Listen To The Latest Podcasts From Skotia
Skotia’s podcasts provide a platform for long-form critical analysis of Scottish politics and beyond. Our latest project is Redgauntlet, a periodic Scottish politics show with the Scottish Left Review.
#3 – THE DEVOLUTION DEAD END?
In 2004, Edwin Morgan wrote that Scots wanted their new parliament at the foot of Edinbrugh’s Royal Mile “to be filled with thinking persons as open and adventurous as its architecture.” What Scots did not want of their parliament, however, was a “nest of fearties.” Ultimately, continued Morgan, “the droopy mantra of ‘it wizny me’ is what they do not want.”
Today, ‘it wizny me’ appears baked into Holyrood’s vocabulary. The Scottish Parliament presides over a litany of botched infrastructure projects, bungled schemes and broken promises. Alistair Grey’s plea to ‘work as if in the early days of a better nation’ has fallen on deaf ears as politicians accept, rather than push the boundaries of, Scotland’s current constitutional settlement.
#2 – SEEDS OF RADICAL CULTURE
The second episode of Redgauntlet examines the role of writers, storytellers and artists in shaping our politics. In the 1980s and 1990s – so the story goes – writers, artists and intellectuals prodded Scotland towards constitutional change, giving voice to a working class that was muted by the Union. Amidst the doldrums of devolution, sometimes it feels as if those times are past.
#1 – THE INDEPENDENCE IMPASSE
Our first episode explores Scotland’s constitutional bind. John Swinney insists independence will be line one of the SNP’s general election manifesto, but he knows his party has exhausted the constitutional routes to a second referendum. Scottish Labour looks set for gains across the central belt in July, while Keir Starmer wraps himself in a union jack. With the General Election just weeks away, the electorate remains evenly divided on the independence question.
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