The unwillingness of Scottish politicians, and not least of the SNP politicians, to pursue meaningful land reform is frustrating to say the least, for without land reform Scotland cannot get out of the colonial rut we are stuck in (the use of ‘colonial’ is justified, I think, for everything we do in Scotland is dictated to us from the outside, and land is the pivot on which that external power hinges).

The weekend past the Revive coalition held a conference in Perth around the Big Land Question (“Why do just 421 people own more than 50% of Scotland’s private land and why is so much of that land set aside for grouse shooting?”). This situation is scandalous, and there is a growing sense that this matters to more of us than the politicians appear to think (according to Revive nearly 700 people attended the conference).

But I think we need some broader coalition to spear head further campaigning on this issue, one with a singular focus, which Revive doesn’t have, for Revive is principally about grouse moor reform, but grouse is orthogonal to land reform, one that could be addressed without it. Land reform is of an interest to Revive because it would deal with grouse moors as a side effect (the framing of the Big Land Question quoted above makes this fairly clear).

And as much as I do believe that driven grouse shooting needs to go in its entirety (and be unequivocally banned by the law of the land), collating land reform with grouse moor reform obscures the full extent of land ownership abuse in Scotland, not least the fact that the biggest growth area in this abuse is in fact rewilding (the biggest landowner in Scotland is a foreign rewilder), and tree planting for carbon capture; and unfortunately, conservationists and environmentalists are prone to turning a blind eye to land ownership abuse when they think it works for their cause.

I’ll be watching what is happening in this space closely, but this latest inadequate legislative effort is yet another reason for me not to vote SNP, which, yet again, on present analysis means not voting at all in the next Holyrood election.