What I'll say to my kids

Whether we win or lose next week I will be proud to tell my kids and theirs that I did not stand shoulder to shoulder with the Tory elite - the millionaires who auctioned off the NHS while millions queued at food banks in one of the richest countries in the world. I rejected the call to stand with UKIP, the BNP, the Orange lodge and Britain First, the xenophobes and racists who want my foreign husband ejected from the country his kids were born in. I stayed away from the insipid Libdems who lost their souls the day the reneged on student fees and Labour who call them socialists while calling free tuition and medical care 'a something for nothing' culture. I will have tried to rise above the BBC and its lies and manipulation and I will have ignored the gutter press for the piece of toilet paper it is.

I will have stood shoulder to shoulder with those who have been striving for social justice, for a future where young people can learn without taking on loans that will mar their entire lives, where women with degrees can get a job because childcare isn't 70% of their salary. I will have prioritised that childcare over paying for a 1980s style nuclear deterrent in my own back garden, that is so out of sync with the world I live in today. Millions are spent of WMDs while millions queue at food banks. I will have stood with those who have fought for the sick, and the disabled. I want my children to grow up knowing that they will only have to leave their country of birth if they choose to, rather than growing up with that as an inevitability if they want to succeed in their careers. It shouldn't be like that. I don't want to have to be a once-a-year granny one day, just because there were no graduate jobs in this country for my kids. I will have been part of one of the most vibrant, inclusive, intellectual and inspirational movements in Scottish history that will live on whatever the outcome.

I have asked myself one question from the outset: Is this really the best my country can be? And I have concluded it is very far from that. 

I will have taken Mandela's advice to prioritise my hopes over my fears and I will be happy to look at myself in the mirror.