Leader: Listen and learn

FOR a decade and a half, Scottish politics has been in a state of almost permanent revolution: the referendum on home rule, the birth of the Scottish Parliament, the death of one first minister, the resignation of another, the coming to power of the SNP and, now, the prospect of a vote on independence. Few of the assumptions that underpinned our thinking at the start of that period have survived intact, among them Labour’s hegemony across the Central Belt and the notion that no one party could win a majority at Holyrood. Now we find ourselves at yet another potential watershed moment, with moves within Scottish Labour and the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party towards far more distinctively Scottish identities, alongside a rethink on policy positions; and a debate within the SNP – at this point conducted in whispers – about what constitutes functional independence in the second decade of the 21st century. Such self-examination is welcome but overdue, because the political parties serving Scotland at the moment are failing to reflect and represent the spectrum of opinion and ambition across this country.

By their very nature, political parties tend to be expressions of the gut beliefs of their members. This is fine if those gut beliefs are shared by a large section of the population at large. The problem arises when the political comfort zone inhabited by these members is one that is increasingly divorced from the instincts of the broader electorate. This is what has happened in Scotland. Our political parties have become the end and not the means. Meanwhile, old allegiances that marked Scotland for generations have been eroded, as the parties have failed to keep up with how Scotland has moved forward. It has, for example, taken a defeat of historic proportions to bounce Scottish Labour into reconfiguring its organisation so it gives due precedence to the Scottish Parliament. That this is only happening now, fully 14 years after a Labour secretary of state published the Scotland Bill and paved the way for devolution, is extraordinary. And it remains to be seen whether Scottish Labour will overcome its reluctance to side with the overwhelming majority of Scots who want a much stronger parliament – far stronger than the current Scotland Bill allows – within the Union. Similarly, it remains unclear whether ordinary Tory members will back Murdo Fraser’s radical moves in the same direction.

The consequence of Labour and Tory inertia has been a drift of voters into the welcoming arms of a Scottish National Party that is such a broad church on economic and social policy – with something for everyone, be they low-tax capitalists or anti-nuke lefties – it renders useless any attempt to pin down its political identity. The emergence of one party as something approaching a “national” party may be excellent news for Alex Salmond but the fact is that will have to change if they are ultimately successful. The decline of the smaller parties – the Greens and Socialists – from their high in the parliament’s second term is another symptom of a disconnect between the priorities and beliefs of many voters and the way we are represented at Holyrood. This country needs a disparate range of political parties, each with its own ideological coherence and all of them fixed on the priority of improving the lives of Scots.

So a return of Scotland’s political parties to the drawing board is a positive step. They now need to be prepared to put their tendency to preach on hold, and instead to listen. Those parties who listen the hardest, and take heed of what they hear, and reflect people’s views as they are rather than what the politicians would wish them to be, will be best placed to participate in the next stage of Scotland’s story.