again of the EU.
But I will come back to that, to how we can truly put Scotland’s future in Scotland’s hands.
As we look around our land in 2050, my hope is that we see a modern, dynamic Scotland, a compassionate, enterprising, forward-looking nation state, back where it belongs at the heart of Europe.
We have taken the climate challenge and seen it as an opportunity for a complete redesign of our ways of living. For example, district heating schemes in every community, an everyday part of life, delivering low-cost heating, and significantly lower energy bills. More liveable communities, full of climate positive, modern, affordable homes, with rethought and rediscovered High Streets. More of our food grown locally, and technology enabling more of what we use every day to be produced locally.
We are a clean energy nation, with the vast amounts of low-cost renewable energy that we produce fuelling a host of new business opportunities. Data centres, research centres, energy intensive manufacturing industries. Low-energy costs making it cheaper to produce food. Low-energy costs making it cheaper to heat our homes. Scotland a clean energy powerhouse. An energy rich Scotland finally meaning also energy rich Scots.
We are a high-tech, clean tech country, with our public realm digitally transformed, high-tech solutions delivering more effective, more personalised health interventions, the right systems in place to manage the acute and support us more effectively as we enter old age.
We have seen too-high levels of child poverty not in terms of handouts, but as a handbrake on our potential, as a limit on the success our nation can achieve. And we have acted decisively to eradicate child poverty in our land. As a result, we have released the potential of tens of thousands of ambitious, eager and talented young Scots, young men and women who are playing a crucial role, a fundamental role, in building our nation anew.
We have looked at our place in this world and decided that the union that offers the greatest opportunity, that provides the greatest security is the European Union.
How do we get there?
In part, through the perhaps mundane reality of good government. That has been my focus since I became First Minister. Interventions in that vein like a realistic medium-term finance strategy, an effective population health strategy and a clear-eyed and mobilising programme of public sector reform – all initiatives being launched over the coming week.
By having government focused on a clear set of priorities, and producing policy that is determined by the real-world, real-life needs of people rather than what might best suit the system.
Eradicating child poverty. Boosting economic growth. Delivering climate action. Improving public services, especially the NHS. This prioritisation of government action on those things that matter most to people, those things that will deliver the most for people, is at the very heart of what I am trying to achieve as First Minister. Listening to the public and addressing the strain they fell over the cost of living.
It is also about collectively owning the vision and uniting in our determination to get there. It is about focusing our efforts behind a sharp and clear set of national outcomes and ambitious short-, medium- and longer-term national goals.
However, most importantly, it is about deciding to take Scotland’s future into our own hands.
It is only by taking charge of our own destiny, with our own hand on the tiller, that we are better able to ride the waves of change, that we are better able to shape our own future.
That does not mean a Scotland standing alone, but rather a nation that has worked out its place in the world, and the contribution it wants to make to the world. An ongoing deep and rich partnership with the other nations of these isles, absolutely, but ultimately as a nation state in our own right, as a Member State of the world’s largest trading block, the world’s biggest social and economic community, the European Union.
I have long believed that Scotland is an afterthought to successive UK governments. Scotland is not on Westminster’s radar in the same way, say, as London, the Midlands or the Southeast. From a UK perspective that is completely understandable, but from a Scottish perspective, to accept it is total madness.
It holds us back in ways big and small, leaving us waiting and praying, hoping that decisions taken at Westminster are not too damaging.
We are prey to a broken system and a failing economic model – a system that delivers for a very few at the very top, while living standards stagnate and real wages are squeezed for the vast majority.
It means, as a nation, that we must try to thrive on what amounts, at worst, to poison pills and, at best, policy scraps from the UK table.
All this when we have the capacity to stand and flourish on our own two feet.
I know there are many in this room who are not yet persuaded by the case for independence, and others who will never be. I respect that.
But independence is the defining choice for this generation, have no doubt. Because the UK status quo has proved itself incapable of delivering on the hopes and ambitions of the people of Scotland.
That is why, like a clear majority of Scots, I believe that our nation should have the right to choose.
If this is a voluntary union, as Westminster politicians insist, then it is completely untenable that there is no mechanism for Scotland to leave the Union if it so wishes.
Whether it is Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch or Nigel Farage, no Westminster politician should have the ability to deny Scotland her right to national self-determination.
I want to close today with a piece of poetry that I think perfectly captures this moment in time for our nation. It was written by Liz Lochhead, Scotland’s Makar from 2011 to 2016. It has just been given pride of place, alongside many other inspirational lines of poetry and prose, on the Canongate wall of the Scottish Parliament.
She wrote,
this
our one small country . . .
our one, wondrous, spinning, dear green place.
What shall we build of it together
in this our one small time and space?
Today, you have heard something of my answer, something of my ambition for Scotland. It is a vision of a country that is fairer, wealthier, more at peace with itself than the Scotland of today.
A Scotland that is modern, dynamic and forward-looking, living in anticipation of what more can be done, what else can be achieved. Moving forward as one, moving forward with hope and self-belief.
Such a Scotland is within reach, I have no doubt. But if we want it, we have to work for it, we have to vote for it, we have to actively, purposefully, and I hope also joyfully, make it happen.