We are fighting to escape from a Westminster economy that no longer works for anyone

Conference,

It is always an honour to address you.

But this afternoon I am particularly proud and for two reasons.

I’m so proud – as should every activist who has knocked their pan in this year be to be here at our first conference since the SNP won a historic fifth term in government.

Well done every one of you.

But also, because today is the first time I will address you as the SNP’s Westminster Leader.

So – seeing as I’m new to this role –

I thought it best to set out a bit about my background and my own story which  is probably very typical of Scotland  but maybe not so typical of politics.

My mother and father were immigrants from Ireland.

They were both born in the West Donegal and they travelled here separately to make their own journey to the east of Scotland.

They ended up meeting and marrying in Perth.

And it’s here where they built their lives, where they worked  and where they found a new home on the island next door.

And I have been lucky enough to raise my own family – in the same beautiful landscapes of Perthshire.

My own working career began as an aircraft engineer, aged 16, armed with an O grade in arithmetic, singular.

I worked for the MoD where I worked to repair and overhaul search and rescue helicopters and Iended up in management. It’s safe to say conference, that being a member of the SNP in the management section of the MOD was not really encouraged.

So after 18 years I left and joined the SNP and began campaigning for our party and our country.

A habit which I’m happy to say I have yet to shake.

At that same time, I made the decision to go to university.

I pitched up as a youthful 34 year old at the University of Dundee studying international relations and politics.

I was actually in the year below Stephen Flynn.

And it’s always pleased me – he can’t understand why  he remembers me really clearly from those days, and I can’t remember him at all.

But during that time too, I worked a while for a Perthshire MSP, John Swinney, I’m not sure if any of you know him.

I always wonder what happened to him, he was a lovely fella.

But back when I was a mature student, I made my living driving taxis on Friday and Saturday nights, possibly ferried some of you home worse for wear.

Now you don’t need me to tell you this.

It’s a well-known fact that taxi drivers the world over hold politicians in the highest possible regard and round about here they hold SNP politicians in a very special place in particular.

But the next time you’re in a taxi – and one of those conversations come up, you’ve now got a free pass… you tell them that the SNP chose a taxi driver to be their SNP Westminster leader.

But Conference,

As you all know – every personal story is shaped by the country and the community around us.

My parents came here in search of a new life.

The opportunity that they found here is the reason I  stand before you on this stage.

But their experience was only one small part of a far bigger story  – a story that Scotland has been writing for the last few generations.

At a time that is so dominated by a doom and gloom news cycle –

where we hear more than enough negativity –

it is important to remember just how far we have come as a nation.

Because if the SNP don’t talk about the success we’ve got in Scotland, then nobody will.

In the last 30 years – our confidence as a country has grown.

We have created our own parliament.

We’ve Created a new social contract with our people.

We’ve e crafted a nation of which we can be proud.

Are there challenges? Of course there are.

There always were and there always will be.

But Scotland is on a positive path.

The path of progress.

Our universities, our whisky, our financial services, our defence sector, life sciences, agriculture, space, fishing, manufacturing, hospitality and tourism.

Here in Aberdeen – a city literally bursting with energy.

Conference,

Alasdair Gray’s timeless advice

To -‘Work as if we are in the early days of a better nation’ –

That has been my guiding principle.

I’ve grown up and lived through that progress – through the age of devolution.

But of course, what makes our movement unique –

what makes our offer to the people of Scotland unique –

is that we are hungry for much, much more.

We demand that our nation takes the next natural step.

We should be proud of our past – we can be proud of our present.

But our future is all that matters now.

And conference,

Scotland’s future will only ever be realised with the full powers of independence.

Friends, as you know, my colleagues chose me to replace Stephen Flynn.

And after all those killer lines at PMQs –

there are a fair few Tory and Labour MPs who were glad to see the back of him.

And – as he proved again this morning –

he’s not  too bad at delivering a conference speech.

But if we want to look on the bright side, at least with me as your Westminster leader, I might not have that cheeky Chappy gene,

But I do, at age 53, have a full head of hair!

