Scotland 2050: Just what can we do to tackle the country's problems?

That Government extended the boundaries of public ownership, embedded a new National Health Service, established the building blocks of a Welfare State and gave practical meaning to what would become a benign but enduring social democracy.

Not until Mrs Thatcher liberalised markets and privatised key industries, did the Attlee settlement come under any serious attack. And, even although the parameters of the post war settlement were redefined by Margaret Thatcher, much of the central tenets were to endure.

Eighty years after the building of the new Jerusalem, politicians at both Holyrood and Westminster are grappling to deal with a host of new problems, many created by the successes of the post war consensus. People are living longer, the range of drugs and operations available has transformed lives, the notion of ‘cradle to grave’ welfare has expanded to deliver a huge social security bill and projections of eye watering demands to pay for future pensions and social care.

The truth is that the Attlee revolution stalled some time ago, financially groaning under the sheer weight of demand for more spending and turbo charged by a demographic time bomb which exploded as the political classes fashioned policies to deal with the short term demands of the electoral cycle. The underlying structural challenges and increasing unaffordability of ’welfare without end’ has been ignored.

On the 17th June, a conference at the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh will ponder the challenges and issues that will look at ‘Scotland 2050, Scotland’s Future’. An alternative name for the gathering of political, business, and civic leaders could well be, ‘Let Us Face the Future’.

I will have the pleasure of chairing the day and help tease out just exactly what our leaders plan to do to solve issues which, in part, help explain the genesis of some voters abandoning the mainstream parties.

Many on the political right of course, believe the problem lies in the fact the Attlee revolution has never been properly dismantled and argue that what is needed is an aggressive dis-membering of the state, a more market focussed view of delivery and a determination to simply limit welfare to those who genuinely can’t work. They would argue that what is needed is ‘Attlee in reverse’ and a diet version of state intervention.

That prospectus is more Nigel Farage than mainstream Conservative. And indeed, with issues like furlough and subsidising energy bills, the last Conservative government was arguably the most interventionist since Attlee.

Scotland seems a slave to social democratic instinct and yet its proponents (Labour, SNP and Lib Dem) seem incapable of moving on from the traditional model of delivery: tax to spend and tax more to spend more.

It was evident some time ago that this model is bust and in the absence of economic growth, the policies that were born of social democratic instinct became unaffordable. But how do they become sustainable? That is one question that this conference will try and answer.

A crisis in the NHS, the Housing Sector, an exploding bill for welfare and pensions, and an acceptance of inter-generational unfairness as the baby boomers enjoy the fruits of the Attlee revolution, denied to their children and absolutely denied to their grandchildren. An inertia of thought and of a tendency to park and then ignore tough decisions have led to today’s generation being denied the benefits some of us took for granted, like student grants, subsidised mortgages, affordable housing, and decent pension provision.

Today’s younger workers have been betrayed by those who prefer to exercise power for the sake of it, rather than risk unpopularity by asking where scarce resources should be prioritised and channelled. I will want to ask in the question and answer sessions, why it is that this was allowed to happen and more importantly, what our leaders intend to do about it?

The conference will hear from some key figures: John Swinney, Anas Sarwar, Alex Cole-Hamilton, Kate Forbes, Jeane Freeman, Willie Rennie, Paul Sweeney, and Mairi Spowage from the Fraser of Allender Institute, to list just a few. It will tackle key themes: Building a resilient economy; Scotland’s clean energy and tackling the country’s housing crisis.

Tickets for the event are free and I will do my level best to involve the audience at key points. You can get a ticket at scotland-2050.co.uk