Scotland’s green energy generation capacity is expected to soar further as big offshore wind farms now being built come on line. The BBC says that 16 gigawatts of new renewable electricity capacity are being developed in Scotland, half of it from offshore wind. Scotland, it says, has tripled its renewable energy output in the past decade, with the renewables sector employing 27,000 Scots.

H/t Scottish Renewables

Scotland, as a small country of 5.45 million inhabitants, exports a lot of its power to England. Those exports were up 17% in 2022, and were worth nearly $5 billion, given the high energy prices provoked by the Russian war on Ukraine and the consequent sanctions on Russian hydrocarbons.

Although some 97% of Scotland’s electricity consumption is now from renewables, the country still emits carbon dioxide from other energy sectors, including heating, transportation, construction and agriculture.

Sky News: “Scottish government: New cabinet to take forward ‘radical, progressive agenda’ – Humza Yousaf”

The ruling Scottish National Party had issued a call this winter for an end to new oil and gas exploration. While not all candidates for First Minister were committed to that policy, the eventual winner, Humza Yousaf, is sticking firmly with the pledge. His ability to block new drilling is limited however, since granting such licenses is a prerogative of the British government. Britain or the United Kingdom is a union of four countries– England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland– and the federal government sets many energy policies. Still, Yousaf can at least complain loudly about drilling licenses being granted in Scotland or off its shores by London.

Yousaf is one of the SNP leaders most committed to a quick achievement of a zero carbon economy, toward which Scotland has made some of the most impressive strides among the world’s economies.

The Tory government of Britain, in contrast, is committed to ridiculous climate policies such as building a raft of new nuclear plants and trying to capture carbon dioxide (which is a poison gas if you pile it up all in one place. What if there is a leak?) Besides which, carbon capture is not a proven technology, it is just vaporware and way too expensive to be viable. The Conservatives talk this way because they are all heavily invested in BP in their retirement portfolios, and the actual value of BP’s oil fields is zero given the harm burning oil does to the earth.

Yousaf is also committed to a just energy transition and using the state’s redistribution capacities to protect the poor and workers. He has spoken of state investments in green energy, i.e. developing a public-private partnership that opponents will brand socialism.

Yousaf has excellent relations with the Green Party members of parliament, and that will help him stay in power. Even Keir Starmer of the UK Labor Party has highlighted Scotland’s renewables successes and said they would be supported in a Labor government.

Humza Yousaf’s appointment as first minister of Scotland is a historic moment for the UK. It means that, for the first time in history, the country has a Hindu prime minister in Westminster (Rishi Sunak) and a Muslim first minister in Scotland.

In his victory speech, Yousaf said:

We should all take pride in the fact that today we have sent a clear message, that your colour of skin, your faith, is not a barrier to leading the country we all call home.

On the face of it, these two men, whose families came to the UK as immigrants looking for a better life, embody the dream that, through hard work, immigrants and their children can make it to the top of society.

Similar stories are playing out elsewhere at the top level of British politics, too. Scotland’s main opposition party Labour is led by Anas Sawar, a man who is also of Pakistani Muslim heritage, as is Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London. The Westminster cabinet also has unprecedented ethnic diversity.

Many of these politicians are the children and grandchildren of immigrants who came to the UK in the 1950s and 1960s, economic migrants from former colonies like India, Pakistan and the nations of east Africa and the Caribbean, who came with little money and limited English language. This first wave of postcolonial migrants often worked in the great British industries, in factories and in mills, settling in large town and cities.

Scotland is the only western European nation to have a Muslim leader and the UK the only democracy where the children of formerly colonised people are running the country that colonised their parents’ and grandparents’ nations. The moment is monumental. The UK, Scotland and indeed Ireland are all led by people from the south Asian diaspora.

Both Yousaf and Sunak have credited their grandparents and parents for their work ethic, which they say has enabled them to move up Britain’s social and political hierarchy. It’s an inspiring story but perhaps one they should both reflect on now they are in power. It is perhaps harder for arrivals in today’s Britain to replicate this journey.

The ultimate stress test awaits

Though Yousaf has stated he is a practising Muslim, he is also clear that he does not believe that legislators should be led by faith in their decision-making. That said, at an event we organised at the Scottish Parliament on Muslims and the political process in Scotland when Yousaf first became an MSP, he revealed that his faith had been part of his motivation for getting into politics in the first place.

His political awakening had taken place a decade earlier in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in the United States. As he sat watching the images of the Twin Towers with classmates, they turned to ask him why Muslims hated America. That, he states, is when he realised politics mattered.

