With the Scottish Parliament elections of May 2026 fast approaching, we have a unique opportunity to elevate the Scots language above the familiar tribalism of the constitutional divide. The Scottish Languages Act of 2025 has officially recognised our native tongue with cross party support, proving that the preservation of Scots is neither an exclusively nationalist nor a unionist cause, but a shared cultural priority. As candidates begin to canvass, you will want to ask them how many manifestos will actually use Doric, Shetlandic, or Standard Scots to convey real policy?

For generations, Scots has been unacknowledged in formal settings, sidelined ever since the court of King James VI moved to London and adopted an English Bible. Yet, you will find a perfect model for our future in Scandinavia, where Norway thrives with two official written forms to accommodate regional variations following centuries of Danish as the administrative language. We are already seeing a historic reversal of our linguistic fortunes, beautifully illustrated by Gordon Hay receiving an MBE for his Doric translation of the Bible. Having read his work to the King at Crathie Kirk, his achievement proves that Scots is a robust, Germanic sister-language capable of high literature, fully validated by the Crown and the commonty alike.

To confidently speak our language, we must drop the defensive historical posture that frames Scotland purely as a colonised Celtic nation. The demographic and linguistic core of the Scottish Lowlands is profoundly Germanic, Norse, Norman, and Flemish. Norman nobility, Flemish merchants, and Anglo-Saxon tradesmen arrived in the Middle Ages, built the Scottish burghs, and proudly adopted the name “Scottish”. You will see this legacy perfectly reflected in Gordon Hay’s Norman surname, de la Haye. We are not a subjugated indigenous fringe, but the descendants of industrious, outward-looking architects who seamlessly integrated into Protestant, North Sea trade networks.

This outward-looking pragmatism is the true Lowland engine, entirely contradicting the absurdity of the colonised victim mentality. You need only look at the Claim of Right of 1689, which is often cited today as the ultimate proof of Scottish popular sovereignty. In reality, it was a pragmatic, assertive legal mechanism to depose a monarch and invite the Dutch Protestant, William of Orange, to take the throne. We were active geopolitical players, and this deep-seated rationalism drove the Scottish Enlightenment and birthed an industriousness that shaped the modern international order, from global engineering to the Ulster Scots who provided the backbone of the American frontier.

By embracing this rich North Sea heritage alongside our Celtic fringes, we can move past the tribalism that divides our political landscape. At oorNews, we remain strictly neutral on independence, knowing that a confident Scotland will always function as a rational, innovative maritime nation firmly aligned with Western economic freedoms. As the election nears, true independence of mind means expecting our incoming MSPs to move past platitudes and implement a comprehensive Scots language strategy with real investment. This is the signal for a new era, one where we drop the defensive crutch, unite across party lines, and start speaking for ourselves.