The old political system is not working for Scotland

THERE are some four million eligible voters in Scotland this election, including any non-British EU citizens who remember they also have the right to vote.

A worrying result of this kind will generate two erroneous comments. First, some will view it as a crisis of legitimacy for devolution. However, every poll shows that Scots would still vote for a Scottish Parliament - and even give it more powers. Second will be the self-serving resp-onse of the politicians, who will blame the low turnout on the media. But the electorate has as dubious an opinion of journalists as do the politicians. No. The verdict of the voters is real: they don’t like what the parties are offering.

Here, then, is the meaning of this curious election, with its voter apathy, prospective low turnout and seeming lack of passion. The old party system inherited from the Westminster years is totally out of step with the needs of the country and the interests of post-devolution Scots. The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the media but in the politicians themselves. What we need are new Scottish political parties, not the dissolution of Holyrood or more of my tax money spent by the Executive on endless, patronising television commercials urging me to vote.

Consider what is wrong with the present party system. Start with the poor Tories. They have been in decline in Scotland since they won a clear majority of all votes in the 1955 Westminster election. Originally, they composed a voting block that represented the local industrial class (long replaced with foreign investment) and the skilled Protestant manual working class (dissolved by emigration, technological change and more enlightened attitudes).

We are left with the amiable Mr McLetchie as a front man for a tiny band of ageing Tories who spend most of their time plotting against each other. Does this mean there is no space in social democratic Scotland for a party of the radical right, espousing free-market economics and social liberalism? Of course not - every Nordic country has spawned one. Now that Scotland is coasting towards having the biggest state-controlled sector in Europe and boasts a haemorrhaging population - the two are connected, by the way - Holyrood is calling out for a similar challenge to the social democratic consensus.

But not from the Tories. I was button-holed by a Conservative spin-doctor on Monday night as I emerged from a BBC television studio. He dutifully explained to me that the Tories were not in favour of cutting income tax in Scotland because their polls told them the Scots wanted higher taxes. Does that include those with the skills who are leaving the country by every plane and train - and who should be the basis of any new radical anti-nanny-state party?

Personally, I doubt if the Tories can convert into a radical force. They will lose seats tomorrow, precipitating another civil war. Better by far to start a new group without the old baggage. There is the People’s Alliance, which would institute tax cuts, but I sense it is really a lifeboat for old Tory thinking as it lacks the social liberalism that could attract the young.

Next, Scottish Labour. Its modern voting base is not proletarian, except in its mythology. Labour’s primary electorate is the vast army of public-sector workers who grew up in the Sixties and afterwards. To these were added the new under-class that lives in the west of Scotland, spawned by the very failures of this mini Stalinist empire, with its slow economic growth and sink schools.

This explains Mr McConnell’s permanent inability to follow New Labour into modernising the public sector, lest he collide with his supporters’ interests. At the same time, the ramshackle public sector devours vast amounts of taxpayers’ money to no avail, antagonising the voters who are on the receiving end of poor service. It is also destroying the Scottish economy. The resulting electoral pressure cooker is waiting to blow up. If not tomorrow then later.

Of course, McConnell could do a Blair or a Clinton and try to recompose his voting base by reaching out to the aspirant middle classes and skilled manual workers fleeced by the tax system. Above all, he could offer schools that work and declare war on the Stalinist town halls of the Central Belt that everyone but their financial clients is ready to burn down. This is the agenda that a Wendy Alexander would embrace, while still maintaining an efficient welfare system to protect the poor. But Jack increasingly looks like a rabbit staring at the headlights of the approaching electorate and not knowing which way to jump.

The Lib Dems were once genuine Liberals with an anti-London, anti-urban base. Joe Grimond would not recognise their opportunist make-over into a mini socialist party of land nationalisers, trying to straddle the votes of Scotland’s state-employed middle class with the electorate’s worry that public services aren’t working. Someday the voters will see through Mr Wallace’s artifice and it will be up to real liberals such as Tavish Scott to find them a new identity. Pity their idiocy over land reform lost the Lib Dems the chance to rebuild the kind of anti-centralist party that works well in Scandinavia.

Then there are the Nats. Once, in the pre-Sixties, their voting base was an alliance of the radical cultural intelligentsia (who hated London domination) and the conservative petty bourgeois of Scotland’s myriad small towns, who sought to defend traditional values against uncertain post-war change. In Quebec and Catalonia, such a voting base later allied with dynamic local business (competing against foreign multinationals) and anti-globalist youth to forge a modern nationalist movement. This mlange of ideologies was able to produce a burst of entre-preneurial capitalism that made their economies go with a bang, yet provide for social welfare.

But the SNP took a different route. It positioned itself as a tax-and-spend Labour Mark 2, thus imprisoning itself and a frightened Labour Party in an obsolete political stance. True, there are those in the SNP like the effervescent Andrew Wilson who are straight out of the Quebec or Catalan mould and who talk enterprise and social liberalism. Which is why Mr Wilson was summarily demoted on the SNP list and faces a tough fight to get re-elected.

The current faceless SNP Holyrood elite are now happy to play a game of musical chairs with Scottish Labour, while the nation atrophies. In the Fifties, we had Butskellism, expressing the indistinguishable policies of the Tory Rab Butler and Labour’s Hugh Gaitskell. Now we have McSwinneyism, with the minor difference of a referendum on independence.

Tomorrow, the loony Trots, barking Greens and single-issue protesters will be the only folk to gain votes. But more importantly, there will be two million Scots not voting until someone creates a new system of parties that meets their needs and aspirations. Only then will Holyrood fulfil its promise and Scottish politics get interesting again.

Kirsty Milne is on holiday.