Scotland is at a juncture where the right in politics will realign. The question is only how, not if or even when. That is something to celebrate. As the Tories have decided to circle wagons it falls to others to make the case for change. As Oscar Wilde wrote, 

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one’s mind. It becomes a pleasure.

The Tories have failed. This election proved that. Ten years have passed since the independence referendum and little progress has been made since them. We are in a time warp where every answer is around the corner and every problem is seen in terms of enemies and not challenges because fantasists deal in absolutes. 

Unionists have long indulged the fantasies of nationalists by turning every election of the last decade into them and us, unionism versus nationalism but that has been a grave error for a reason we should pause to consider.

Unionism and Nationalism are not equals. There is no parity of esteem

Unionism and Nationalism are not equals. There is no parity of esteem. There cannot be because one of these movements is rooted in fantasy and the other is very real. Nationalism holds that every solution can be solved in a magical time, undefined, and safely displaced outside the event horizon of any current parliament. 

That is the field in which nationalism thrives. Fighting that movement in that field is utter folly — playing to its strengths which may explain why it has been in power for the past 20 years. Given the miserable lack of hunger for change among Tory leadership contenders, it is very likely they will continue to waterboard the electorate with more fantastical threats of indyref being just around the hill — all the while feeding the nationalists with hope and relevance.

Toxic codependency fuels one vision of the future, and it isn’t ours. Often we disdainfully think of nationalists as revolutionaries but that foregoes an undiscovered opportunity for unionists: counterrevolution. Less is taught about counterrevolution in history because it is so wonderfully dull and boring. That is its strength. 

Every issue in Scotland today can be measured in terms of how far we have indulged fantasies. The solution will be how we ground solutions and policies in the real world. What unionists need now, and always have needed, is movement of now.

“Reality Now” is what no one is offering. No one is trying to be boring but few things are as effective as being boring. We could also say professional, or commanding authority, or being accountable. Fantasists find such trifles to be boring — and very intimidating. 

What better way to end any fantasy than to spoil it by pointing out that it will not work and explaining why it will not work. Few things fill me with dread like a 30 year old politician being passionate about something. 

If your child had a tumour, your roof was leaking, and your car engine seized up it would make for a miserable day but how would you feel if the person taking the emergency call told you how passionate they were about helping? How they have some interesting ideas to try out, and that was the right time to test them, and not to worry because it’ll be alright on the night?

All of us would firmly put the phone down, walk out of that meeting, and seek a second opinion. It is no different with fantasists who put another “i” in running the country by running it. It is fantasy that someone who has never worked in healthcare can run healthcare. That someone functionally illiterate and immune to evidence can run education or that someone who cannot define a woman can represent women.

Like the emperor who wore no clothes, the national fantasists are in Holyrood today. Greens in particular seem disqualified from elected office by crimes against numeracy. I doubt I’ve heard a Nationalist or a Green mention the word gigawatt or kilojoule, and never anything based on an order of magnitude of base ten yet every argument they make on energy assumes the numbers are right. 

Are they? Has anybody on our side even bothered to ask if powering 2 million homes on twigs and old cooking oil is even possible? Is any green solution proffered scaleable?  

From healthcare, to Covid, to economic policy (we don’t have one by the wa ) one thing Scotland suffers badly from is a very narrow repertoire of skills in politics, all based on fantasy over reality. We have very few doctors, chemists, accountants, architects in our politics, almost none in our Parliament. 

Crisis management can only be delivered by realists. Fantasists are found out all too often and quickly in crises. This may be why we handle crises so badly, because we don’t really handle anything that well, only that when things glacially fall apart no one seems to notice. The crisis of competence in Scotland is the fire in which we burn and unionism is not spared.

Yet, we have form. During the independence debate, there were some very interesting boring people. The late Alistair Darling was wonderfully boring, and ripped apart every economic argument the fantasists offered up.

Discussions on borders, pensions, currency were cold wet rocks upon which every wave broke into foam. The angrier the waves swept over the rocks, the higher the foam, the more energy expended and the cold wet rocks moved not an inch. Fantasists made many waves in that campaign, and it was realism that broke them. 

In contrast this decade has been squandered wrestling like pigs and arguing like drunks about a referendum that unionists have already won. 

My background in emergency medicine focuses my politics as a matter of reality and of now, of crisis management as being urgent and therefore the most desirable to manage. The first rule of emergency psychiatry is that as a clinician you take control without hesitation. There is no parity between delusion and insight, nor is reality served within oneself by indulging irrational and malingering fantasies in others. That we can see how others imagine certain things does mean we agree with them and nor should we. 

Ruth Davidson’s project spent its whole time telling us how they agreed with the SNP on every social issue, just not as much of course, not to the same extent, that they were sensible executive fantasists for those a little nervous of going the whole hog.  In this vain effort to reduce politics to the singularity of independence, Davidson’s party surrendered to fantasy.

This leaves a husk where there was a proud unionist party. We had a stable of professionals connected to real life and real solutions in our politics but now that party is soaked in PR boys, gender activists and theoretical social science lecturers. Worse, we have bag carriers who never grew up, without even a P45 from a job outside of politics. 

Like popes choosing cardinals picking popes, the unionist right is sclerotic and incapable of internal renewal. It has delivered an intellectual dark age for Scottish Unionism, lauded over by a pious woke priesthood for too long and for their personal gain. More of the same dross beckons. The remainder have been silent for long to have anything credible to say now.

By indulging and promoting indyref threats we wasted a decade living in a future that never came but we were always living in the now. Every day we live is today. That is how our politics should be, living in the here and now. It is time we voted for people who live in our time — free of any that emotive personality guff we’ve endured for too long.

Fellow Unionists, our time is Now.