Where did all the hope of 2014 go?

Ten years have passed since the Scottish independence referendum, but it’s a slightly different (although related) personal anniversary that I marked last week.

It’s officially been a decade since I started in Scottish political journalism.

I don’t remember that first week in very much detail. I started just days before the big vote, a real baptism of fire for this newbie reporter. I do remember being sent home mid-afternoon on the Thursday to make sure I voted. I remember making myself go to bed at 10pm as I needed to be up early to catch the train to Edinburgh the next day.

A whopping turnout of 84.6 per cent and a country talking about its direction not just in the parliament, but on the streets

And I remember walking to Partick train station the next morning – it was still dark, but so many of the flats I passed had lights on and TVs blaring. Clearly many had stayed up to watch the results of that historic vote come in.

I’d felt a strange sense of pride at the time, that so many of my fellow citizens were so engaged. A whopping turnout of 84.6 per cent – trouncing the turnout of any election in my lifetime – and a country talking about its direction not just in the parliament, but on the streets, round dinner tables and over pints.

As a politically engaged teen, I had despaired at how many of my peers just didn’t care about politics. The 2010 election was the first one in which most of my pals could vote – I, much to my deep annoyance, was just a few months shy of 18 at the time – and yet so few of them had bothered. Not a small number of those that did only did so because I had effectively annoyed them into it.

But the 2014 referendum was different. Whichever way people were intending to vote, Yes or No, it really felt like that mattered. A sign I saw one Yes campaigner displaying on Buchanan Street has stuck with me ever since: “Vote like you’re living in the early days of a better world”.

Alamy

In the couple of years that followed, that enthusiasm and optimism about creating a better world continued. Many Yes campaigners I knew accepted the vote had not gone their way but were determined to use the energy of the referendum to improve Scotland as a part of the UK. No campaigners, having first breathed a sigh of relief, also got to work to begin the change to the status quo the campaign had proved was desperately needed. Many of my No friends even backed the SNP at the 2015 election, believing it to be the party that would show up for Scotland.

So where did all that hope go?

I can’t pinpoint exactly when things started to turn, but turn they have. In recent elections – both UK and Scottish – it’s felt like voters have been asked to support the least bad option, the option that isn’t promising hope but at least an end to hopelessness.

Two weeks ago, I found myself reporting on a miserable statement from the finance secretary about how terrible everything was

That’s in no small part due to the Conservative UK Government that presided over declining living standards, rising bills and the decimation of public services. But what both the pre-summer King’s Speech and the recent Programme for Government show is that neither Labour nor the SNP seem to have any idea of how to renew that hope.

When I started my career, I spent a lot of time reporting on aspirations and actions to improve the lives of everyone. It was far from perfect – no rose-tinted glasses here – but that feeling that everything would get better was palpable.

Two weeks ago, I found myself reporting on a miserable statement from the finance secretary about how terrible everything was and how she was completely powerless to do anything but announce cuts. Then the next day it was a grim Programme for Government from a first minister who insists he’ll fix the mess but with no plan to do it.

So, as I blow out the candles on my 10-year anniversary cake, I’m wishing for some of that optimism to return to politics. Without it, nothing will change. Without it, the UK of 2034 will be a very bleak place to be.