Broken Westminster promises show why Scotland must decide its own future

During the referendum there was also the promise that “every Scot will be £1,400 better off every year” sticking with Westminster.

Have you felt £1,400 better off every year since the referendum?

It’s not likely considering what has happened over those years.

Just over a year after the referendum cuts by the Westminster government will cost Scots working mothers £3,400 each year.

And only three years after we learn that it is actually the Brexit that Scotland didn’t vote for that will cost each home in the UK £1,400.

But it gets worse.

In 2019 pensioner couples learn that pension credit changes will cost couples £7,000 a year and by 2022 the Sun’s front page splashes with: “Ouch! … Brits £2,417 poorer … worst crunch in 32 years“.

And even a change of party at Westminster changes nothing. Only in March 2025 an analysis of the path being taken by Keir Starmer’s Labour government concludes that all UK families will be ‘worse off by 2030’ with the least well off bearing the brunt.

It can’t go on like this for Scotland. The promises of being better off with Westminster have not transpired. Westminster just follows the same old failing policies.

Only by exercising your right to decide Scotland’s future can you ensure a fresh start, free from these repeated failures of Westminster governments.

Before the independence referendum the opposition promised that a ‘No’ vote would ensure lower shopping bills, lower energy bills and cheaper mortgages.

How has that gone in the past eleven years?

On lower food prices we’ve seen the Daily Express go from reporting Jacob Rees-Mogg promising 20% lower prices before the Brexit referendum to a headline saying ‘Get used to higher food bills‘.

Year on year there have been headlines about repeated food price increases since Brexit. By the end of 2021, Brexit had already cost UK households a total of £5.8 billion in higher food bills, and in 2022 UK food prices soared by the fastest rate on record.

In 2023 we learnt that the Brexit Scotland rejected has caused a third of UK food price inflation, and by 2024 we hear that ‘Britain faces £2bn post-Brexit bill on European food imports‘.

Even in the week of the eleventh anniversary of the independence anniversary the food price remains bleak with the Food & Drink Federation inflation forecast projected to increase by Christmas.

The story of energy bills is little different.

In 2021 they were reported as soaring by more than £300, and, in the year after, advice groups were describing the hikes as a ‘hammer blow’ for households.

By 2023 the BBC is asking ‘Why are energy bills still so high?‘; and 2024 sees average bills soar to £1,717 a year.

And as the current year breaks the news is that ‘millions of households in Great Britain face higher energy bills‘.

As for mortgages the story follows the same tired route.

In 2022 it was a specifically Scottish report on how ‘Scots face average rises of £1,700 after mortgage hikes, whilst 2023 sees the Guardian report that families face tough choices as mortgage costs soar.

A year later we are hearing that soaring UK mortgage rates have pushed 320,000 adults into poverty; and 2025 witnesses reports of how those on five-year fixed interest mortgages face soaring costs.

Year on year since the Brexit Scotland didn’t vote for, and was told wouldn’t happen with a ‘No’ vote, the promises of lower food and energy bills, and cheaper mortgages have not been met.

That failure to deliver these promises is good reason for the people of Scotland to employ their right to decide again.

Just one month before the 2014 referendum former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown told a ‘No’ campaign event that the “UK welfare state offers better protection“.

An incredible assertion considering it was a Tory-led government in charge of the UK’s welfare system.

Moreso considering what we have also learnt since 2014.

Only two years after the referendum the respected charity Oxfam described the UK as one of the most unequal countries in the developed world; and the next year a report the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ranked the UK state pension as one the worst in the developed world.

The year 2019 saw a United Nation’s report compare UK welfare policies to Victorian workhouses and accused the UK government of the “systematic immiseration of a significant part of the British populations“.

Four years later, and with more cuts and no solutions, the United Nations said the UK was now ‘in violation of international law‘ over poverty levels.

It is somewhat bitterly ironic that Gordon Brown described that the levels of poverty he was seeing in the UK as the worst he’d ever seen despite his 2014 claim the UK offered “better protection”.

But the advent of a Labour government has not improved the situation. They’ve targeted cuts in benefits for the disabled and pensioners, and gone as far as suspending MPs for voting to abolish the two-child benefit cap.

It is quite obvious that the Westminster welfare system has failed to offer better protection for Scots and stands as a glaring example of why the people of Scotland can have their right to decide again.

One day before the referendum the Labour party pledged that the future of the NHS was safe with a No vote.

Only four days after the vote Labour were suddenly warning that the NHS needed saving from Tory privatisation. By the 2015 UK general election and Labour was saying “Save Our NHS“.