Yousaf’s faith and ethnicity had previously been rarely commented on in Scottish politics. Indeed, it is rare to hear him described as a “Muslim minister” or “British Asian MSP”. The same applies to others who have preceded or followed him and is a measure of how far the UK has come with regards to minorities in public life.

During the SNP leadership contest, however, Yousaf’s absence from a vote on equal marriage for same-sex couples was questioned and linked to his faith and standing in the Glasgow Pakistani community. The allegation was that he did not want to vote in favour of this legislation for fear of alienating that community.

A spokesperson for Yousaf’s campaign responded by saying that he “unequivocally supports equal marriage” and that his absence from the vote was due to “an extremely important engagement which involved trying to secure the release of a Scottish national sentenced to death for blasphemy in Pakistan”.

It is important to note that neither Yousaf or Sunak have yet faced the real stress test. They both became leaders on the back of a closed party selection process so have not yet had to stand as a leader in a public election.

That will be the real measure of how accepting the wider British public is of the changing face of national politics. It remains to be seen whether their ethnicity becomes a factor in the public debate around their politics.

Both Yousaf and Sunak seem keen to keep their faith in the private sphere, which is expected in British politics. Former prime minister Tony Blair’s team famously lived by the mantra “We don’t do God” when it came to avoiding discussions about his Christianity.

The class caveat

Yousaf’s politics couldn’t be more different from Sunak’s. He is firmly left of centre on immigration, welfare and taxation. This reminds us that the ethnic minority political identity is not uniform, although for years parties on the left took the minority vote for granted.

Today ethnic, religious and cultural diversity is reflected across the political spectrum. It is possible to reach the top whatever your political identity.

But it should be noted that less has changed when it comes to educational and social background. Yousaf’s father was an accountant. Sunak the son of a doctor and a pharmacist. Both men went to private school. They were part of a generation of immigrants who were able to come to the UK and make a better life for themselves.

Politics continues to be dominated by the privately educated. Class is the true divide in British politics, whatever colour rosette a candidate wears.

Parveen Akhtar, Senior Lecturer: Politics, History and International Relations, Aston University and Timothy Peace, Lecturer in Politics, University of Glasgow

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Scotland already gets nearly 100% of its electricity from renewables, but much of its building heating comes from methane gas, and its transportation sector still largely depends on petroleum. Both commodities are wrecking the planet with dangerous carbon dioxide emissions and have spiked in price, creating fuel insecurity among the poor and elderly. Matheson not only sees the crisis as a wake-up call to move even more quickly to wind and tidal power in Scotland itself but also envisages Scotland exporting its wind-driven electricity to Europe.

Matheson pushed back against Scottish members of parliament who wanted to revive the country’s fading oil and gas industries as a way to replace Russian methane gas. He insisted that renewables are a “more consistent and stable form of energy supply” and contrasted them to volatile hydrocarbons.

The Scotsman quotes the Strategic Business Development manager at Port of Cromarty Firth, Joanne Allday, as saying that the government’s surprise January announcement that it would let bids for some 25 Gigawatts of new offshore wind power was an “incredible statement of intent to put Scotland on the offshore wind map,” saying, “Offshore wind is, if you like, our country’s renewable superpower.”

I had written on January 19 when this announcement was made, “17 new massive offshore wind projects have been authorized off Scotland that collectively would generate 25 gigawatts of power. Note that the total offshore wind capacity as of 2020 in the whole world was only 35 gigawatts, so this one set of “ScotWind” projects will almost double the global total.”

Apparently Matheson is hinting that even more offshore wind will now be developed by Scotland.

Scotland is pursuing both turbine towers rooted in the seabed closer to shore and floating wind turbines farther out, where winds are stronger and more consistent. Allday wants Scotland to develop floating turbine technology further and to become the world leader in it.

The Scotsman points out, “Estimates suggest for each 1GW of offshore wind power installed, around £1 billion will be invested in the Scottish economy.”

Foreign direct investment was at nearly 6% last year, despite the pandemic and even though FDI fell in Europe as a whole. Scottish FDI has been strong for many years. Allday is saying that offshore wind installations alone will bring in $32.5 billion in new investments.

Katrine Bussey at Scottish TV News reports that Liberal Democratic Party leader Alex Cole-Hamilton argued that a Scottish “green industrial revolution” could replace Russian gas in Europe.

