The publication of a Programme for Government is always an important moment. Attention turns, quite rightly, to the commitments made, the priorities identified and the omissions that remain. Politicians defend, opponents critique, journalists interpret, and organisations such as Scottish Care seek to understand what the proposals might mean for the people and communities whose lives will be affected.
All of that matters, because programmes must become more than words, aspirations must find their way into action, and political promises must be tested against lived experience. Yet as I reflected on this year’s Programme for Government, I found myself drawn towards a more fundamental question: where is Scotland going?
I do not mean where we hope to be next year, or even at the end of a parliamentary term. I mean what sort of nation we are seeking to become over the coming decades, what lies beyond the immediate landscape of legislation and expenditure, and what values will guide us towards it.
The Programme for Government recognises that the status quo is no longer sufficient, especially for public services built for another age and now confronting changing demographics, rising demand and profound social and economic pressures. Its emphasis on prevention, public service reform and sustainable services for future generations is an attempt to look beyond immediate crisis towards longer-term renewal.
That attempt deserves serious engagement. Scottish Care has welcomed the proposed dialogue on the future reform of social care and indicated our willingness to participate constructively. We have also been clear that social care must not be treated simply as an adjunct to the NHS. Its distinctive purpose is to enable people to live meaningful, independent and connected lives in their own homes and communities.
The Programme therefore feels less like the conclusion of a political conversation than an invitation to begin one. It asks whether we are prepared merely to reorganise existing systems or possess the imagination to create something genuinely different; whether reform will move structures around or transform lives; and whether we are willing to ask what our public services are ultimately for.
Political debate can become preoccupied with the machinery of government rather than the purpose of governing. Structures, targets, budgets, frameworks and delivery plans are necessary, but they are instruments. We must not lose sight of the human destination towards which they are meant to carry us.
This is why I find the work of Mariana Mazzucato compelling. She challenges governments to do more than manage markets or repair failures, arguing instead for mission-driven government in which public institutions provide direction and work in partnership around a clearly articulated purpose. In a recent interview connected to her 2026 book on the common-good economy, she put the question with characteristic directness: “If there’s no purpose or direction, then what the hell are we doing?” Economic growth, reform and innovation are not sufficient ambitions in themselves. They acquire meaning only when we are clear about whom they serve, what they create and the society they help us become.
For Scotland, this raises questions that government cannot answer alone, but which it has a responsibility to articulate. What is our shared mission? What does success look like twenty years from now? What kind of country do we hope our children and grandchildren will inherit, and what must we begin doing differently today?
These questions are not detached from the realities of public finance, workforce shortages or economic pressure. They are what enable difficult choices to be made with consistency and courage. Without a shared destination, every decision risks becoming isolated, every reform vulnerable to the next change in political weather, and every initiative another short-lived repair to a system whose purpose remains uncertain.
When I consider where Scotland might be going, I think first of a nation that ages well. Scotland is becoming an older society, but longevity should never be described merely as a demographic burden. Longer life is one of humanity’s greatest achievements. The question is whether those additional years are characterised by contribution, participation, relationship and purpose rather than exclusion, loneliness or loss of control.
To age well should mean remaining connected to the people and places that give life meaning, having real choice about where and how we live, receiving support before crisis removes that choice, and being recognised as a citizen with gifts and experience rather than as a collection of needs. If Scotland is serious about prevention, it must understand prevention not only as avoiding hospital admission but as sustaining the relationships, capacities and communities that enable a person to flourish.
I think, too, of a Scotland that cares well. Care is not simply a set of services for those assessed as eligible. It is essential social and economic infrastructure, the foundation that allows families to continue, communities to endure, people to participate and the wider economy to function.
For too long, social care has been viewed through the prism of pressure, demand and cost, or valued principally for relieving strain elsewhere. Its purpose is wider and more human. It supports identity, autonomy, relationship and citizenship, enabling people not merely to survive but to continue living lives that are their own. A Scotland that cares well would recognise that contribution in how it invests, commissions, regulates and values the workforce.
I also hope we are travelling towards a Scotland ready to embrace innovation while retaining a clear sense of humanity. Technological change, especially artificial intelligence, will reshape how we work, communicate and organise support. Scotland has an opportunity to lead not simply in adoption but in ethical innovation, ensuring that new systems deepen rights, choice and human connection rather than diminish them.
Mazzucato has observed that ‘innovation has not just a rate but also a direction’. We can innovate rapidly and still travel towards the wrong destination. Innovation is not progressive simply because it is new, any more than reform is beneficial simply because it changes structures. We must ask what innovation is for, whose interests it serves, whose voice shaped it, and whether it gives individuals and communities greater control over their lives. The most important test of progress is not the sophistication of the tools we create, but the humanity of the future they enable.
