Kenny Farquharson: Raise your game, First Minister

Published on Saturday 13 December 2008 18:48

The sails no longer billow with ideas. The Government is becalmed

IASKED a simple question of the First Minister's office last week and got back an answer that was unintentionally revealing. My question was this: Could I please have a list of the SNP Government's achievements for the calendar year of 2008. (Note the "please": I may come from a scruffy bit of Dundee but over the years I have managed to acquire a semblance of manners.)

What arrived in reply was an e-mail with a very long list attached. It contained no fewer than 190 achievements. Impressive. But it wasn't quite what I'd asked for. This wasn't a 2008 list. It included everything the SNP had done since May 2007, taking in those heady days in the immediate aftermath of the historic election victory.

Pardon my cynicism, but I don't think this was an idle error. Because as I read the list it became very clear that most of the Government's achievements – and certainly the most eye-catching ones – came from those first seven months. The items for 2008 were largely uninspiring or unconvincing. I've put the full list online at www.scotlandonsunday.com/opinion so readers can make their own judgment.

All the headline grabbers – abolition of road tolls, cuts in prescription charges, scrapping the graduate endowment, the council tax freeze – are now more than a year old. In the past 12 months there have been many creditable initiatives – modest, admirable, lowercase policies, the day-to-day prose of government – but little to shout about. The momentum of those early months has been lost. The sails no longer billow with big ideas. The Scottish Government is becalmed.

The challenge that 2008 presented to the SNP shouldn't have been a surprise. There was always a need in the first months of the first ever Nationalist Government to put a premium on delivery. And this was always going to be followed by a period where the priority was embedding the SNP culturally and organisationally as a party of government for the long term.

What we've seen, however, is an administration struggling to impose its will on the country it is supposed to be governing. Scottish institutions have doggedly refused to embrace key SNP policies such as local income tax and the Scottish Futures Trust. Local authorities have defied the so-called "historic concordat" and refused to implement Government policy on schools. Kenny MacAskill's clumsy crackdown on alcohol abuse has cost the party credibility, especially with the young.

And where has Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond been during the past year? Undoubtedly, he has stamped his authority and personality on the Holyrood Parliament, where his performances in the chamber have been magisterial. But has he stamped his authority and personality on the country as a whole? I would argue that for Salmond the past 12 months have been a wasted opportunity.

This past year was the ideal time for a series of statesmanlike First Ministerial initiatives. It was the time when he should have been working the crowd, literally and metaphorically. He should have taken up the cause of a key section of Scottish society – the poor, the young, the elderly, the unemployed – and made himself their champion. Above all, he should have been fleshing out what he and his Government stood for, beyond the waving of a Saltire.

In November 2007 I wrote in this column about the need for Salmond to share with us his personal vision of Scotland. I argued that although he was a familiar figure to us all, we knew very little about where he stood on key moral, social, political and economic questions. And I mentioned a few dilemmas to illustrate my point.

How explicit should sex education be in schools? Should scientists be allowed to use human embryos for research? Should the state reward marriage? How should the law acknowledge same-sex relationships? How should we deal with disruptive kids in the classroom? How should we balance punishment and rehabilitation in our criminal justice system? Is voluntary euthanasia beyond the moral pale? How do we tackle Scotland's sick-note culture? How punitive should we be about soft drug use? Should pupils wear school uniform? How do we control immigration? How do we combat racism and intolerance?

Last November we knew nothing about where Salmond stood on these and other similar issues. Today, more than a year later, are we any the wiser? Not much, I'd argue. As we head into 2009, can we expect enlightenment? I hear there are rumblings at a high levels in the Scottish Government about precisely this issue. The suggestion is that Salmond needs to be portrayed much more effectively as a national leader with a national vision. Perhaps that is what lies behind this weekend's First Ministerial visit to Catalonia. But if Salmond is to have a loftier profile, he needs loftier things to say.

Last week I spoke to someone who had been a guest at a St Andrew's Day reception hosted by Salmond at Edinburgh Castle. The perfect location, the perfect date, you might think, for a First Minister to say something of importance about the state of the nation. Apparently not. The speech, my mole reports, was a jumble of platitudes.

Now that the economic downturn has trimmed back the SNP's scope to offer new goodies, there is a good practical reason for Salmond to turn to philosophy. Talk, after all, is cheap. This is the national conversation that Salmond should be concentrating on. The First Minister should raise his sights, and his game.

For the full list of Scottish Government achievements click here.