LOOKING to be cheered up? Want to read something uplifting? Feeling optimistic? Then look away now.

Because with less than a year to go until the next Scottish parliamentary elections and a year into Keir Starmer’s government, I ask you what exactly is there to inspire people to go to the polls in May 2026?

Are the parties offering exciting policies? Inspirational political leadership? A bold vision for Scotland’s future? Nope, none of that.

All we see is a political class, all of whom have been in government at a Scottish or UK level at some time in the last 20 years, bereft of big ideas, with zero vision other than implementing semi-managed decline.

We shouldn’t be surprised if the voters stay at home in record numbers in May 2026. What do they have to vote for?

Holyrood and Westminster are failing us, local government has been depoliticised, stripped of powers and underfunded, communities have seen essential local services subjected to cut after cut after cut.

The hard facts cannot be ignored. One in six Scots is on an NHS waiting list. We have a social care crisis and a mental health crisis. Care homes are being closed or privatised at a time when adult care home fees average £1,500 per week.

Twenty-three per cent of children in Scotland live in poverty. A quarter of the kids in every classroom in Scotland are going without the basics in life. Twenty per cent of working-age adults don't earn enough to pay the bills.

Community policing has all but disappeared from our streets. Social workers are drowning in case work. Grangemouth is to close, leaving an oil-producing nation with no refining capacity. Our huge wind energy resource has been flogged off at a discount rate to the private sector, at the same time as fuel poverty is soaring.

Community centres and local services are being closed. Contracts to build new buses and trains have been awarded to foreign states as skilled Scottish workers are made redundant.

There is a housing crisis and record homelessness with young people forced to stay with their family or choose between exorbitant private-sector rents and a lifetime of debt with a 40-year mortgage. Fourteen per cent of adult Scots experienced food insecurity last year.

Climate targets have been missed, our streets are filthy and rivers are increasingly polluted. Scotland is the drugs-death capital of Europe. Fire stations are closing and firefighter numbers are being cut. Public transport is expensive and unreliable.

The ferry service is in crisis — the cost of building two new ferries, which were seven years late, ballooned from £97 million to over £400m. Prisoners are being released early because of overcrowding. The price of the new Barlinnie prison has doubled to an eye-watering £1 billion.

We have had the winter fuel fiasco, disability cuts shambles and the retention of the two-child benefit cap. The Waspi women have been betrayed, the Green New Deal cut and bankers’ bonuses retained. Even life expectancy is falling.

Looking at this litany of failure, it is impossible to conclude anything other than to say Scotland is being failed by our politicians.

This is not just my conclusion, it is the view of many across the trade union movement, the third sector and community groups.

It is this despair and the pressing need for an alternative that has driven the launch of the Scotland Demands Better campaign.

An initiative of the Poverty Alliance, and backed by the STUC, the campaign seeks to bring together social justice campaigners from charities, voluntary organisations, the labour movement, environmental groups and communities across the country to take part in a national “Scotland Demands Better” march and rally in Edinburgh on October 25.

The campaign headline demands are: better jobs for everyone who needs one with fair conditions and wages that pay the bills; better investment for life's essentials, like affordable homes, good public transport, a thriving natural environment and strong public services; and better social security so that all of us have a foundation for the future.

These are supported by a series of practical policy demands to address the multiple problems we see in our economy and society.

At this historic rally, politicians won’t be making any speeches at the event — instead, they will be asked to come to listen to what people have to say.

So no matter what age you are, where you live or which party you have voted for in the past, please get involved. Change for the better happens when people stand together and demand it.

We want people to take hope, comfort and inspiration from marching alongside thousands of others who want a better Scotland. We are not alone — and when we work together, we can make real change.

Union branches and individuals can sign up to get involved at scotland-demands-better.com.