It just exemplified how another ‘No’ campaign promise was not worth the tweet it was sent on.

Only ten months after the referendum the Tory Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt was even reported as casting doubt on the future of NHS and in March 2016 said the NHS would be put under threat by Brexit … in a referendum his party was proposing!

But he was right on that.

Following the Brexit referendum there were warnings that a UK trade deal with the USA could trigger the ‘break-up’ of the NHS; a warning that didn’t subside when Tory MPs ripped out NHS protections from the post-Brexit trade bill.

However it was not just the threat from post-Brexit trade policy that has affected the NHS.

Brexit has put pressure on all the national health services across the UK with shortages of doctors and nurses, with cancer patients denied life-saving drugs due to Brexit costs.

Plus the election of a Labour government doesn’t offer respite since they not only now endorse Brexit but even in opposition their Westminster health spokesperson was threatening the NHS with no additional funding unless they use the private sector.

Even after nearly a year in office he says he won’t shrink away from opening up the NHS to the private sector – a policy wholly endorsed by the Scottish Labour party.

Scotland’s NHS has not been safe with Westminster since the 2014 referendum.

It’s threatened by the effects of Brexit; It’s threatened by post-Brexit trade deals; and it’s threatened by Westminster parties obsessed with opening up the NHS to the private sector.

On the basis of what is happening to the NHS the people of Scotland deserve the right to decide again.

It’s almost like the Westminster parties never even promised that a Scotland as part of the UK would remain in the EU.

But it was one of their key promises to the people of Scotland in return for a ‘No’ vote.

The ‘No’ campaign even boasted that all it’s parties supported membership of the EU and their politicians repeat that with the likes of Tory Ruth Davidson, Labour’s Anas Sarwar and the LibDem’s Alistair Carmichael – who even argued a Brexit referendum wouldn’t happen.

Yet, despite those promises, Scotland is out of the EU despite voting ‘Remain’ in every single local authority in Scotland. Westminster totally ignored Scotland and dragged us all out.

And that breach of trust with the people of Scotland has had real world consequences for ordinarily Scots.

It’s added to the overall cost of energy, reported as doing “untold damage” to Scotland’s economy and will leave the £300bn worse off by 2035.

It’s effect on the NHS has been entirely negative with medicine and staff shortages creating problems for health care.

And, if that weren’t bad enough, there’s the threat from US-style health corporations from a post-Brexit trade deal.

So with Brexit defining Nigel Farage’s Reform party, the Tories implementing Brexit, and Keir Starmer fully aligned with the Tories on Brexit, that leaves independence as the only way for Scotland to reverse that Brexit damage.

The fact Brexit has occurred against the wishes of the people of Scotland is reason enough for you to exercise your right to decide again.

In 2014 Gordon Brown argued for a ‘No’ vote on the basis that the UK was the most equal union than anywhere else in the world. It complimented the other ‘No’ campaign message that Westminster offered the pooling and sharing of resources across the UK

However, as the Institute for Government wrote just over a year later, this supposed equal partner in the union had “largely been forgotten” by the Westminster government.

And when it came to the hugely important issue of Brexit, in September 2017 it was revealed that the UK government had not met with devolved administrations to discuss Brexit in over six months.

In 2012 Theresa May argued that Scotland and other UK nations would “flourish side-by-side as equal partners” after a ‘No’ vote. But by 2018 Caroline Nokes – the Tory Minister of State for Immigration under Theresa May – dismissively rejects immigration powers for Scotland bysaying Scotland is the equivalent of an English county council.

By 2019 this supposed “equal union” sees the post-Brexit Tories unveil plans to take control of Holyrood cash. Previously EU funding was given directly to Holyrood to spend but from 2021 is controlled by the Westminster government. Holyrood had continually rejected this power grab.

And it’s been no different under Keir Starmer’s Labour government with Scotland treated as an afterthought.

In January 2025 Rachel Reeves laid out a list of big investments – particularly investment between Cambridge and Oxford – the locations of the UK’s elite universities. Her announcement didn’t mention any such investments for Scotland.

The month of April sees Grangemouth – Scotland’s only oil refinery – close, only seventeen days before this Labour rushed to nationalise a steel plant in England to keep it open whilst ignoring calls to nationalise Grangemouth.

And by July we learnt that Scottish energy bills are to rise to pay for English nuclear plant despite cheaply generated and abundant renewables being Scotland’s main energy source.

None of this meets the promise of 2014 that Scotland would be part of an “equal union” with the pooling and sharing of resources.

It is yet another example of why the people of Scotland deserve the right to decide again.