By Phil Martin, IMT Edinburgh

MSPs belonging to the Scottish National Party teamed up with the Tories in the Scottish Parliament at the end of May in order to vote against measures designed to protect tenants during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Members of the parliamentary COVID-19 committee were considering amendments to emergency legislation that were put forward by Scottish Labour and the Scottish Green Party.

Almost six years have passed since the Scottish independence referendum, and over this time, the UK has been ruled by a perpetual Tory government. This stasis has led to a resurgence of the independence campaign. It is important to analyse what such an independent Scotland would look like in our current crisis.

A trade unionist in Edinburgh recently commented on the new challenges of union organising, saying that in COVID times a few days are like several months. This is very apt. Whilst out in the streets things are eerily quiet, inside, in the houses and the key workplaces we’re going through a huge and irreversible change in consciousness.

There is growing anger among postal workers regarding the lack of safety and infection control provisions within Royal Mail. In some places, postal workers have already staged walkouts, showing the bosses that they won’t be sacrificed for profit.

While workers across the world are facing uncertain incomes or being forced into work by bosses with little regard to safety, workers in the Scottish Highlands are also facing another threat to their safety. There has been a huge influx of people into their remote communities, many paying for luxury ‘isolation holidays’ or returning to their second homes, putting what little services exist in these areas under enormous strain. This reflects a broader pattern of the ruling class viewing the Highlands as their playground, leaving locals with a lack of housing, poor economic opportunities and a severe lack of vital services.

When the results of the 2016 EU membership referendum came in, Nicola Sturgeon took to the airwaves to denounce the fact that while the rest of the UK had voted to Leave, Scottish voters had not. While this fact has been consistently used to make a democratic case for independence, the SNP policy on the EU has evolved multiple times: from “special status”, to Single Market membership, to “Stop Brexit”. As Britain has now left the EU, this process of evolution has merged the two questions, with the main SNP slogan now being “an independent European nation”: advocating that an independent Scotland would re-join the European Union.

The ancient Chinese military specialist Sun Tzu once said “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” It is for this reason that Marxists spend many an hour studying the capitalist class. Fortunately for us there exists The Financial Times, a paper which gives a very honest commentary on behalf of this class, often revealing their anxieties, ideas and long term plans. In January, the paper’s senior economics editor at the Financial Times, Martin Wolf, showed his anxiety by drawing attention to “an unholy trinity of slowing productivity growth, soaring inequality and huge financial shocks” that have gripped capitalism in recent decades.