Bussey writes, “Alex Cole-Hamilton urged ministers in Edinburgh to ‘maximise’ the amount of wind, tidal and even solar power that can be produced, arguing the renewables sector could see Scotland become ‘the engine that powers Western Europe.'”

Cole-Hamilton noted that Scotland was fortunate enough not to rely greatly on Russian oil and gas, but that much of Europe was not as lucky. He added,

“We need a green industrial revolution to maximise the energy we generate from wind, tidal, even solar power. The more that we can export, the more we can reduce demand for Russian oil and gas.

“We should be investing in any project which offers a good chance of reducing domestic demand and expanding international supply. Not only would that offer a boost to our European allies looking to wean themselves off Putin’s supply, it would help hard-hit families struggling with the cost-of-living crisis.

“From our islands which have a track record of being at the forefront of renewable energy innovation to the decades of offshore experience in the north east and the engineering yards of Fife and Glasgow, this is as close to a win-win opportunity as the Scottish Government are ever going to be offered.”

Edinburgh, Scotland

(Foreign Policy in Focus) – If I were the European Union, I’d be wiping my hands, sighing in relief, and slamming the door after the United Kingdom’s long-delayed departure.

Britain had been a noisy, pushy houseguest for 47 years, and it was only growing ruder. It spent the last three years hanging out in the foyer, braying and temporizing. Even as it steps out the door it’s trying to negotiate the most generous visitation terms: all rights with no responsibilities.

Good riddance to guests who overstay their welcome.

The UK was always demanding special exceptions to the rules. It was always attempting to smuggle its ridiculous laissez-faire ideas into continental practices. It was always boasting of its extramarital affairs with America. And, mon dieu, could it drone on at dinner about the “good old days” when the sun never set on its imperialist expanse. John Bull, indeed!

There’s no better example of this British bull than Nigel Farage, the man who practically engineered Brexit. What do you suppose he was doing for a living for the last two decades? Managing a Union Jack flag factory? Running a fish-and-chips shop in London? Growing turnips somewhere in the British countryside?

No, the man who made a career of hating the EU served in the European Parliament non-stop since 1999.

He was pulling down 100,000 pounds a year for doing the work of a termite, eating away the foundations of the house into which he’d been invited. Part of his time was also spent misspending funds, which forced the EU to dock his pay. At least when he complained of EU corruption, he could present one indisputable case to prove his point.

Farage’s departure from the European Parliament was of a piece with his undistinguished tenure as parliamentarian. “I’m hoping this begins the end of this project,” he crowed on his last day in the body as he waved his little Union Jack. “It’s a bad project, it isn’t just undemocratic, it’s anti-democratic.”

Seems to me that the European Parliament was overly democratic by letting someone so obnoxious bite the hand that had fed him, year after year, for two decades.

As for the speechifying and flag-waving, the parliament’s vice president, Mairead McGuinness, , was having none of it. “If you disobey the rules, you get cut off,” she said to the misbehaving Farage. “Please sit down, resume your seats, put your flags away — you’re leaving — and take them with you.”

It’s too bad no one ever said something like that to Boris Johnson, the erstwhile prime minister of what will soon be the incredibly shrinking United Kingdom. Johnson joined Farage in misleading the British public into cutting off their own noses to spite the EU’s face. Johnson is wittier than Farage, more willing to make fun of himself and his pomposities. But he’s still a prat. In the end, the pair have turned out to be the glycerol and nitric acid of Brexit — harmless by themselves but recklessly explosive in combination.

The nitroglycerin blast won’t reach across the Channel. The European Union will survive Brexit, thank you very much.

No, Brexit will turn out to be a suicide attack on the UK itself.

Goodbye Scotland?

The hardy people of Scotland didn’t want to leave the European Union. By a margin of 62 percent to 38 percent, they voted Remain in the 2016 referendum. It was unanimous across all 32 council areas.

In the last UK election in December, meanwhile, the Scottish National Party (SNP) practically swept the results, gaining 13 more seats to hold a commanding 48 of 59 Scottish seats in the British parliament (it currently holds a majority in the Scottish parliament as well). Labor, having failed to clearly support Remain, dropped to a single seat.

The head of the SNP, Nicola Sturgeon, is angling to hold another referendum on Scottish independence. The Johnson government is saying no, that the 2014 referendum, which supported remaining in the UK by a margin of 55 to 45 percent, was a “once in a generation” opportunity. Sturgeon could very well retort that, because of Brexit, the UK has aged a generation in the last three years.