That future will also depend on whether Scotland strengthens or further fragments its communities. The places in which people live are not simply settings for service delivery. They are landscapes of memory and identity, spaces in which people know and are known, and networks through which support is often offered long before formal systems become involved.
Economic prosperity matters enormously, but it cannot be measured by growth alone if people feel powerless, unheard or disconnected from the decisions shaping their lives. A successful nation must be concerned not only with the wealth it generates, but with the relationships it sustains, the opportunities it shares and the extent to which people experience themselves as participants in a common endeavour.
This is where recent thinking about democracy becomes relevant. A 2026 Demos paper argues for ‘everyday democracy’, rebuilding the relationship between citizen, state and institutions by making participation part of how government works rather than an exercise conducted after important decisions have already been framed.
That is a vital challenge for the engagement ahead. Consultation cannot simply collect views before established institutions proceed largely as intended. Genuine participation must allow people who use support, unpaid carers, frontline workers, communities and providers to shape the questions as well as answer them. It must show where evidence has influenced decisions, what has changed and why difficult choices have been made. Scottish Care has argued for visible feedback loops so that people can see how their evidence has been used.
Recent political-philosophical writing also offers a caution about appeals to ‘common sense’. A discussion published by Edinburgh University Press suggests that common sense can validate the judgement and lived experience of citizens but can also close down disagreement by presenting complex choices as though only one reasonable answer exists. Social care will not be renewed by pretending that tensions between national and local priorities, prevention and crisis response, resources and expectations, or health and social models of support do not exist. Reform requires us to name those tensions honestly, listen to uncomfortable evidence and resist the claim that any one institution possesses the whole truth.
Perhaps, then, the deepest challenge of this Programme for Government is whether its proposals can become the beginning of a renewed national purpose. Missions require more than a strategy written at the centre. They require citizens to participate in defining public purpose and different parts of society to work together towards concrete goals.
For Scotland, such missions might include becoming the best country in which to grow older, creating social care founded on rights and relationship, ending the poverty that diminishes childhood, renewing communities through prevention, or ensuring that technological progress advances human flourishing. A national mission must be bold enough to inspire and specific enough to guide choices. It must reach beyond departmental and institutional boundaries because people’s lives do not fit neatly within administrative structures.
There will be legitimate disagreement about the route, pace and resources required. That is not a weakness of democracy but one of its necessary strengths. The task is to ensure that disagreement does not make us fearful of ambition, and that realism does not become another word for accepting what is inadequate.
The future will not be delivered by government alone, but neither will it be created without government willing to set direction, convene partners, invest in possibility and make courageous choices. It will require public bodies prepared to share power, businesses that recognise social purpose, organisations ready to work beyond protective boundaries, and communities whose knowledge is treated not as anecdote but as expertise. Above all, reform must be created with people, not done to them.
Mazzucato puts it plainly: ‘Good governments have a vision. They know what they want to achieve, can articulate why, and work out in public how to get there.’ That is a challenge not only for government but for all of us. The strongest national visions emerge when citizens, communities, public services, businesses and civic organisations recognise themselves within a shared story about the future and feel able to contribute to its creation.
So, as debate around the Programme for Government unfolds, I return to the question with which I began: where is Scotland going?
The answer will not be found in a parliamentary chamber alone, nor contained within any government document. A nation’s future is fashioned through the countless decisions made each day by citizens, communities, organisations and institutions that choose what they value and where they invest their hope.
Scotland stands, as every generation eventually does, between inheritance and possibility. We are custodians of a rich legacy of creativity, compassion, resilience and community, but inheritance is never enough. Each generation must decide what it will add to the story and what gifts it will place in the hands of those who follow.
The future is not waiting beyond the horizon for us to arrive. It is already being made in how we respond to ageing, how we value care, how we use technology, how we strengthen community, and how willing we are to see one another not as competitors for scarce resources but as fellow citizens bound together in a common endeavour.
Long after today’s political debates have faded, what will remain are the lives we have enabled people to live and the society we have chosen to become.
Perhaps the question is not simply where Scotland is going, but whether we possess sufficient courage to imagine a Scotland worthy of future generations, and sufficient generosity to build it together.
For every journey requires a destination, but the greatest journeys also require hope. Hope, at its best, is the decision to begin walking towards a future that does not yet exist, believing that together we can help bring it into being.
Donald Macaskill
Photo by chris robert on Unsplash