And Conference,

That SNP landslide meant that Stephen to Holyrood, it returned Stephen Gethins as well

Both Stephen’s former MPs from our group now standing as Scottish Government ministers.

And when they stand up in Holyrood every week and bat them back, we in the SNP Westminster Group watch on… like proud parents.

Or in the case of Pete Wishart and Seamus Logan – proud grandparents.

In fairness though, the result in May meant a slightly different journey for others.

Things took a different turn for the former leader of the Labour Party in Scotland.

Or as they used to call him in the Labour Party –  their  “generation talent”.

One more unionist career tragically sunk by a combination of John Swinney and the Scottish people.

I started by talking about my own story.

But the Sarwar story really is one for the ages.

A stunning rise from rags to ermine robes.

From his start in 2010 –

Arriving in Westminster with nothing but his plucky disposition, the clothes on his back,  a private school education, and his dad’s old Westminster seat…

Then lifted to the dizzying heights of the Scottish Labour leader.

And leaving the best till last.

Leading the Labour party in Scotland to their worst ever Holyrood result.

But don’t worry conference, it wasn’t long before the House of Lords sent a lifeboat for Anas Sarwar.

And what more evidence do we need of the thriving meritocracy that is the United Kingdom

What more evidence do we need that the insurance policy for branch office politicians is a cosy Westminster club.

Conference – what more evidence do we need that the House of Lords is, and always will be, an undemocratic disgrace.

One of the other consequences of the SNP’s landslide was the end of another Prime Minister.

Keir Starmer.

The latest Westminster leader to be chewed up and spat out by Brexit.

And of course, his replacement is Andy Burnham.

The Labour Party’s latest messiah, and you can make of that what you will.

The man who thinks Manchester is the ‘North’ of the UK.

It’s a safe bet that if a Prime Minister doesn’t have a clue about geography, he’s never gonna have a clue about Scotland.

But conference,

Let’s give Andy a chance – politics is the art of the possible.

So – if Andy Burnham really wants to make Manchester the north of the UK – then he’s got a friend in me!

So I hear Andy’s dug out a map, or one of his officials have dug out a map, and he’s on his way to Scotland tomorrow.

So my message to him as he comes “north” is to let’s make it happen Andy.

Let’s get this referendum sorted so we can vote to restore Scotland’s independence.

Because nothing, and I mean nothing, would give me more pleasure – than the northernmost reaches of the UK stopping at our border with England. 

That’s what will happen when we restore Scotland’s independence.

And  et us not forget it has been a seismic few weeks in terms of the constitutional question.

For years, the Westminster establishment have conspired to block our democratic right to self-determination.

That blockade came in two parts.

For the past decade they have ignored the independence mandates secured by this party.

And secondly, they told the Scottish people we don’t even have the right to know the democratic route to independence.

Despite the fact that in Ireland they have signed up to a legal route in the Good Friday Agreement.

But Conference,

Westminster’s dam against Scottish democracy can’t last.

The tide is washing it away as we speak

And a few weeks ago, at PMQs – we saw exactly that.

The Westminster establishment clearly never saw my colleague Chris Law’s brilliant question coming.

If only we had known sooner that all Scottish nationalism needed was a six-and-a-half-foot Dundonian with a ponytail and a tweed suit to get some straight answers out of a British Prime Minister – we’d be a lot further down the road.

But in all seriousness, that moment in PMQs was vital for this reason.

It’s on the record. It’s in Hansard.

The Prime Minister accepted – he accepted – that the democratic mechanism for referendums on Irish unity was ‘exactly the same situation in Scotland’.

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom accepted that it is the Scottish people, and the Scottish people alone, who have the right to decide our own future.

And Conference, Westminster will never forgive him for that moment of honesty.

Because no matter how hard Burnham now backtracks –  the ink in Hansard is dry.

The power and the principle of those words cannot be erased.

Scottish democracy will no longer be erased.

Westminster’s democratic blockade is breached.

And it’s now our job to win back Scotland’s independent future.