Support for independence today in Scotland is as close as Brexit was in 2016. The latest polls put it at around 51 percent. But that will likely increase as the economic impact of Brexit begins to hit.

Of course, Scottish independence would also be a step toward rejoining the European Union. According to outgoing president of the European Council Donald Tusk, there’s enthusiasm in the EU about an independent Scotland applying for admission.

The enthusiasm goes both ways, since the Scottish economy depends a great deal on Europe. In 2018, Scottish exports to the EU grew by 4.5 percent to reach 16 billion pounds. That’s less than a third of what goes to the rest of the UK, but it’s still a significant amount. Moreover, because of a growing labor deficit, Scotland has relied on EU nationals to staff the tourism and service sectors.

As a sign of their Europhilia, the Scots voted last week to keep the EU flag flying outside their devolved parliament in Edinburgh. Take that, Nigel Farage!

Goodbye Northern Ireland?

Northern Ireland also wanted to stay in the EU, not quite so much as Scotland, but still by a significant margin of 56 percent to 44 percent in the 2016 referendum.

Brexit could have the most calamitous impact on the peace that has held between unionists and republicans in Northern Ireland. The Good Friday Agreement that effectively ended the war between these two communities also softened the border between the two parts of Ireland through demilitarization and increased cross-border exchanges.

Ever since, it’s been a delicate balance between the north and the south and between Northern Ireland and the UK. But at least everyone was part of the EU. Not anymore.

Since the Republic of Ireland remains part of the EU, a special arrangement has been made to keep Northern Ireland part of Europe’s customs union. But that will push the boundary between the UK and Ireland into the sea and also require all sorts of paperwork for the trade that passes between the two.

The unionists are upset that their link to the UK has been weakened. The republicans are angry that they’re no longer part of the EU alongside the Republic of Ireland. The various paramilitaries associated with these communities are still around, though it’s unlikely that Brexit by itself will reignite the conflict.

But the long-held dream of republicans in Northern Ireland — unification with the south — is now back on the table. And that might push the unionists up against the wall. Many are furious at Boris Johnson’s betrayal of Northern Ireland at the EU negotiating table and might probably view unification with the south as a detour back into the EU. But other unionists might be willing to go to any length to prevent that scenario.

As Nick Laird writes in The New York Review of Books:

The old binary national and religious distinctions would be complicated with economic questions, and questions about whether the Northern Irish want to be yoked to insular self-defeating Little Englanders who couldn’t care less about them, or to the largest single market in the world, which, for whatever its faults, was founded on the postwar ideals of peace and fraternity and prosperity.

Of course, the longer Northern Ireland debates this question, the more the question might answer itself. “The demographics of Northern Ireland have been steadily shifting,” writes James Angelos in The New York Times. “Within the decade, a majority of its people will be Catholic, making the prospect of a united Ireland seem almost inevitable.”

Goodbye Prosperity?

First off, even though the UK is now officially out of the EU as of January 31, no one knows what the economic impact will be — because of the one-year grace period before any of the consequences of withdrawal begin to kick in.

The UK has dodged the bullet of a “no deal” exit, which would have been truly catastrophic. But during this transition period, it now faces a second bullet. Johnson is threatening a “no free trade” exit as part of his negotiations with the EU, refusing to accept European rules and regulations in exchange for privileged access to the EU market.

Even if the two sides narrow their differences, the UK will be hard hit by losing the benefits of membership. The Brexiteers have been counting on a trade deal with the United States to take up the slack. Given how vindictive and unpredictable Donald Trump can be on trade issues, that’s an especially poor horse to bet on.

According to economists at the London School of Economics, Britons can expect a drop of 6.4 percent in per capita income. Whatever the UK saves in its payments to the EU — about 9 billion pounds overall in 2018 — will be more than offset by the cost of divorce, which will be 33 billion pounds.

The UK will lose out not only on the import and export side. UK businesses won’t be able to bid on public contracts in EU member states. The UK will have to forgo R & D resources from Brussels. Young Britons won’t be able to find work so easily on the continent.

Brexit optimists point to a couple strong indicators in the current British economy, such as low unemployment, low inflation, and accelerated wage growth. See, they say, the gloom-and-doomers are wrong.

But this last year has been the worst non-recession growth year in the UK since World War II.

The economic shock delivered by the initial Brexit vote in 2016 already took 1,600 pounds out of the British pockets that they might have ordinarily had if the vote had gone in the Remain direction. Financial services and other businesses have already moved a trillion dollars in assets to other European cities. Foreign investors who might have set up factories in England as a way to access the European market, like Honda and Nissan, are looking elsewhere. Last year, the rate of investment into the UK dropped to the lowest in six years.

