I am sitting in the community-run cafe at the Eilean Glas lighthouse on the outer edge of the Isle of Scalpay, which itself is on the outer edge of the Isle of Harris, which itself is on the outer edge of Scotland and the UK. The lighthouse is two kilometres from the road end, down a well-maintained but undulating path, and getting to the road end is, even by the standards of the single tracks in the Western Isles, rather a bum-clenching 15 minutes from Tarbert.

The fact that I’m eating home-made orange, lemon and lime drizzle cake, drinking a mug of strong, black filter coffee, and paying for it by Apple Pay, feels like something of a miracle. Because although my children seem oblivious to the chasm between life in Scalpay and life in south Edinburgh (chocolate cake is chocolate cake after all, or in the case of my oldest daughter the controversial choice of carrot cake) I can’t help but reflect that the cafe and restaurant, the cake shop and craft hut, and the holiday rentals, hang by a thread on Scalpay as they do in very remote communities all over Scotland.

My family life takes me to the Western Isles frequently, and my professional life takes me from the rural south-west of Scotland, several hundred miles north-east to the Shetland Islands. I take the temperature of these places when I’m there. Truthfully, though, you must live in them to really understand. And people who do live in remote Scotland appear to harbour an increasing resentment towards those of us who dwell in the urban central belt, making decisions with an existential impact on them from what appears to them to be a diminishing supply of both knowledge and empathy.

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I, increasingly, find it hard to blame them. Scotland is a complex country to run. At its best, it thrives on an interdependency which is rare, perhaps even unique around the world. The populated centres are easier and cheaper to run when it comes to housing, transport, education and health services, providing emergency services and so on, and provide the economic growth and tax backbone of the country which pays for it all (particularly in the case of Edinburgh and, in good times, Aberdeen). Conversely, the Highlands and islands and the rural south cost much more per head in service provision, for comparatively poor return.

But, wait, because these remote and rural areas have long provided, and long will provide, the natural environment - water, wind and land - for the creation of our most precious resources, energy and food, not to mention culture and tourism. When we townies dine on our smoked salmon starter and beef main course, cooked in an oven using electricity supplied from a wind farm and sitting in a house heated by gas from the North Sea, we’re dependent on the teuchters, are we not?

This is a social contract between different parts of Scotland. We are giving to each other with one hand, and taking with the other. When it works, it works. But when it doesn’t, it doesn’t. And at the moment, it isn’t.

The reason I am in this cafe in Scalpay is because there is a bridge, now around 25 years old, from the mainland. If the island were still dependent on a ferry, we would be somewhere else right now, and so would most of the others in this unexpectedly busy little gem. And if we continue to move against the motor car in favour of mass transport, then forget it. Ferries (and local buses) will always have a part to play in island life, but in order for our islands to thrive, bridges and tunnels must be the answer. And, yet, we are light years behind comparable nations in this realisation. That is partly because we are trapped in an ideological presumption against leveraging private finance for infrastructure projects, stuck in a cycle of believing there is no money simply because it is not in the government’s bank account, but it is also because we are making the political and social choice to plough money into that designed to benefit the urban centre.

Over on the mainland, let’s put the A9, A96, A75 and others in the same bracket. Let’s put digital connectivity in the same bracket as physical connectivity, as I hold my phone to the heavens in the hope that I might discover a single bar of 4G connection with which to send this article to The Herald’s nervous editorial team.

Let’s also add healthcare. The NHS’s investment into digital healthcare, which could be of enormous benefit to remote communities, has for decades been frustratingly woeful. Instead we seem stubbornly determined to throw money down an unreformed black hole, playing healthcare whack-a-mole with sickly central-belt types.

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The question is, why is this social contract so weakened? I’d suggest that the political imperative of the last decade or so has played its part. In order to expand the narrative in favour of Scottish independence, a "One Scotland" approach has very clearly emerged at government level. There has developed a tendency to homogenise Scotland for the purposes of internal marketing, and to downplay its diversity. We have pushed the narrative that there is something uniquely worthy about being Scottish, rather than there being something uniquely worthy about being Glaswegian or being from Dumfries or being a Highlander or being a Hearrach.

We should reverse this, for if we begin to reverse it in tone, we will find ourselves reversing it in policy.

The introduction of elected mayoralties would provide propulsion for that process. Proponents of mayors will often cite the need for them in the cities, and they are correct. However, less well developed is the case for elected mayors for our remote and rural areas, elected with a mandate to lobby for their region in Edinburgh, and in London for that matter.

It would be intriguing to see a mayor for Dumfries and Galloway, or for the Highlands, taking their case to government with full public support. And it would be particularly interesting somewhere like the Western Isles, where that mayor would likely be unencumbered by party politics.

An independent mayor, with the people behind them, forcing change. Forcing a renewal of our social contract.