Ross Martin: Road to reform yet to be travelled

Published on Sunday 24 April 2011 16:08

Scotland deserves better than the dull and delusional election campaign which is merely turning out more of the same old soundbites

NO TUITION fees. No prescription charges. No bridge tolls. Unfundable, untenable and frankly, unbelievable. Add to this a continued council tax freeze, a continuation of free personal care and a continuation of free bus travel for the elderly and one begins to wonder whether Fred Goodwin is standing for finance minister.

This is a political sham, a social scandal, a democratic deceit designed to suggest that all government is good and that the Scottish public spending spree that we have enjoyed these past ten years can continue. It can't. Budgets are being slashed and our political elite are fiddling the figures whilst what remains of their tattered reputations burn.

This election should be a battle of ideas, a contest of choices, a robust examination of the options available for saving our public services, of ensuring economic stability and of building the foundations for growth. Not simply GDP growth of the old variety led by an unsustainable bankers' boom, but real growth, of local economies, of skilled and interesting jobs, of social enterprises. Growth of community connections, of social adhesion, of the things which bind society together and strengthen it for the struggles to come.

This year's election should be about all of these things, but it's not. It is dull and disengaging, uninspiring and uninformative, depressing and delusional. Perhaps more worryingly, it is simply an extension of what has gone before. Scotland deserves better.

Sadly, the dead end which Scottish politics is turning out to be was signposted at the dawn of devolution, when chance after chance to take our politics down a different route was missed. Even before the Scottish Parliament was re-convened, the leaderships of our political parties conspired to shun the historic opportunity to change the nature of our politics. A once in a lifetime chance to reshape representative democracy; to make it both truly representative and engagingly democratic. Sadly, Holyrood is neither.

The road to reform, signalled by the Constitutional Convention, was clear for all to see.

An opportunity to truly transform Scottish politics was closed off and instead of taking the road less travelled, our elected elite chose to go the same old way, with very few changes to either political process or indeed the nature of political engagement.

True, there were a few hopeful signs at the beginning, with attempts made at gender balance, partial efforts at attracting the unusual suspects from wider civic Scotland to stand as candidates and the occasional alteration to parliamentary procedure, but the nature of political discourse essentially stayed the same. Punch and Judy politics.

Forgive the petty, self-interested sulk of the SNP walking away when their country called them to help shape the new institution. Forget the equally shameful business of the siting, design and cost of the new building, decided by a coterie of Labour politicians and advisers as yet unelected, operating with absolutely no popular mandate to determine the rightful home of the Peoples' Parliament. A shibboleth indeed.

The only debate that mattered regarding the Scots' Parliament was whether it should be hosted in Edinburgh, Stirling or some other part of the country that could lay a better claim. If based in the capital, the new Scottish Parliament had to be on Calton Hill, with the civil service down below in what has now become the city council's administrative HQ. Linked to a revamped Waverley Station, with a bus and yes, a tram interchange built-in, this was the ideal site, ironically ruled out on cost grounds. But it did not happen like that, and Holyrood is the result.

Then that first administration, led by Donald Dewar, was too cautious by far, both in cause and crucially, in character. Instead of putting together the rainbow coalition which the electorate sought to construct in the 1999 ballot, in preparation for the new Millennium, Labour under Dewar sought refuge in the lowest common denominator with a policy package made up almost entirely from grievance politics, simply seeking to "right the wrongs" of the Thatcher years.

In this unimaginative and uninspiring endeavour, Scottish Labour was supported by the Liberal Democrats, who brought what little excitement there was in the awkwardly entitled Executive's first policy programme. In times of economic plenty, the only show in town was to decide on what all that HM Treasury largesse could be spent on; both in capital and in revenue expenditure, the coalition spent like there was no tomorrow.

After Dewar's untimely death, our MSPs couldn't stop splashing the cash, with Henry McLeish's government (note the small g) adopting unsustainable policy after policy, struggling to spend a budget that was rising faster than an MP's expense claim.Free personal care, universal bus travel, free university tuition, the list of goodies seemed endless and yet, like the banks whose tax receipts HM Treasury relied upon, this spending boom was always heading for bust.

That didn't stop Jack McConnell leading his administration yet further up the spending hill, with the only real policy highlight from that period being when the parliament halted between hostilities and united to ban smoking in public places. Our third First Minister had form, wasting well over a billion pounds on a huge hike in teachers' pay, whilst getting absolutely nothing in return. Next up were the doctors with their stratospheric salaries, followed by a wide range of civil servants on eye-watering pay and pension packages.

Then, in 2007, following the political upheaval that ushered in the SNP to form the first Scottish Government, there was no let up with spending, we even saw the removal of vast areas of income from the public purse; bridge tolls were abolished, council tax frozen and eventually prescription charges were consigned to the dustbin of GPs' surgeries, with many still struggling to provide a service fit for last century, never mind this new one.

And yet, all the while the budgetary storm clouds were gathering and still the parties contrived in common cause that all was well in the public expenditure driven Scottish economy.

It is hardly surprising then that as we approach this year's Holyrood elections that self-same delusional drivel is being peddled by the four main parties. Spending promises are being showered on a largely disengaged electorate like confetti, in a bidding war so divorced from reality it makes one weep. Not a single sentence have we read, not a word have we heard from the party leaders' lips on the only issue that matters on 5 May: it's the economy, stupid, so how will you deal with the deficit?

After ten years of budgetary growth, public expenditure is about to decline, fast. Our political leadership, at the national level, seems unable to face up to this financial reality. How did it all come to this?

It could all have been so different. The Scots' Parliament was supposed to be a gathering of all the talents. It was meant to herald a new beginning, bringing together a cross-section of Scottish society to focus not only on "Scottish solutions to Scottish problems", but also to inject the enthusiasm, energy and ideas that swept the nation on Devolution-day.

Our Parliament re-convened to the sound of song. As we stand at this current crossroads perhaps our politics needs some poetry. Robert Frost, in The Road Not Taken presciently considered the incoming Scottish Government's options. They should take this additional oath: "Two roads diverged in a (Scottish) wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference."

The road to reform has not yet been taken in Scotland.Let's see if our politicians can make the right choice this time, after we've made ours on 5 May.

• Ross Martin is policy director of the Centre for Scottish Public Policy