In Thrive, Lesley Riddoch makes an impassioned case for independence, weaving academic evidence with story, international comparison with anecdote, to explain why Scotland is ready to step forward as the world’s newest state.
Why won’t Scots simmer down?
Why batter on about independence when folk voted no a decade back?
After all. Scotland is not as populated as Yorkshire. Nor as wealthy as London.
But it’s also not as Conservative. Nor as suspicious of Europeans, keen on Brexit or willing to flog off public assets to the ruling party’s pals.
Put simply - and with or without Nicola Sturgeon at the helm - Scotland is a social democracy stuck in a Conservative state with no legal way out. A progressive North Atlantic nation steered by a Westminster government that’s preoccupied with regaining its lost imperial status.
Scotland is a former state with its own laws, education, universities, languages, welfare system, history and hang-ups - in short, another country.
And the British Isles will work better together when Scotland is governed by the folk who call it home.
‘Let’s cast aside pre-conceptions. Whichever way you voted in 2014 – if you were able – the world has changed, Europe has changed, the UK has changed (not in a good way) and now Scots need the freedom to change too.