Brian Monteith: Johann Lamont is no Tory

THE Scottish Labour leader has been unfairly attacked for a brave speech, writes Brian Monteith

Such is the appalling state of Scottish political discourse that when a party leader seeks to provide a principled explanation of how our nation should address its route march towards financial oblivion, that she is roundly ridiculed and chastised by being called a Tory.

Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont deserves more credit for saying, in her own party’s terms, the unsayable, than being stigmatised as a Tory Poster Girl or a Thatcher in red underwear, but such is the inability of the bloated Scottish welfare state and its adherents to countenance any criticism that she now runs the risk of finding out what it is like to be Ruth Davidson.

This is risible. Firstly, let me knock on the head the idea that the Conservatives in Scotland have been railing against the Scottish Parliament’s munificence in anything other than a half-hearted manner. All too often the party took the lazy way out of confronting the state behemoth and instead of challenging the expansion of free public services it has championed them and even thought of new wheezes that might win some electoral support.

“Free” tolls for the Erskine Bridge and supporting “free” personal care of the elderly were the sort of policies that came ahead of finding genuine savings and then cutting taxes that Holyrood actually controls – like business rates.

That Ruth Davidson, the new Tory leader in Scotland, has teased Johann Lamont for adopting supposedly Tory themes of prudence is welcome, only in as much as she recognises them as being principles she might herself subscribe to. Such acknowledgement that the party has principles that used to attract hundreds of thousands of votes is long overdue, but she needs to get her skates on if she is not to see them hijacked by Ms Lamont.

More encouraging would be if Ms Davidson were to make a speech of a similar defining nature and actually list what shibboleths she might wish to take a tilt at. Why not point out the demographic change that will make free personal care more and more difficult to sustain on a workforce that is shrinking, and, here’s the irony, unless we encourage open immigration to help provide a workforce large enough to pay the necessary taxes and fruitful enough to deliver more young Scots to our population there will never be the taxes to pay for it?

Another issue she might confront is the need to start shrinking the state to something closer to what we actually raise in taxes by redesigning what it does and, if it is to ensure it has the best workforce to deliver those desired services, it reforms itself with a process that includes compulsory rather than voluntary redundancies. Without such a discipline we shall continue to see the scandal of Scottish civil servants receiving £38 million in pay-offs, knowing some will in future be hired as consultants..

Lamont’s speech was not, however, about Labour trying to take Tory clothes, real or imagined; it was about the party returning to its roots by rediscovering the approach of past prudent chancellors such as Stafford Cripps and believing that, like any ordinary family, the Scottish state must live within its means.

That Labour and its Liberal Democrat partners could expand the freebie culture in Scotland during the time of Donald Dewar, Henry McLeish and Jack McConnell, was due to the unconstrained munificence of Gordon Brown that is at last being seen for the misguided arrogance of a man who believed he could defeat boom and bust by fiat – and a devolution settlement that encourages Scottish politicians to spend up to the hilt without feeling the pain of the consequences that high taxes and deficit financing eventually wreak.

It is therefore to be welcomed that Ms Lamont is also now willing to consider how the devolution settlement might be adjusted – hopefully in a manner that at last brings our spendthrift MSPs (of all parties ) to heel.

What Ms Lamont’s speech was about was showing how the SNP, in its rush to win votes within the devolution straightjacket, has been even more outrageous than the relatively restrained Scottish Executive and, by direct association, argue that an independent Scotland run by these same politicians would very quickly join the ranks of Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain as bust and requiring to be baled out by larger, more secure nations.

Labour has always said that it wishes to redistribute wealth through taxation or welfare payments – and Ms Lamont is not departing from this. What she is now saying is that the welfare state – as adjusted by the SNP – has become of benefit primarily to the Scottish middle classes rather than the poorest in society and that Labour wishes to return to helping the weakest rather than the most articulate.

That Ms Lamont has faced a tirade from commentators in the MacChattering classes who see life through the prism of government agencies, quangos and departments doing what they think is in our best interests, rather than letting us decide for ourselves, but with help rather than direction, should come as no surprise to genuine socialists or free marketeers – both of whom are marginalised by the state-funded professional elite.

The speech also had another resonance, and that was to set up a fight with Nicola Sturgeon. If Alex Salmond loses his independence referendum he will in all likelihood seek to retire from the field, find some directorships in energy companies and establish Nicola Sturgeon as his successor.

By taking on the minister responsible for the largest rise in complaints in the NHS, for bowel cancer treatment at Lothian NHS becoming a scandal, and for defending free prescriptions at a cost of £57m when cancer drugs are refused for being too costly, Ms Lamont is preparing for the longer game of defeating the SNP not just now, not just at the referendum, but at the Holyrood elections and beyond.

We can call Lamont anything we want, but in challenging past certainties she is worthy of respect, even if her arguments require further inspection.
• Brian Monteith is policy director of ThinkScotland.org