Scotland faces a turning point as 2025 closes, with the loss of key industrial sites echoing the devastation of the 1980s – and raising urgent questions about energy policy, jobs, and the future of our economy, says Marie Macklin

As we leave 2025 behind, it risks going down in history as the year in which the final nail was hammered into the coffin of Scotland’s industrial capacity, impacting many of the same communities which have yet to recover from the last wave of manufacturing decline in the 1980s.

At the same time, rapid advances are fuelling dreams of how a brave new world of innovation can help change our lives for the better. But while developments in fields like AI hold out hope for transformational change, it is also worth considering just how much we still depend on existing technologies.

More than a generation ago, Scotland was suffering the effects of rapid deindustrialisation as huge swathes of our working infrastructure were shut down or mothballed, most of which was never again put back into productive use.

That led to the mass unemployment which impacted working class communities across Scotland’s industrial heartlands. Mining and steel manufacturing joined the nation’s shipbuilding tradition on the scrapheap of history.

As someone who comes from one of those areas, no one needs to explain to me just how devastating the effects of deindustrialisation can be. It not only leads........

© Herald Scotland