At the end of October we will be presented with the fourth prime minister in succession who was able to take over the most powerful position in the land without having to be elected by the people. Theresa May and Boris Johnson chose to call elections when they thought it was to their advantage but they could each legally have stayed in office for over three years without an election.
This is unacceptable in any democracy but even more so when we are being dragged to a more “presidential” form of government where more and more power is vested in one person.
Whoever becomes Prime Minister this time their first job must be to call a General Election and let the people decide whether to accept them.
That General Election will allow us to cast a verdict on the Prime Minister who laughed and partied while everyone else obeyed his lockdown rules; the Prime Minister who repeatedly lied to parliament and to the people; the Prime Minister who created the conditions for the current cost of living crisis; the successive Prime Ministers who let energy companies enjoy massive profits while people freeze in their own homes; the Prime Minister who caused a huge hike in interest rates adding thousands of pounds per year to people’s mortgages; and much, much more.
It’s also time to cast a verdict on every single Tory MP who stood and cheered for May, for Johnson, for Truss, and for all of their attacks on our living standards and on our civil rights.
It’s clear that the Tories, regardless of who their leader is, are not fit to govern. But changing the party of government is not enough. The fact that May, Johnson and Truss were able to inflict one disaster after another on us demonstrates that Britain itself is a broken and failing state. Scotland can’t afford to wait until enough voters in England finally face up to this fact. We can’t afford to, and we don’t need to.
It’s time for Scotland to take steps to guarantee that we can never again be ruled by a party we rejected at the polls. It’s time for our people to recognise that we can never build the fairer, wealthier and greener Scotland we want to see while Westminster makes the rules. It’s time to get out of this broken, corrupt and out of date union.
It’s time for Independence.