John Swinney: A generation has passed - it's time for another independence referendum

Every day as Scotland’s first minister is an unbelievable privilege. I am immensely grateful for the opportunity to serve our country. When I came to office just over a year ago, I set the government four key priorities – ending child poverty, growing the economy, improving public services like the NHS and schools and tackling climate change.

On each of these areas I have so much more I am determined to achieve – but on each we have delivered real, substantial progress over the last year. 

We saw a further fall in child poverty in Scotland this year – and the levels of child poverty here are significantly lower than the rest of the UK. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation predicts that Scotland will be the only part of the UK where child poverty will fall further by 2029 – with levels expected to increase south of the border.

In a country as rich and successful as Scotland, I cannot bear the thought that even one child is forced to suffer from poverty – and I am determined to do everything I can to prevent that. We will be delivering further progress by abolishing Labour’s abhorrent two-child cap, lifting another 20,000 children out of poverty. 

On the economy, Scotland secured a record share of the UK’s inward investment projects this year, cementing our position as the best performing part of the UK outside London on foreign direct investment.

In our NHS, we are exceeding our pledge to deliver 150,000 extra procedures to reduce waiting lists – we are now delivering more than 210,000 additional procedures. And we are putting more resources into GPs to make it easier for people to get an appointment.

In our schools, this year’s exam results showed improvements in attainment across the board – and a fall in the attainment gap between the richest and poorest pupils.

And we are continuing to back our vital renewable energy sector – supporting one of the world’s largest offshore wind farms at Berwick Bank which will grow the economy and play a vital role in delivering the clean energy we need in order to tackle climate change.

That is what happens when we take decisions for ourselves here in Scotland – we can deliver real progress on the issues that matter most to us. But for every step forward we take in Scotland, we find ourselves held back by decisions taken by Westminster governments. 

The UK Labour government is keeping in place abhorrent Tory policies like the two-child cap which are making child poverty worse, meaning Scotland has to invest in mitigating Westminster decisions rather than in further proactive measures to tackle child poverty and give children the best start in life.

Rather than supporting industry, the Labour government has imposed a tax on jobs with its National Insurance hike – and its immigration policies are stopping businesses from bringing in the staff needed to fill key skills gaps.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves is sticking with her self-imposed fiscal rules, which are choking off vital investment which could flow to our health service and schools and deliver further improvements for patients and pupils.  

And rather than focussing on our remarkable renewable energy potential, the UK Labour government is obsessed with expensive new nuclear with all the potentially dangerous waste that comes with it.

On each of these issues, Westminster is holding us back. Whether the government is Labour or Tory, for Westminster, Scotland will always be an afterthought.

That is why the powers of independence matter – by taking decisions for ourselves we could achieve so much more. And that is the message I will be taking to the people of Scotland over the next year. Scotland has the right to choose our own future.

No one has more to gain from independence than Scotland’s young people – most of whom have never had the opportunity to give their view on our constitutional future. By 2030, there will be a million people eligible to vote who were too young to vote in 2014. Indeed, people will be eligible to vote who were not even born at the time of the last referendum.

So let us be clear – a generation has clearly passed since the last time Scotland had our say and another anti-independence argument has crumbled.

Although, as we know, sometimes the anti-independence parties do not bother to actually put forward an argument at all. Over the last few years, they have simply folded their arms and said ‘no’.

That is simply not democratically sustainable. And history shows us that the route to securing Scotland’s right to choose our own future comes with an SNP majority at a Holyrood election. That is what is needed to break the logjam.

We achieved that in 2011 and secured our referendum. The precedent has been set, and our challenge now is to repeat it. That is what I am determined to deliver – and confident we will achieve – in 2026.

It is an ambitious goal, but one that is very much within reach. The SNP is in a far stronger position running up to the 2026 election than we were in the leadup to 2011. We have more MSPs and significantly more members than we did then – and we know support for independence is far higher today. Before the 2011 election, support for independence hovered around 30 per cent – now it is at historically high levels, often above 50 per cent. That is the base we are working from, and that gives me real confidence.

I do not believe that securing the powers of independence has ever been more important. Because the last few years have been so tough for so many people – and yet Westminster has shown itself to be completely incapable of change.

After 14 years of Tory government, we had been told that all we had to do was to give Labour a shot and things would improve. If anything under Keir Starmer things have got worse.
 Labour have sought to balance the books on the backs of the poor, caused misery for disabled people and pensioners and have failed utterly to provide the moral leadership needed as Israel conducts a genocide in Gaza.

The cost-of-living crisis which started under the Tories is continuing to hurt people – food prices just keep going up and people are still struggling to pay their energy bills, which are £150 higher than when Labour came to office, despite their promises to cut them by £300.

Rather than a UK Government which stands by while families are pushed into poverty by unaffordable energy bills, with independence we would have the powers to take a different path.
We could finally make our vast energy wealth work for us – capitalising on our low-cost renewable energy resources to bring down household bills, attract new industry to Scotland and transform our economy.

Labour’s failure to act in government is about more than just the failure of one prime minister and one party. It confirms that Westminster will never be able to deliver the real change that people need – the whole Westminster system is simply broken.

In 2026, the heart of our positive message will be that the people of Scotland should be in charge of our own destiny, and that we have the right to choose a better future by becoming an independent country.

We need real change – and the only change that will actually work for Scotland is independence.

This article appears in Holyrood's Annual Review 2025