This is clearly where we disagree I suppose. Democratic socialism attempted to restrain unbridled capitalism within the contexts of a nation state and to make it more socially responsive to the needs of the average punter. Now that global trading links and communications have become so easy with jet travel, satellite dishes and the internet it has become obsolete as the nation state is no longer able to act in the same degree of self-contained isolation as was once the case. If you are a Thatcherite and a believer in neo-liberal laissez faire this is a pure dead brilliant state of affairs to try to sound like a Clyde Built man of the people Jimmy Reid style. If you are the average Anniesland punter who can be put out of work by a sudden flight of international capital from a particular political jurisdiction and who sees things like pension benefits and health care under threat in the cutthroat global market it really should not look quite so rosy.

The European integration project is driven to a large extent by the political forces of the reconstructed "third-way" social-democratic left and the liberal centrists who both want to be able to restrain global capitalism on a supranational level by creating a larger trading block with a coherant set of rules that prevent the transnational corporations from playing jurisdictions off against each other to the detriment of the "average Joe" to use North American rather than stereotypical Glaswegian terminology. If Blair wanted to remain within the evolving third way "social-democratic" block with people like Schroeder in Germany he would be gung ho about the Euro, the Nice Treaty and the EU's social contract. Instead Jorg Haider in Austria favourably compares his immigration and law and order policies to New Labour's and Blair has refused to take the euro plunge. The SNP by being pro-euro etc is firmly within the new evolving socially concerned liberal centrist block in Western Europe but has not been able to clearly articulate this stuff yet even to its own activists and support base IMO who are still stuck in a very traditional nation state and in some cases even social-democratic mindset. The question of whether the average punter in Anniesland is a bit premature therefore in some ways if a party has yet to fully convince its own members.

The political situation within Scotland and the UK is therefore in a state of considerable flux and the opportunity is there for a party like the SNP to grab a firm hold of the political initiative from the traditional Westminster based parties due to that institution's ingrained Euroscepticism. It isn't going to happen overnight however IMO. The 80's anti-Maggie class struggle stuff has to be ditched a in the new state of affairs the trick to sustained electoral success and building a better more socially responsive society is getting the young and skilled within the new economy to feel a sense of social responsibility towards people like pensioners and the large unskilled underclass. Stir up old-style NUM class confrontation aggro in a particular locality like Scotland or Canada and they will just pack up and move somewhere else as the nation state is no longer as self-contained as it used to be. If you instead slowly create a society like Canada based on traditional British institutions and a social consensus across the traditional class divide where you can walk around the inner cities without encountering too many crackheads and gun toting hoodlums even in the middle of the night by having a strong welfare state social net to maintain social harmony and universal health care to protect the weak and less able then a large portion of those new economy people will be willing to pay higher taxes than they would have to pay elsewhere even if there is a jurisdiction with a more laissez faire approach right on the doorstep. Canada has a great array of natural resources to help make this possible. Scotland even with North Sea oil and whisky revenues will need the European Union link to make it work IMO.