The great hang-glider debate, 20 years of Holyrood

Thoughts on 20 years of the Scottish parliament, Daily Reord 11/05/19

It was quite an event, the day Scottish parliament opened at the General Assembly on the Mound in Edinburgh. 

It was a day of great speeches, Donald Dewar’s best ever. A morning of great music, Sheena Wellington singing “A Man’s man for a’ that” in front of Price Philip and the MSPs joining in. The strains of Inverness Gaelic choir wafted up to the press gallery where we sat, a new model army of political journalists looking down on 129 new members of the Scottish parliament.

At the time there was about one journalist to every two politicians, more than enough to capture Winnie Ewing’s words that echoed of history and continuity: “The Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25th day of March in the year 1707, is hereby reconvened’.” It was her finest moment too. 

Somewhere I have the commemorative Royal Bank of Scotland pound note printed for the occasion, slipped into a copy of Neil Gunn’s “Silver Darlings” bought that day because I’d meant to read the novel for years and now seemed like the time for a new beginning.

That’s how it felt, as children from all of Scotland’s schools marched down the Mound and new faces made life-long friends as Scotland’s political class made it's way to the pub. 

It didn’t seem divided, as the body politic is now, although in the thrilling finale to ceremony, as the Red Arrows escorted Concorde in a fly-past down Princes Street, the seeds of the next 20 years were cast in a comic aside.

“See if that was your independent Scottish republic that wouldn’t have been Concorde it would have been a hang-glider,” joked one stridently Unionist hack to his colleague.

“Aye, but it would have been wur hang-glider,” came the sharp retort. which pretty much sums up the current divided state of play in Scottish politics.

To begin with the delivery of devolution itself was the achievement, the pendulum swing from almost two decades of Conservative rule and the response to many years of demands for devolution in the United Kingdom.

With the hindsight of 20 years many argue devolution, to Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland,  is still unfinished business, that Holyrood is not complete despite tax-raising powers now being giving MSPs the freedom to raise and spend how they choose.

Yet the reluctance, or complexity, in assuming new powers on everything ranging from welfare payments to VAT is highlighted by critics as the unpreparedness of the current SNP government to move forwards.

The push-pull of devolution will continue for years and while Scotland has changed, Westminster institutions have yet to match the new devolutionary politics that strain at the ties of the United Kingdom. The devolve and forget attitude of Whitehall, and the high-handed treatment of devolved governments at what are meant to be joint inter-governmental meetings, grates with those outside (and some inside) the Westminster postcode.

Now the Scottish parliament is part of nation’s furniture,  although arguments about that furniture and the Enric Miralles designed home for the parliament, absorbed almost five years of controversy until politics came down from the hill to Holyrood at the foot of the Royal Mile. 

Holyrood, and its upturned boats is now seen as more important by Scots to their lives than the House of Commons and Big Ben, though it is the full-blooded drama of Westminster politics that still catches the country’s attention, and occasionally the country’s breath.

We shape our buildings and thereafter they shape us, said Winston Churchill. Holyrood may disprove that. Despite the radical design of Holyrood the politics that emerged from the building have been essentially conservative.

There have been some ground-breaking initiatives. Land-reform, the pre-legislative gift from the Labour government, has still to extend beyond the crofting counties. The smoking ban and the minimum price for alcohol will have long-term health benefits for the nation.

But others, like free care for the elderly and the abolition of tuition fees, mostly benefit middle ground, middle class Scotland that the all sides must satisfy to in order to build an electoral alliance.  

The stats for health outcomes and educational achievement for the poorest parts of the country remain stubbornly low, lending credence to the conclusion that devolution has been very good for Scotland’s middle class and not so good for the poor.

That raises, even after 20 years, a fundamental question about what politics and parliaments are for, if not improving the lives of the country’s citizens? 

While post-devolution England experimented with health care, education and social care reform - for better or worse - successive Scottish governments have shown no great courage for reform or for taking on vested interests that might prevent change.

Radical is not the word to describe 20 years of Holyrood, managerialism is and that lends itself to another m word, mediocrity.

But two decades is not long in the lifetime of a parliament and there is still great energy, great opportunity in Scotland to do things differently, as the recently ignited debate on climate change demonstrates.

Part of the reason why everything has stayed the same while everything changed is that the bandwidth has been absorbed by one political project - independence.

The rise of the SNP, the eclipse of the Labour party as the home of the traditional left vote, and the first, though perhaps not final, independence referendum have been the defining moments of the first 20 years.

That has been an incredible story and for those on the nationalist side of the debate these have been years of steady advance on the long, perhaps inevitable, march to independence. 

In 2014 the world looked on as that impulse for self-determination came close to a big bang that would have set Scotland on a very different trajectory.

Since then the world has moved on, leaving Scottish politics and Holyrood still in permanent orbit around the independence question or, as my squabbling journalist friends would have it on  that first day 20 years ago, the great hang glider debate.