A HAPPY St Andrew's day to you from Scotland on Sunday. May it be an enjoyable one. The way we celebrate our national day doesn't quite live up to the American razzmatazz of July 4 or French pomp of July 14 (the inclement time of the year certainly doesn't help).
There may be few parades or firework displays across Scotland today, but we can still pause and take time to enjoy our country's many pleasures – even if it's no more than a bracing walk in a beautiful wintry landscape or a warming sip of the nati
onal drink. Perhaps, too, we can spare a moment to think about our nation's future.
This newspaper has chosen today to launch an ambitious, long-term project called Scotland's Future. Our intention – in fact, our promise – is to put Scotland on Sunday and its readers at the heart of the debate over what kind of country this should be for generations to come. We will do this in the way we know best – by talking, by listening and by arguing, using the best minds and imaginations we can find, whether they be politicians or poets, within and outwith Scotland.
Alex Salmond has pledged to hold a referendum on Scottish independence on St Andrew's Day 2010. Of course, it remains to be seen if the SNP can muster the parliamentary majority necessary to hold such a poll. But assuming he can, this gives us 24 months to fully debate a choice that will, one way or another, etch itself in Scottish history. We intend to make good use of that time.
A decade on from the advent of devolution, there's no doubt we need to look again at Scotland's constitutional arrangements. Sticking with the same form of government we have just now is, this paper believes, unacceptable. The form of devolution ushered in by Donald Dewar in 1999 was a sensible starting point in giving Scotland back control over its own domestic affairs. But the lack of meaningful power over the economy, with fiscal power limited to the unwieldy option of varying the basic rate of income tax, means the Scottish Government is spending money it does not raise. This is not a recipe for responsible, accountable, dynamic government. We deserve better than this. We as a nation are more capable than the current system allows us to be.
The 2010 referendum is shaping up to be a clear choice between two alternative futures. The first is a Scotland that breaks away from the rest of the United Kingdom and becomes a sovereign state in its own right. The second is a new and improved version of home rule within the Union. The exact form of this second option remains, for now, unclear as it hangs on the outcome of the Calman Commission discussions. The Calman deliberations are crucial to the debate on Scotland's future and deserve particular scrutiny in the weeks and months ahead. But so too does the argument for independence, especially in the light of a global economic crisis that questions many of the assumptions that have underpinned the Scottish constitutional debate in the past.
This newspaper's position on the constitution has, with the occasional diversion, been fairly consistent since Scotland on Sunday first hit the streets in 1988 (when Scotland, you will recall, was still run by direct rule from London). We have campaigned vigorously for a strong Scottish Parliament with substantial powers – usually in excess of what the Labour Party has been offering at any particular time, but short of the SNP's favoured option of full sovereignty. Our stance is not, however, an ideological one. We will not die in the last ditch for the Union. Nor will we leap blind into independence. We will judge what is best for Scotland, taking into account our economic, cultural, political and social circumstances, and the state of the world around us. At the end of this process we will weigh all in the balance and make a decision on Scotland's future based on the evidence. And we will provide the arguments and insights that will allow Scots to make up their own minds about which course of action is best for them, their families and their country. The road to November 30, 2010, is long and winding. We must travel that route with our eyes wide open rather than sleepwalking.
