Tomorrow, Scotland chooses. Not just a government, but a direction.
The SNP has run this country for nineteen years. They have had one good idea – that Scotland is a proud, capable nation, capable of standing on its own two feet. And one obsession: that the answer to every question is independence.
Whatever you think of the constitution, their record speaks for itself. It’s hopeless.
Tomorrow, we have a chance to change Scotland. Let’s seize it. Because our country is broken. And some of the failures trip you up almost daily.
You’ll know if you’ve tried to get a doctor’s appointment or an operation.
The NHS, once our pride, creaks under the weight of waiting lists that should shame every health minister.
Too many families have been struck by the tragedy of addiction. On the SNP’s watch, we’ve been the drug-death capital of Europe. And God help you if you live on the islands.
CalMac ferries, vital lifelines to rural communities, would be a laughing stock if they weren’t such a serious problem for people who have to live and work at one end of their services.
But it’s our kids, and our grandchildren, who have suffered the worst betrayal of all. Scottish schools that once topped international league tables now slide down them. The less well off you are, the worse it gets.
The attainment gap between our richest and poorest children – the gap Nicola Sturgeon staked her reputation on closing – remains huge.
This mess doesn’t all lie at John Swinney’s door. He is a decent man who has served his country and party faithfully for decades. But, as anyone eyeing his impossible plans to fix supermarket prices, give kids a school bag and – yes – obsess about another referendum knows: he’s bang out of ideas.
And, too often, he and other SNP leaders have tried to shift the blame for policy failure onto Westminster.
For years now, we’ve had grievance cosplaying as government.
What’s the solution? Change.
Some of you will be tempted to give Reform UK or the Greens a look. Yesterday, we set out the the crazies, nasties, bigots and zealots that have found their home in Nigel Farage’s party. We urge you to give that shower a swerve.
The Greens would love to paint themselves as being different. But while they might sit at the opposite end of the political spectrum, they’re united with Reform in their populist rhetoric.
While Reform would take us to the dark ages socially, the Greens would send us to the dark ages economically. Their daft plans would leave tens of thousands of us without a job.
The Daily Record has never been shy about where it stands. We were forged in the same furnace as Scottish Labour – the shipyards of the Clyde, the heavy industry of Lanarkshire. The tenements of Glasgow and Dundee.
We carried the torch for Keir Hardie. We mourned John Smith and Donald Dewar as our own. We backed devolution because we believed Scots could build a fairer country with power in our own hands.
And we stood by The Vow in 2014 because we believed Scotland could be proud and united – Scottish, British, European – and more than the sum of those parts.
That is still our tradition. A Scotland that is internationalist, not narrow. Egalitarian, not tribal. A Scotland that sees the European Union as a family of nations we should never have left.
A Scotland whose horizons stretch further than Holyrood and the referendum argument that has struck it dumb.
But we don’t want to re-fight 2014’s referendum. And polls show Scots feel the same way.
We see so many ways to make our lives better right now, without politicians taking to the streets – again – in yet another campaign for our votes.
We also know Labour has left people furious. Keir Starmer’s government is lost. Decisions in London have hurt Scots. We have said so, and we will go on calling it out.
Loyalty has never meant silence, and we know our readers feel let down by London. We feel it too.
But this election is not about Westminster. It is about Holyrood. And the most likely outcome this week is no party will win a majority.
Whoever sits in Bute House on Friday morning will have to govern through coalition, through compromise, through deals struck in the chamber rather than imposed from on high.
That’s not a bad outcome. It means the SNP don’t have five years of untrammelled power to pass more terrible laws. It means our politicians have to work harder, and pass plans that actually benefit the majority.
That makes your vote vital tomorrow.
It is no longer just a choice of government. It is a choice about what kind of parliament Scotland gets.
An SNP and Green coalition would blow another five years on squabbling while the hospitals, the schools, the ferries and our kids wait.
We cannot afford that.
So we say a Labour vote still has purpose: to keep Reform out your constituency. A purpose, to force the next Scottish government to do the actual job – running the country – alongside a parliament with teeth.
A purpose, because we think Anas Sarwar – with your votes – can have a big role in that parliament.
He won’t be First Minister by Friday night. What looked like a Sarwar bandwagon two years ago has been driven off the road by the Starmer car crash.
Sarwar is an energetic and principled Scottish politician. He has fought for his party through the tough years when it would have been easier to walk away.
He has held this government to account with a forensic seriousness that is too often missing from Scottish public life: just look at his work on the scandal of the Queen Elizabeth II University Hospital.
He speaks the language of opportunity and fairness, and he knows what to do to deliver it: better GP services, breakfast clubs and phones out of classrooms, scrapping the broken business rates system, cleaning up Holyrood, and – at last – a rail link to Glasgow Airport.
The son of an immigrant family who rose on merit, he embodies modern Scotland in his own story. Exactly the Scotland we believe in. We still think his ideas would make Scotland a better place for us all.
That’s why we urge Record readers to use their votes tomorrow, and use on Labour. Use them to make it clear Scotland wants a government that sets about fixing its problems – not wasting another five years.
Voting Labour isn’t backing a failing Prime Minister even Sarwar has rejected. It’s a vote for a Scotland that is fair, ambitious and at ease with itself, and knows there’s work to be done.
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It’s a vote, above all, for change: for yourself, your family, and a country that looks forward.
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