I’m not making a public announcement here on where I stand on Scotland’s constitutional future (I wouldn’t dare) but I will say this: if you really want to change everything then your offer must be truly transformational.
And this is what was perhaps the most puzzling aspect of the new SNP/Green administration’s recent Programme for Government (see current magazine) – the disconnect between where it said it wants to go and the route taken to get there.
Maybe it’s Covid fatigue, maybe it’s just me being gloomy at the onset of autumn and the prospect of another troubled winter, maybe it’s just how tiresome the endless Groundhog Day of Scottish and UK political life has become – but I genuinely can’t remember an administrative programme being set out with such an air of “will this do?”
There is, of course, much to be welcomed, but mostly in terms of incremental improvements, if they ever happen.
And there’s concern here – a National Care Service is a great idea, but will it go the way of the once-touted and now abandoned, publicly owned Scottish energy company?
On paper, this should have been an exciting moment. It was being made by an administration (a coalition that you’re not allowed to call a coalition) including, for the first time anywhere in the UK, Green parliamentarians. It was being made at the start of the parliament that should see us crawl out of the Covid pit and begin to stake out the parameters of a new way of doing things. It was all designed to build up to the announcement that the Scottish people will be given the ultimate say on their own destiny, the political complexities of that actually happening notwithstanding.
Yet rather than being electrifying, it hit home with the dull thump of touching an electric cattle fence. Maybe not as unpleasant but the effect felt as short-lived.
There’s a real feeling of opportunities missed here – and you have to ask why. If the case is to be made for Scotland’s future outside the UK, then surely you’d take the chance to show how you can do it better?
To take one significant example – just at a time when the Tories at a UK level are cutting Universal Credit (see current magazine), the Scottish Government had a chance to show how it intends to do things differently by committing to helping ending child poverty by doubling the Scottish Child Payment in this year’s budget. Instead there were commitments to do this ‘“as early as possible” within the parliamentary term. Like families in poverty can wait.
In refusing an immediate uplift, the first minister did two things – first, she ignored the advice and pressure of more than 120 organisations from across the Scottish voluntary sector and civil society, and second, she missed an opportunity to show how the Scotland we have today can be a precursor to an even better one tomorrow.
If you want to take people with you, you have to do two things – show them the path to something better and demonstrate how the old ways of working are impeding this. Old lefties out there may know these as transitional demands.
What’s concerning here is that this caution suggests the Scottish Government – for all its Green trimmings – has not completely broken with the neoliberal nostrums of the Growth Commission, which wanted to reimagine Scotland as a sort of late 90s Blairite nostalgia show.
It’s also concerning that the lobbying and advice of Scotland’s charities and civil society can so easily be set aside.
The quote, attributed to Alasdair Gray, about working as if you live in the early days of a better nation is hammered into the walls of the Scottish Parliament. Maybe it would be better if this were also set in stone at the heart of government itself.
Graham Martin is editor of TFN.
