Why we should be cynical about SNP's sudden conversion to listening to rural Scotland

The minority SNP government’s need to reach out to other parties has presented an opportunity to reverse some of the harm caused to rural and island communities by their centralising instincts

The discussions around this year’s Scottish Budget have certainly been interesting. I don’t know (and we may never be told) if Humza Yousaf had some master plan to restore interest to Scottish politics when he blew up his party’s coalition with the Greens. Whether intended or not, that is what he achieved.

Gone are the days of negotiations that were largely performative and where the nationalists could play politics secure in the knowledge that the Greens would give them what they wanted anyway.

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Humza’s “legacy” has turned out to be an opportunity for communities that have been underserved by the nationalists for years to start clawing back some political and fiscal firepower. We have the chance now to reverse some of the harm caused to rural and island communities by SNP/Green centralisation.

Island communities like Kirkwall have been poorly served by the SNP government in Edinburgh (Picture: Adrian Dennis)Island communities like Kirkwall have been poorly served by the SNP government in Edinburgh (Picture: Adrian Dennis)
Island communities like Kirkwall have been poorly served by the SNP government in Edinburgh (Picture: Adrian Dennis) | AFP via Getty Images

A Green red line

I’m glad that my Liberal Democrat colleagues in the Scottish Parliament have been fighting hard for their corner. While the devil will be in the detail in what is actually delivered by the government, they have forced concessions on issues that matter to us both nationally and on the local level for our communities. It maybe tells us something about the changed state of Scottish politics that even the Greens’ “red line” about more reports on independence was not enough to get them back in favour with John Swinney.

One of the more notable wins from our perspective is the commitment to £20 million of capital funding for transport, split between the Orkney and Shetland councils. There has been a growing fear that the ferry troubles inflicted on the Western Isles by the SNP could become those of the Northern Isles before too long. There is no time like the present to invest and stave that off.

A little money going towards transport in the isles is a good thing, long overdue though it may be, but it should also be seen as the start of a process rather than as an end.

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A special moment

We need to win the fight against SNP centralisation not just now but for the years to come. What is really needed is to force the SNP to allow communities to regain control of their own decision-making on services and spending, particularly in the Highlands and Islands. We need them to take responsibility for the harm they have done to local government.

As one wry comment I saw this week put it, the Scottish Budget is a special moment: it is the one day in the calendar when the SNP discover their ownership of the Budget and take credit for anything popular – before they spend the rest of the year telling us that everything is really controlled by those devils down in Westminster.

This is a late ploy by an SNP government drowning in 17 years of short-sighted decisions, centralisation and the drip-drip-drip of scandal and failure. They are throwing everything at the wall now and hoping that something sticks, whether that is the unfunded promise to end the two-child limit or this belated outreach to island communities.

We can and should be cynical about the SNP’s latecomer conversion to listening to other parties and people outside the Central Belt – but we can also make the most of it while it lasts.

Alistair Carmichael is the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland.

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