The election has unseated the worst Tory Government of modern times, which is now replaced by an opposition that is committed to spending its people’s wealth on funding the most indiscriminate and inhumane weapons ever created. Nor does it understand or nor take serious action on the most urgent crisis the world has ever faced, as wildfires and floods devastate lives and the environment alike.
This election indicates that people now have lost faith in any change being effected through the ballot box. The 2014 Indy referendum turned out 84% of the electorate, but Starmer’s Government was elected as a default by 42% in Scotland.
Scotland has its own weaknesses in the realm of prejudice and bigotry, but there is a strong aspiration, at least, for universal fairness, standing up for friends and strangers and offering something better. That is communicated through culture, arts and participative community based conversations.
Looking forward
We can practice autonomy and self-determination in the spaces we occupy together, and amplify and share that aspiration through listening and telling our stories. In the face of real and everyday dangers from poverty, misinformation, exclusion of the poor or the foreigner, acting together can challenge the prevailing nonsense that militarism, war or nuclear weapons keep us safe. If all of us withhold resources, effort or even acceptance that our wellbeing depends on an economy based on the capacity to destroy life rather than sustain it, individual actions can force change through their cumulative impact.
Are people apathetic or dismissive of a system that won’t serve them or are they ignored and silenced by the media, and is there the means to tackle that through sharing ?
Through arts and culture we can speak, and through the withdrawal of consent for government actions that misrepresent us that we can effect change. But a failure to yet again elect a government that meets the challenges faced by the people of Scotland and which is trumpeted as a triumph need not silence us or mean that we need lose hope. The nature of the broken system is a possible opening for a real change and effective resistance to an oppressive regime that is based on ‘might is right’.
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