Scotland has become an international reference point for gender equality policy and for progressive equality policy in the twenty years of devolution. The tautologous slogan ‘Leave Means Leave’ is similarly (if unintentionally) honest: the meaning is in the leaving, not in what is being left or how. It is British exit that is the point, not what it is exiting from. It does not include or even allude to Europe. The very word Brexit contains a literally unspoken truth. Over the past three years it has become ever clearer that Brexit is not about its ostensible subject: Britain’s relationship with the EU. If the choice between shooting oneself in the head or in the foot is the answer to Britain’s long-term problems, then we can sure that the wrong question is being asked. It is to find myself locked in a dark, airless nursery cupboard, somewhere in the south of England, with Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Theresa May and Paul Dacre, former editor of the Daily Mail. Some people have a dream I have a nightmare. This includes what has changed and what has not changed over this devolution era understanding where, and how far, we have come, and what the contours and challenges of the future might look like. In these pages we therefore address a wider canvas. The twentieth anniversary of the Scottish Parliament offers the opportunity to assess a Scotland beyond the narrow politics of devolution.

Scotland the brave earrape