Johnson is hoping that he can remake England into a low-wage, low-regulation alternative to the European Union, a “Singapore on the Thames.”

Singapore? Hah, the UK should be so lucky. It will be more like Louisiana, which has also pursued a “low road” approach to competing for investment. Despite being a haven for oil and chemical companies, Louisiana is one of the two poorest states in the country and comes in dead last in the rankings of most environmentally friendly states.

The Holy Grail

The Holy Grail of the Brexiteers is not just leaving the EU but also destroying the institution, as Farage so indelicately put it. Even here, though Brexit has proven self-defeating.

The British experience of withdrawal has served as smelling salts to the rest of Europe. No other exits are on the horizon. Brexit has revealed just how beneficial EU membership is — and also the exorbitant cost of divorce.

The far right remains Euroskeptical. It has also grown more powerful politically since 2016 and has more representation in the European Parliament. This access, however, has changed the political calculus. Now the Euroskeptics are looking at how to change the EU from within, which is frankly a more dangerous prospect.

But that’s a European debate, which no longer will include the British. The UK is pursuing a different Holy Grail: success outside the European Union. And how likely is that prospect?

To understand the UK’s current predicament, let’s go back to the scene involving the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

The Black Knight stands before a bridge to block King Arthur from crossing. Undeterred, Arthur promptly cuts off the Black Knight’s left arm.

“’Tis but a scratch,” the Black Knight says, brandishing the sword with his other arm.

Arthur promptly cuts off this arm as well.

“It’s just a flesh wound,” says the Black Knight.

Arthur cuts off first one leg and then the other.

“All right,” says what remains of the Black Knight, “let’s call it a draw.”

That’s England, limbless after its battle with the EU. Goodbye Scotland, Northern Ireland, and general prosperity. Brexit has left the UK with barely a leg to stand on.

Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson might call that a victory. Other Brexiteers might gamely declare it a draw.

Everyone else will see it much more clearly: as a veritable rout.

Via Foreign Policy in Focus

————

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

AP Archive: “Sturgeon lays out independence plans”

The increase in green energy came mainly from new offshore wind.

New offshore wind also allowed the UK to get 33% of its electricity from renewables in 2018. Although the UK is far behind Scotland in the green energy transition, it is nearly 12 times more populous, at 66 million, and so for it to get fully a third of its electricity from green sources is in real numbers a much bigger deal. British carbon emissions fell 3% last year.

Scotland and the UK have further big plans for new floating offshore wind turbines a technology pioneered off the coast of Scotland by Shell.

Britain as a whole wants to get 30% of its electricity from wind alone by 2030.

Scotland is also doing groundbreaking research and development on wave and tidal energy, which has the advantage of being steady (unlike wind and solar). A small demonstration project is already powering 2600 homes in Scotland, and there are near-term pans to expand it.

People who talk about our finding future solutions to the climate emergency are just out of date. The solutions exist, it is just a matter of implementing them, of political will.

Scotland has that political will. (Truth in advertising, my maternal grandfather was a McIlwee, which I take it makes me an honorary Glaswegian).

Scotland also has plans for car parks that charge electric vehicles, having called for the end of gasoline-driven cars by 2032. The Scotsman says, “Revolutionary vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology will also be employed at the hubs, allowing charged cars to feed electricity back to the smart grid where it can be used to power homes and businesses.”

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Bonus video:

Financial Times: “Power ahead: Scotland’s pioneering renewables role”

The BBC reports that five massive floating wind turbines off the coast of Aberdeenshire in Scotland have gone operational. They generate enough electricity to power 20,000 homes. This “Hywind” project was built by the Norwegian firm Statoil.

It is an exciting development, since a lot of high-wind areas are offshore and being able to install turbines out there will permit us to capture that energy. There is also sometimes some public opposition to onshore turbines (though it appears to be ungrounded), and putting them 10 or 15 miles out from the coast would avoid such pushback.

In the first six months of 2017, wind supplied 57% of Scottish electricity. Electricity generation from wind is up 13% from the same period in 2016.

And, in some months, wind powered the entire country. In June of this year, wind generated 113% of Scottish electricity use, which means they exported some electricity and in principle for that month did not need any natural gas. Reliably, over half of Scottish electricity comes from renewables. That figure in the United States is 10%.

Scotland wants to get 100% of its electricity from renewables by 2020, which will be about 30% of its total energy consumption (household heating, gasoline-fueled transportation, etc.)

