Cat Boyd

WHEN it comes to my Scottish identity, I’ve never been a romantic nationalist. I’ve never felt that sense of solidarity that comes with shared birthplace or ancestry alone. Rather, when I think of Scotland, I see a nation built on conflicting, clashing forces: a country founded on confrontation between rich and poor, landlords and tenants, reactionaries and rebels, trade unionists and Tories.

A “MEDIOCRE, milquetoast neoliberal centrist”. That’s how Dr Cornel West describes the new president, and he’s right.

THREE and a half years ago, when I started writing this column, it felt as if a people’s army was gathering for a Europe-wide assault on the fortress of austerity.

I WANTED to call this column “Victory to the gilets jaunes”.

I DON’T judge how people voted in the EU referendum. I am still guilty of indecisiveness. As I’ve said before, in a real vote on the EU, I am for Leave. If voting on the social attitudes of the respective campaigns, I’d vote Remain. The mainstream debate forces you, in essence, to choose between xenophobic nationalism and the neoliberal globalisation that gives rise to xenophobic nationalism. Clinton or Trump. Remain or Leave. Crisis now, or crisis in five years. This is the blackmail imposed on our whole global political debate, and Brexit is just one angle on it.

TALENT borrows, genius steals, so they say. I hope there’s some truth in it, because blatant intellectual theft is a hallmark of all the best campaigns I’ve been involved in. Take, for example, “Another Scotland is Possible”, the motto of the Radical Independence Campaign. We stole that, quite specifically, from the World Social Forum, a conference that once attracted much of the intellectual and campaigning talent of the global radical left and briefly threatened to unite “world public opinion” against American imperialism and corporate dominance.

DAVID Cameron may have been the worst prime minister since Anthony Eden, but I must admit, the man could jibe. He was a master of public-school debating put-downs, a rhetorical bully with style and panache. Arguably his pithiest and most quoted one-liner was a scathing assessment of Tony Blair: “He was the future, once.”

TWO events highlighted contrasting visions of our planet’s future yesterday. In Korea, the world’s top climate scientists issued a “final call” to save the world from climate catastrophe. “It’s a line in the sand and what it says to our species is that this is the moment and we must act now,” said a co-chair of the one the groups looking at the catastrophic impacts of rising temperatures. “This is the largest clarion bell from the science community and I hope it mobilises people and dents the mood of complacency.”

IN 2014, I ran around all of Scotland, and much of England, saying Britain is broken and it’s time for change. Back then, our movement was out on a limb. We were outsiders, trying to get an audience for an analysis of the British state that most of the media considered absurd. How had some people got it into their heads that Europe’s most stable capitalist democracy was on the verge of collapse? Today, by contrast, there is no more argument: Britain is synonymous with crisis.

LABOUR’S EUref2 dilemma dominated last week’s news: will they, won’t they, will it make a difference?