Scotland’s land is owned by the few, while the many are left powerless. Despite overwhelming public support for reform, political will remains absent—and the consequences are shaping the nation’s future says Robin McAlpine.

Land is power. There is no more consistent reality in history. Those who own the land control the future. On this basis the people of Scotland are some of the least powerful people in the world.

It's not just that we are the most centralised country in the developed world, with the weakest local democracy. It's not just that we are now governed by a barely accountable sprawl of public agency empires over which we have little influence. And it's not just that our economy is now largely owned by overseas investors. It’s the fact that we don't own our own land.

We have to beg landowners to let us build houses. We have to beg them not to strangle our rural communities. We beg them to change their practices to restore our wildlife. If we want to start a land-based business we beg them (usually unsuccessfully) for some land to base it on.

No citizens anywhere else in the world own so little of their own country. Scotland is a nation which has turned its own people into tenants.

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Why don't we fight back? Because land is power. Every single piece of credible research says that Scots overwhelmingly do want to fight back. Land reform is wildly popular, supported by overwhelming majorities. Yet still it doesn't happen. Why?

The public identifies the SNP as 'the party of

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