If Scotland Goes

Identity today: a plural Scottishness?

By John McDermott

There’s a story going on here that people in England don’t know about,” says Henry McLeish. I am talking to the former Scotland first minister in Glasgow’s George Square, outside the “Kremlin”, the stately building that houses the city’s leftwing council. Scotland has always been more bolshie than Bolshevik but McLeish believes its identity is experiencing a quiet revolution. I have returned home for the week to find out more.

I say “home”. I was born and brought up in Edinburgh, Scotland’s genteel capital, which, according to David Bowman, a man I meet in Kelty, a once thriving Fife ...