Irvine Welsh's view on the Scottish Referendum

A view of Edinburgh, Scotland

"The most interesting thing about the independence referendum is how the yes campaign has gone from being perceived on the left as anti-British, to part of the vanguard of a broader populist movement to restore democracy across these islands. In the larger context, this is isn't surprising; the Conservatives have long given up even pretending to represent anybody other than society's elites and their cohorts, who have taken the country to the cleaners for the last 35 years. (Anybody who doubts this should look at the continuing flow of wealth from the many to the few.) Labour has also presided over this ongoing obscenity, while occasionally hinting that they can perhaps wring some begrudged concessions from those elites. This seldom, if ever, happens; the UK is simply not set up that way.

With its morally bankrupt party system, zero-esteemed career politicians, and plethora of coverups and conspiracies reaching into the heart of a seedy, decadent, self-serving establishment in business, politics, the media and the judiciary, the UK is now perceived as a failed state by many of its citizens. It has entrenched the entitlement of power and privilege above that of the aspiration to any true democracy.

But now people are thinking about the public school elites, aristocracy, City of London investment bankers, corporate lobbyists, and the imperialist warmongers, apologists and conspirators in the media, not as instruments of good government and a healthy democracy, but as dangerous impediments to it. All those will be eliminated, or their influence largely diminished, in Scotland following a yes vote and the establishment of a constitution that confers genuine rights on citizens. If Scotland moves in that direction, I wouldn't expect England to hang around in developing a true grassroots democratic movement.

The yes campaign has empowered people to take control of their own destiny, and offered hope that they, their families and communities can have a genuine future. The principle is a simple one: it involves national resources going into education, health and housing, instead of being siphoned off into the offshore accounts of the super-rich or squandered on sordid overseas conflicts, instigated by the inadequate for the profit of their paymasters. (This is what they mean by "influence on the world stage".) The yes campaign deserves to succeed in September with a positive vote. Either way, the genie is now out of the bottle, and the issue, and the newly empowered citizens it has created, certainly will not be going away.

On a personal note, I've lived most of the last decade in Ireland and America, two countries that were once ruled from London. I've yet to meet a single person in either who is in a hurry to go back to that arrangement. Once Scotland and England have freedom from the corrupt, imperialist and elitist setup, I can guarantee that their people will feel exactly the same way."