Bill Jamieson: Alex Salmond is down but not out

Published on Tuesday 21 September 2010 15:47

WHAT is the point of Alex Salmond? Yesterday the Scottish Parliament's health committee voted to remove the administration's minimum pricing proposal from the Alcohol Bill. As it did so, yet another of the SNP's flagship policies was consigned to oblivion.

It joins a lengthening list of SNP manifesto ambitions to crash and burn. The great referendum bill was withdrawn. Local income tax was voted down. As for the First Minister's ambition to raise the growth rate of the Scottish economy to at least match the UK's, that was scuppered by the great banking debacle and its recession aftermath. The past is strewn with manifesto wreckage and the future holds little but grief.

The economy is broken and the cupboard is bare. The Scottish Government's budget is about to be cut and, for as far ahead as Salmond can see, an endless procession of public sector supplicants is converging on the door of Bute House, pleading to save this organisation or that from spending cuts.

For a party that courted popularity on lifting bridge tolls or promoting "free" prescription charges or campaigning against tuition fees, we have entered a Dark Age. We have gone in short order from "It's Time" to the baleful politics of "No".

It cannot be argued that the SNP has not tried to fulfil its manifesto promises. Its position has been circumscribed by its status as a minority administration. Its ministers have, on the whole, done a competent job and in key positions have proved better than their Labour predecessors. Alex Salmond himself - half bully, half charmer and quite often both at once - has been a notable and energetic First Minister.

But what is the point of Salmond's "SNP-lite" now? It has no landmark achievements to its credit above the abolition of bridge tolls and prescription charges. It has no programme for office. There is little to galvanise the party and build momentum for the Holyrood elections next May. His purpose in government has been reduced to that of turning St Andrew's House into a bully pulpit from which to blame the spending cuts on the "London-based parties" and fight any and every policy initiative or positive suggestion that bears the slightest contamination of having been a success in England. That would never do. There is no contortion that the SNP administration will not undergo to be different from the rest of the UK for what now often seems to be the sheer cussedness of being different. You cannot sustain a political movement on a programme defined by what it is not, least of all a credible government.Is Alex Salmond not now a busted flush, and are his days not surely numbered?

But it is here - at the very edge of the precipice and at a time when he is vulnerable to the slightest push that could send his party hurtling on to the rocks - that he finds a most unlikely lifeline. It is a phenomenon that could save the SNP from oblivion and even see it through to re-election next year.

Salmond needs only to whisper the two most deadening words in Scottish politics, a whispered name that could cause his most raging critics to slump comatose on the parliament floor. It is a name that reduces barking dogs to a whimper and makes the most neurotic cats sleep through a march past of mice. Throw away the sedatives and repeat until the urge to fall asleep closes totally in: Iain Gray.

The Labour leader is a decent enough man. He is neither a rabid representative of Strathclyde Old Labour or a grating New Labour moderniser on the make. He's been around. He knows the ropes. He means well. But there is barely a Holyrood Question Time that has not ended in Alex Salmond knocking Iain Gray out of the ring. The maulings were so shocking at first you wanted the contest stopped on humanitarian grounds or the St John Ambulance called in. Today the knockabout is so routine, few MSPs bother to turn up.

Gray is the star of a most lacklustre Labour front bench. There are some honourable exceptions to this, but not many. Wendy Alexander still shines as the brainbox. Rhona Brankin is popular and competent but is sadly leaving. The others? It is hard to remember the names, but Jackie Baillie at Health stands out, so to speak. There is the ambitious Richard Baker at Justice. And then there is that familiar yet disturbing commotion of sound, the trundling of a mini-cart of rattling municipal pails and brushes and a muttering and sputtering of imprecations. Enter, Andy Kerr.

If this is the new Scottish government taking over in May, to what problem can it possibly be a solution? What hope can it offer? What new idea has it got? For any Scot of aspiration or ambition, here's what to do. Emigrate. Flee the country. Get out. Head south. Quit before utter narcolepsy closes in.

It is Iain Gray that is now the biggest prop to Alex Salmond's political fortunes. It is the prospect of Iain Gray as First Minister that cannot but make the elections next May about the calibre and character of the rivals for Bute House. It is mooted that unhappy, dissatisfied Lib Dems will throw in their lot with Labour. Are they serious? Have they looked long and hard at what might be in prospect?

A Labour administration would be a near certainty were Alex Salmond to quit. For the SNP, a Salmond resignation would be a movement akin to pulling the pin from a grenade. The moment he goes, there is every danger that the SNP - always an uneasy and fissiparous coalition itself - will disintegrate into its little fundamentalist pieces.Under him, the party has managed an impressive discipline, but one increasingly senses the strains building underneath. Salmond has made leadership of the SNP look easy. That is a most deceptive appearance. It is a feat more akin to a tap dance on Vesuvius.

Now, with the referendum bill "parked" for the time being, the most ominous rumblings are being heard. The dropping of the referendum proposal, however much it may have been dictated by the reality of voting numbers in Holyrood, has stirred the fundies. Their anger is a fusion of a sense of betrayal coupled with deep misgivings over the vacuity of a nationalist party with no higher mission other than to govern. It may reasonably argue it is better than being governed by the other lot.

But governing for what? What is the purpose and mission of the SNP without a commitment to achieving independence as a priority? Many of those who voted SNP in 2007 might be happy with the Calman Commission "long road" - more powers by stages and degrees. But with so many manifesto pledges blocked, beaten or defeated, Alex Salmond now faces the biggest question of his life: what is it that he stands for?