In saying those words – I can almost hear the clichéd reaction that will ring out from some.

The usual unionist suspects will lecture us to focus on the cost of living instead of the constitution.

I have a question for our unionist friends.

Have they ever looked around – with any degree of honesty – at the dire state of the United Kingdom?

Never mind the last two decades of despair and decline.

Take a look at the here and now.

The next wave of Westminster’s cost of living tsunami is hitting households already.

Diesel is over £2 a litre.

Energy bills a £1000 higher than the Labour Party promised.

Mortgage rates are 6% and climbing.

And food prices are set to soaring up in the run up to Christmas.

This is the United Kingdom right now.

And they have the temerity, the bare faced unionist impudence to tell us we have to get dragged along for the ride?

No conference, that’s not what we’re about.

This is the broken Britain has been experienced by the people of Scotland for a generation – and yes I mean a generation.

And what is Westminster’s response to this endless cost-of-living tsunami?

Is Andy Burnham’s got a 10-year plan.

What use is a 10-year plan? 

We need a plan for this winter.

So I say again – on his fly-in visit to Scotland tomorrow –  Andy Burnham could do two very straightforward things.

He can remove VAT from petrol and diesel for the duration of this fuel crisis and he can cut energy bills by the £300 that the Labour Party promised.

But conference –

There is a far bigger point here.

In Aberdeen – in Scotland –

we have plenty of energy –

To fill our cars and heat our homes.

So let’s put Scotland’s energy in Scotland’s hands.

Let’s protect our energy future with Independence.

And let’s make sure that a crisis like this can never happen again.

Because Conference, we are  by this stage all weary witnesses to the UK’s economic mess.

But we can’t allow ourselves to think that this is normal elsewhere.

Just look across the Irish Sea – it is not normal for our nearest neighbours.

I began by talking about my parents coming from Ireland.

They came to Scotland in search of opportunity and they found it.

But the Ireland they left is now a distant memory.

Last week the Irish Government delivered a massive cost of living budget.

They extended cuts to fuel duty cuts on diesel and petrol.

They cut taxes on gas and home heating oil.

They extended a cut to VAT for hospitality businesses.

And they still ran a 9 billion Euro surplus.

Ireland continues to invest all that extra money into a sovereign wealth fund –

Just like our neighbour to the east – Norway.

The contrast on these islands could not be clearer.

Brexit Britain is bust – while our neighbour Ireland goes from strength to strength.

So conference – the next time you hear that tired old Westminster cliché –

Telling us to focus on the cost of living – not the constitution.

Tell them that’s exactly what they we are doing –

We are fighting to escape from a Westminster economy that no longer works for anyone.

Tell them we are working to build a better, brighter burgeoning future.

And tell them that Scotland’s only path to prosperity is with independence inside the European Union.

The growing momentum for constitutional change has been front and centre for months.

3 First Ministers after May’s elections all committed to self-determination.

The signing of the Cardiff Agreement.

And the Prime Minister’s acceptance of the right and the route for Scotland to decide our own future.

That momentum is of course driven by all of us, here today,

and the staff and volunteers that make the SNP the force it is.

But is also being driven by something else.

It’s driven by a belated sense of awareness in London

An awareness of just how broken the old idea of the United Kingdom is.

Andy Burnham says Westminster is broken – we agree.

He says we have lived through a decade of damage – we agree on that too.

But Andy Burnham says that it will take at least a decade to fix it.

What this British Prime Minister completely fails to understand –

what he completely fails to recognise is this.

We don’t want to be part of another generation asked to wait just a little bit longer to fix the rubble of broken Britain.

We don’t want to be part of a patched-up UK.

We want to be part of a generation that builds a nation that is respected by its larger neighbour – not ruled by it.

Part of the generation that returns home to the European Union.

We want to be part of the generation that builds a bold, new independent Scotland.

So Conference – my job, our job –

this generation’s job

is to win that future together.

Let’s get on with it.

And let’s restore Scotland’s independence.

Thank you.