When faith in our politicians is at an all-time low, there has never been a more important time to hear the views of the guardians of our future on what is going wrong in Scotland and how to put things right. The search will take the form of an essay-writing competition with two categories open to all Scottish residents aged 16 to 18 and 19 to 25.
The essay's title will be Political Accountability in Scotland: how can we ensure our politicians are answerable and effective?
The winning essays will put forward original ideas based on research and a clear understanding of the economic, political and philosophical issues at stake.
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To start things off, the leading historian and thinker Michael Fry outlines some of the challenges facing the current generation.
In the 1960s, when I grew up, we thought we were going to change the world. We had the ideas, after all, whether of the left or of the right. The lads and lassies of the left were going to liberate every conceivable minority, from the racial to the sexual, and give them the equal status history had denied them.
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Those on the right proposed what was in their own estimation a much more rational but no less radical agenda, to throw off the controls by bureaucrats and politicians that had cramped our parents' lives ever since the second world war.
Revolution was in the air. We thought about it, talked about it, wrote about it, sang about it and some countries actually attempted it, such as France and Czechoslovakia. Britain was still feeling secure in its basic social and political values, but in Scotland, nationalism stirred. A lot of little revolutions in lesser spheres of life went on.
Looking back over 40 years, I would say my generation did change things quite a lot. The minorities have been liberated, so that they are able to lead lives on their own terms, regardless of what the majority think. And the state has been rolled back - not as far as the purest libertarians would have liked, but still a long way.
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All the same, not everything has worked out for the best. One liberated minority consists of pretty ordinary folk who for some reason or other become famous for being famous, and in their empty celebrity disport themselves across the media in a way the wealthy would never have stooped to do in the old days. They mock the concept of equality.
On the other hand are those who have abused the freedoms opened up to them (and at the expense of the rest of us), whether they be the managers of hedge funds or the politicians who have sought and won (or is that bought?) our votes. They mock the concept of liberty.
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Yet, amid this current decadence of the values we live by, both the left and right in Britain have come to agree on a great many things. It is strange how at the end of 40 years the two sides in the passionate debates of that earlier era seem to have grown together into a consensus. Now this consensus starts to look stifling, even barren.
Time for another revolution, then? Let us hope so. Especially, I think, we need it in Britain, or more especially in Scotland. We used, 40 years ago, to compare ourselves complacently with foreign nations lacking the long-term social and political stability that allowed our revolutions to be evolutions, without upheaval or violence. This stability was above all institutional: parliament, monarchy, political parties, public bodies of all kinds enjoyed the confidence of the people that let them change when they had to, but not before they had to. It was a comforting country.
Not any more. We have handled the defining crisis of the credit crunch badly, and probably because our institutions are rotten. Some of our leaders tell us the worst will soon be over, others promise us only years of austerity and hardship ahead. Yet all of them now agree that we need the reform that they have at best pursued half-heartedly, and more often refused and rejected.
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In the competition being run by The Sunday Times Scotland and Reform Scotland to find the best young thinkers in the country, I look forward to hearing ideas from the generation who will have to bear the burden of reshaping Scotland.
It does not seem to me that either the traditional left or the traditional right starts with any natural advantage: everybody has to surmount and think beyond political positions that have been more or less discredited. The judges will want to hear from all sides.
Let me set out some problems for which I would like to see answers proposed - mainly because I cannot think of any myself. For those on the left, how is the traditional progressive agenda to be revived? Rather against the odds, Old Labour has come through the years of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair and is now perhaps, under Gordon Brown, reasserting itself. If this is so, we cannot yet say that Old Labour has overcome the record of disaster that caused its eclipse in the 1970s and 1980s. So has it a future that is not too cumbered by the past?
As for new Labour, does it really mean anything apart from the glamour and glitz that accompanied Blair into 10 Downing Street? The spectacle, even at its most exciting, obscured some less pleasant realities: the frank acceptance of widening social inequality, the inability to renew public services, the subservience of British interests abroad to American interests.
Was there more to it than spin? Some of those Blairites who have just resigned from the government appear to think so. If there was more than spin, what can be salvaged and put to better use in future?
Those on the right have a somewhat similar dilemma to face. Thatcherism changed Britain in many ways and for ever. In its heyday, it enthused a lot of young people - much more in England, admittedly, than in Scotland. Would it be possible to create a Scottish Thatcherism (doubtless under a different label) that would in the same way destroy outdated structures and liberate novel forces in society, with the aim of giving ordinary people more control over their lives?
The combative energy that had to be expended on the right in the final quarter of the twentieth century has left even English Tories looking for a quieter life, which they have found under David Cameron. He has been able to exploit the current political crisis in Britain, but once the smoke of that battle has cleared, will we find much distinction in actual policy between the party he seeks to lead into power and the party he hopes to throw out? In other words, is there anything in his cuddly Conservatism that makes it all that different from new Labour? Could it offer a programme for Scotland, too?
And, finally, we have within Scotland the opportunity, which many of us took in the Euro election, to reject British politics entirely by voting SNP. It offers us the prospect of a new nation. Yet oddly, the new nation it projects often seems much like the old nation - with a hyperactive state, heavy public expenditure and a weakness for yielding to the demands of any special interest group that cares to get its act together and lobby hard enough.
Has the realisation of Scottish dreams been hindered up to now simply by lack of revenues from North Sea oil to spend on them? Or is there something wrong with those dreams? In that case, what new dreams do we need?
I belong to the generation of 1968 and I have to admit we have not made as good a use as we might have of our political inheritance. I hope the generation of 2009 can do better. Let us see, in this competition, if they at least have the potential in them.
How to enter
Your essay should be no longer than 1,500 words and be sent by post to the following address:
Reform Scotland / Sunday
Times Scotland Essay
Competition
The Executive Centre
7-9 North St David Street
Edinburgh
EH2 1AW
The deadline for submissions is October 9.
Winners will be offered a two-week work experience placement at The Sunday Times Scotland and a one-week work experience placement with Reform Scotland. In addition, the winners' essays will be published in The Sunday Times and on the Reform Scotland website. The winner in each category will receive £300 and the runner-up in each category will receive £100. Winners and runners-up will also receive a free subscription to The Sunday Times for a year.
Full details are available on the Reform Scotland website at www.reformscotland.com - all queries should be directed to Reform Scotland, which can be contacted on 0131 524 9500 or info@reformscotland.com
Terms and conditions: Open to all Scottish residents aged 16 -25. One entry per person. Entries must be received by 5pm on Friday, October 9, 2009. Entries will not be acknowledged or returned. All entries must be the original work of the entrant and not previously published. The Sunday Times and Reform Scotland reserve the right to edit entries at its discretion for publication. Entrants will retain the copyright to their submitted entries, but give The Sunday Times Scotland a worldwide royalty-free perpetual licence to edit, publish and use all or segments of their entry in any and all media for publicity and news purposes. The judges' decision is final. The winners will be notified no later than December 31, 2009.