Bruntsfield bolsheviks on the Holyrood warpath

It is a prospect that could trouble both the Scottish Conservatives, whose supporters are split on their stance in the polls next year, and the Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition, facing a populist anti-Holyrood backlash.

The new party faces an uphill struggle of organisation, logistics and finances. The biggest graveyard in politics is reserved for one-issue causes and new parties. But it may have the inkling of a chance under the regional list system, particularly on a low turn-out for the incumbents, of winning two or three seats on a campaign pledging to derail the runaway gravy-train. As for the new parliament building, it proposes to convert this into a Museum of Follies.

Many will say it hardly needs a new party to undergo this conversion. But bags me be the museum guide.

On your left, ladies and gentlemen, precious and genuine artefacts from the anti-dog-turd bill. Up to your right, scooped up in hanging bunches and billowing down in long strips from the rafters, is a complete list of the St Andrew’s House payroll. Here, in this glass case, the mummified remains of Henry McLeish, complete with favourite fiddle. Over there, the scarlet ballgown worn by Dorothy-Grace Elder and, yes, the burn marks at the ankles where John Swinney tried to set it on fire. And here, ah yes, the ashes of Mr Swinney. Above us, you will see suspended as if in mid-flight the giant skeletal form of the Dinosaurus Sheridanus, stripped of its Armani suit and with the molars taken out for public safety.

Hurry along now, please, there’s lots more to see. Here we have the amazing Wendy Alexander babble machine. Press the button, the eyes light up, the mouth opens and out streams a 45-minute speech on Wired Scotland and social exclusion delivered in just 30 seconds! Please don’t press the button, madam, it’s on continuous loop. Through here to the bricked-up closet that is the office of the Deputy First Minister. And to your left, a montage of life-sized dummies caught mid-dagger in Jack McConnell’s Night of the Long Knives. Mind where you’re stepping, sir – that’s the finance minister.

And here, my friends, in all its gothic splendour, the very pice de rsistance: the Grand Perpetual Motion Scottish Parliament Millennium Estimate Clock! Every hour precisely, the giant wheels and ratchets grind into motion, an orchestra plays Wagner’s Entry of the Gods into Valhalla, cranes spring to life, buckets of cement are raised and lowered, builders stir to work, a brazier of burning fivers glows ever brighter at the base and – whoosh! Pouring from the chimney at the top comes a shower of new estimates of the cost!

Few issues are more preoccupying Labour’s election strategists than how to re-enthuse and re-connect supporters to turn out for the May election against a growing mood of cynicism over the way the Holyrood project has turned out and the public’s resentment over MSPs’ pay and perks.

For the Conservatives, the problems are no less acute. Party strategists are already concerned at the prospect of a breakaway faction putting up a slate of anti-parliament candidates. Not only are many rank-and-file party supporters unconvinced by the leadership’s proposed election ticket of “running devolution better”, but there is also growing unease within the party that it will become tarred with the brush of out-of-control government, ever-rising costs, and perks and expenses fiddles. Grassroots Conservatives prefer in the main less government, not a validation of the vast machine that the Labour and Liberal Democrat coalition has created.

How long that coalition will hang together in the approach to the election is moot. Some Lib Dems feel there is tactical advantage to be gained in pulling out as May approaches. But this is exactly the sort of artifice and posturing with which the public is growing tired. What is the difference between these parties that they can be in alliance until an election, when the Lib Dems can then claim to be an effective opposition? And who could speak of opposition? The great Holyrood Building Clock keeps burning up those fivers.

Who would help set up the new party? I understand two formative meetings have been held in the past month in the Bruntsfield Hotel, Edinburgh. One of the ringleaders is Christopher Monckton, a former minence grise in Thatcher’s cabinet office who now lives in Scotland and who could be fairly described as an eccentric. The cabal is also seeking – and claiming it is getting – cross-party support. Other names being bandied around include some well-known public figures, some of them peers. But in Scotland that is not necessarily an asset.

The problem here is that it is going to take more than meetings of these Bruntsfield covenanters for this idea to fly. It will need money. Arguably as worrying for the Conservatives is the possibility that such a group might just catch the attention of one of its own financial backers. Some business people, anxious about the rising costs of the parliament and the prospect of the “tartan tax” being introduced, could well be tempted to finance a populist faction on a manifesto to oppose the entire project, lock, stock and smoking barrel.

Daunting though the prospects are, it is perhaps more surprising that such an anti-establishment opposition party has not appeared before now. There is certainly an anti-consensus breeze blowing across Europe. And there is little doubt that in Scotland there is mounting public antipathy to the costs of the new parliament and what appears to many to be an unstoppable, out-of-control government machine run for the benefit of a political and administrative elite anxious to protect and expand its sinecures.

Ironically, the more that the First Minister has sought “to do less better”, the more overblown the new parliament building comes to look. The political elite may see it as a fitting monument to devolution. The public has another view: a 300 million complex of modern architecture modelled on upturned boats and with a sprawling honeycomb of offices for hundreds of people just to pass new regulations on dog turds? Give us a break.

The Bruntsfield bolsheviks are on to something. But they will have to cast their net much wider than Morningside if they are to succeed. What is needed is a cross-party vehicle that can capture this public weariness of the soft-shoe shuffling within the establishment that passes for opposition, and which offers a genuine alternative.

Certainly, all four parties are currently wedded to a defence of Holyrood and a system that has presided over the biggest explosion in the cost and numbers of the government machine in Scottish history. It is not being anti-Scottish to call for this behemoth to be brought to heel. But where is the real opposition, a party of canny Scots that will say: “Stop!” – and mean it?