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Articles by Mandy Rhodes
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Plans for the future: Politicians can’t leave the public to provide detail on Scotland’s future alone

Asking your friends how they would vote in an independence referendum may not be very scientific, but I guess it is a party game many of us are playing right now.

Three weeks in since the launch of the Scottish Government’s consultation on its independence referendum and so far, I have an overwhelming “yes” vote, but not always for the reasons you might expect.

While politicians argue over wording, franchise, mandate and timings, I have friends and colleagues who just say that regardless of the finer points of the debate – which they sense, are sadly lacking – they just want to be part of history and to know whether independence will make things better for them.

It’s a fair question and one that both the SNP and the unionists would be wise to address because no one, it would appear, wants the status quo, but neither have politicians of any persuasion yet come up with a coherent, well crafted and detailed alternative to what we already have. It may be tactics, but it’s still a strange way to run a campaign on the future of our nation.

The debate may have taken ages to gather momentum despite the inevitability that it was coming, but now it is here, it is the ordinary people; friends round dinner tables, work colleagues, family, people in offices, men and women at the school gates, and beyond who have overtaken the politicians in terms of the whys and the wherefores. And they are looking for specifics.

What would our currency be, will we have the Queen, what will our defences look like, will we be part of Europe, will I need a Scottish passport, will English students now qualify for free tuition fees in Scotland like their other European cousins, etc, etc? The questions are mounting and becoming increasingly sophisticated and yet the answers are becoming more and more oblique.

Labour, as it likes to remind us, introduced devolution, as if that gave the party some Godgiven guarantee over its guardianship. It sp...

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A game of two halves: Exclusive interview with former First Minister Henry McLeish

The SNP has been the making of Henry McLeish. And that is a sentence that needs a double-take. Last month, the Rt Hon Henry McLeish was splashed across the front page of the Scottish Sun hailed as the saviour of the Union. The week earlier, he was being touted as the man to lead the devo-max assault on the SNP and, just before Christmas, he was warning Labour to halt the SNP bulldozer. In fact there isn’t a week goes by without the former First Minister’s sage words, often first expressed in the pages of Holyrood, making headlines. Ironically, since the SNP came to power in 2007, the former Labour leader’s political star has been in the ascendant. Embraced by the SNP Government and its claim to be more consensual [...]



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Budgeting for the future: Exclusive interview with Finance Secretary John Swinney

In 2007 when the SNP decided to go it alone and run Scotland as a minority Government, people said it would never last. The Labour Party, smug despite its defeat, hung on to the belief that John Swinney, the newly installed Finance Secretary, would not get his first budget passed and that that humiliation would lead to the inevitable fall of Scotland’s first SNP administration, with Labour undoubtedly poised to take its place. In the event, the budget did pass, the SNP continued in office and Labour smarted. But despite that early victory, few people will ever forget the undignified and last-minute negotiations that went on in the chamber with the FM passing notes offering deals to the Green’s Patrick Harvie in full view of the public. The passage of [...]



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Making it your Scotland: Referendum debate needs confidence, not humility

No matter what your politics, no matter whether you have any, no matter whether you consider yourself Scottish, we are living in historic times. As the First Minister said as he launched the Scottish Government’s consultation, ‘Your Scotland, Your Referendum’, the bird has flown the cage and there is no putting it back. We sit at a tipping point for the future. For whatever the question; the status quo is not an option. This referendum undoubtedly represents the biggest decision the Scottish people will have taken in 300 years and while for many the debate has just begun, Salmond has the air of someone who has already won the argument. The First Minister’s confidence in almost everything he does is something that irks the opposition, but they would be wise [...]



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Labour of love: Interview with Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont

Siding with the Tories is not something that comes naturally to Johann Lamont. Indeed in her usual forthright style, she says that her problem with David Cameron is not that he is English but that he is a Tory. But neither is it her default position to kowtow to Alex Salmond but the rub is that where she now stands on the issue of an independence referendum and who controls it is critically important for the future not just of Scottish Labour but of Scotland. Lamont was elected leader of Scottish Labour (and for the first time, that means what it says on the tin) just three weeks ago and has been thrust, without ceremony, into the battle for Britain. Last week the UK Government fired the starting gun on [...]



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