In 2016, Scotland, which only has 5.4 million of the UK’s 66 million people (8%), was nevertheless responsible for 25% of the renewable electricity in the country.

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World’s first floating offshore wind farm in Scotland.- BBC News

STV (Scottish TV) reports, “Construction work on the world’s largest tidal energy project is set to begin… The 269-turbine installation, which is expected to power 175,000 homes, will be built in the Inner Sound of the Pentland Firth. Construction is expected to begin at the Ness of Quoys near the village of Mey in Caithness in January.”

Proactive Investors Stocktube, from last summer: “Atlantis Resources chief confirms Scottish and UK governments to back MeyGen”

The Atlantis Web site explains: :

” Tidal Current Power

Tidal current electricity – sometimes known as tidal stream electricity – is clean, renewable, reliable and most importantly, predictable. Atlantis is a leading tidal power technology developer.

There is often confusion regarding the different types of tidal power, and indeed between tidal current power and wave power. To summarise:

Wave energy converters: these harness the motion of waves, which are primarily generated by the wind

Tidal lagoons and tidal barrages: a barrage is constructed across a bay or inlet to create a captive reservoir. The rise and fall of the tides produces a difference in height between the reservoir and the open ocean and this is used to drive turbines fitted in the barrage

Tidal current or tidal stream: these turbines use the kinetic power of tidal currents in the same way that wind turbines use the movement of air. This type of generation has lower capital cost and minimal environmental and visual impact.

Sea water is 832 times denser than air, giving ocean currents an extremely high energy density, which means that tidal turbines have a smaller rotor size than an offshore wind turbine of equivalent power rating. Tidal turbines require less seabed for an equivalent amount of installed generation capacity when compared to wind power, because tidal turbines can be installed closer together within each array. Unlike traditional hydro power or tidal barrage schemes, tidal current power does not require significant alternation of the natural environment and has the obvious advantage of minimal visual pollution when compared to offshore wind.

Tidal energy’s greatest advantage over other alternative energy sources is that it is almost entirely independent of the weather and hence, although it is variable, it is also predictable. Other variable renewables, including wind, wave, solar and hydroelectricity are affected, on varying timescales, by climatic fluctuations which can create challenges for the balancing of the transmission system. Hydroelectricity is subject to seasonal changes and very vulnerable to droughts; available solar power varies at seasonal, daily and instantaneous timescales; and wind and wave climates fluctuate on both seasonal and very short term timescales.

As water covers over 70% of the Earth’s surface, the oceans represents a vast source of energy. We have already identified 25GW of potential tidal stream resource, and other estimates are even higher.”

The US media coverage of the Scottish referendum is oddly lacking in any reference to actual politics. As usual, the corporate media concentrates on issues in ethnicity to cover up issues in social class and social policy. The “Washington consensus” of Neoliberalism, substituting blind so-called “market forces” for good governance, has been adopted with alacrity by the English ruling elite (including much of Labour). That this way of proceeding produces bad public policy and increases wealth inequality, damaging democracy, is seldom considered. But the Scots have Neoliberalism’s number, and they’re also aware that it is unlikely to be dislodged from Westminster any time soon. They are worried about the welfare of the average person under this elitist regime.

1. Scots are on the whole substantially to the left of the current government of the UK, with 64% unsatisfied with the performance of Conservative prime minister David Cameron. The Conservatives only have one member of parliament from Scotland.

2. Scots overwhelmingly favor renewable energy, especially wind power, over nuclear and hydraulic fracturing of natural gas. Mr. Cameron favors fracking.. Scotland has pulled out all the stops in promoting green energy and gets over 40% of its electricity from renewables, aiming for 100% by 2022. England in contrast is a carbon hog.

3. Scots believe in higher education and are afraid of the consequences of Cameron’s deep cuts to university and research funding, which have plummeted the UK to the bottom of the G8 in this regard.

4. Scots overwhelmingly support the National Health Service even if they criticize it for delays. But they are afraid that right wing England will completely privatize it.

5. Scots believe in government redistribution of wealth from the wealthiest to those less well off. Mr. Cameron and his Conservatives want to use the government to make society even more unequal.

The majority of those who voted in the referendum chose to stick with the United Kingdom, but the referendum showed very substantial dissatisfaction with Conservative policies that deeply affect the quality of life of the average Scot, and not for the better.

Channel 4 News: “Interview with Jonathan Shafi of Radical Independence Campaign”