WHY does the idea of learning from other countries enrage opponents of independence?
Twitter/X can be an unpleasant place at the best of times, but posts about my new Denmark film – first of 19 screenings tomorrow in Dundee – have triggered interest from Yessers and a veritable outpouring of fury from Unionists who will not accept the workings of another state can have any relevance for Scotland.
“She’s living in a fantasy world” and “Feck off and live in Denmark then – or is it Norway/Wales/Estonia?” are two of the more printable responses.
It’s strange. These keyboard warriors are generally great believers in league tables for everything from school attendance to hospital performance. Apparently, it’s just international comparison that offends. You can see why.
Compared to like-sized countries across the globe, Britain doesn’t do very well. At anything. And Scotland isn’t a lot better.
We are indeed a different country from England with our own institutions, cultures, history, problems, skills, resources and the same communitarian outlook as our Nordic neighbours. But that ideal operates mostly in our heads, hearts and voting behaviours – not in governance structures that remain resolutely British, albeit with tartan tweaks.
British governments of every political hue have long presumed that big is beautiful, cheap is best value, privatised is most efficient, competitive systems are “natural” and the little people only mess up “good governance” and are best excluded to let quangos, private companies and highly paid bureaucrats govern communities they vaguely disdain and will never visit.
This deeply embedded presumption of citizen incompetence and place irrelevance is weird and suffocating yet viral across these islands.
The “secret” of Nordic success is simple. It is the reverse of all the above.
Citizens of the four mainland Nordic countries (to varying degrees) have been in the driving seat of their parliaments for a century because unlike “rotten burgh” Britain, they had widespread land ownership early doors and thus the ability to vote.
In Norway 1814, 42% of working age men could vote because so many owned land compared to just 5% of men in feudal Britain and a miserable 2.8% in Scotland. No wonder Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland have better outcomes today – a healthier pattern of land ownership set their democracies off on a different, modern, egalitarian path compared to archaic, quasi-Victorian old Britain.
The Nordic Four have used proportional voting for more than a century to encourage cooperation and citizen involvement at every turn. They aren’t innately better people. They’ve just created vastly better, people-centred systems that promote collaboration and check personal greed.
That’s the big lesson Unionist naysayers don’t want Scots to learn. One glimpse at our Nordic cousins tells us we are on the right track – we need to transform creaking British structures into Scandi-style systems which evidently work. But that’s a very tall ask.
All the Nordic nations have welfare states and high-quality services, funded by relatively high personal taxes. All have trade union involvement in company management. And all have powerful truly local councils as the bedrock of their lives.
Thus, the 290 ultra-powerful councils of Sweden collect all but lower-rate income tax direct from taxpayers and have a 92% turnout at elections. No wonder. They have the cash and the clout – not Stockholm.
So whilst Swedish councils are small in population size relative to Scotland, they have more power and offer more services, including green district heating to stop citizens being fleeced by private providers.
Meanwhile, central government in Sweden is funded only by corporation tax and higher rate tax cos it runs far less than Holyrood.
Small is beautiful just 400 miles across the North Sea. Yip, it’s a mind blower.
Would such a shift be desirable or possible here? We’ll never know unless we look beyond our own centralised shores to realise just how weird and out-of-kilter the whole British Isles has become.
So actually, this Twitter critic is kinda right: “Denmark is not remotely like Scotland.”
Danish society is a product of Danish history and culture. You cannot replicate Denmark by becoming independent. You can’t clone a country. Scotland is not Dolly the sheep. Agreed.
You can’t copy a country and who would want to? But you can learn. And the unwillingness to learn from other countries defines poor stuck, isolationist Britain.
It’s all going wrang here, but looking for inspiration elsewhere is tantamount to treason.
C’mon. Scots badly need other yardsticks to measure “success” and that’s a brave thing to do because it’s massively demanding of politicians (from all parties) who expect to achieve only minor tweaks of broken systems.
Let’s face it. Outcomes in Britain are poor to shocking across the board – in energy security, energy prices, housing affordability, housing insulation, the cost and standard of public transport and in public health.
Britain is the only country in the OECD where life expectancy is now in decline. Of course, successive Conservative governments are largely to blame. But their trickle-down mantra and privatised norms have permeated the thinking of every other party – most obviously Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.
Last week, Paul Sweeney MSP said Scottish Labour would reduce 14 health boards to three in the name of IT efficiency and better communications.
Now perhaps it was bad luck that his centralisation call came the same week as the Horizon scandal.
More than £150 billion has been lost by taxpayers because one powerful quango could cover up its mistakes, thanks to buy-in from other centralised “on-message’ ministers and civil servants – together they almost got away with it.
It would be far, far better to abandon plans to centralise any more services and adopt the Norwegian model, where big projects like hospitals are planned, financed and delivered by ultra-small councils of fewer than 10,000 people, working together.
The Norwegian Audit Office says such joint projects with more than one set of eyes on the prize and more than one definition of “success” have produced better hospitals than single “monopoly councils”.
How is that affordable?
Norway’s small councils double and treble up portfolios so a modestly paid Director of Planning is also Director of Roads and Transport – and hire Education Directors who are also part-time teachers. Home lies a walk not two day’s drive away, so council meetings are held in the evenings, day-jobs can continue and councillors aren’t paid. The result – one in 88 Norwegians stands for election, compared with one in 2071 in Scotland.
In short, we are flaring off local energy, know-how and passion from Scotland’s democratic system like no other country in Europe and leaving communities to scale the bureaucratic heights of Mount Everest to have any involvement via energy-consuming buyouts.
It must be otherwise. If we don’t look beyond our borders for inspiration and guidance, Scotland will be a mini-Britain when it becomes an independent state. And that will cause drift and disappointment a new country can ill afford.
Humza Yousaf is talking about our wee Nordic neighbours – which is great, but not enough. We need courage, strategy and action to step up and join them – not just independence.
Denmark; the State of Happiness is showing in 19 cinemas and community venues. Book your tickets here.
