 | 'It would seem that Welsh has handed back his dinner-pail because he was bored in our grand wee parliament, and didn't think he was doing any good there. One can sympathise with his clear disappointment at not being given a ministerial post, if only because so many ministerial jobs were created this summer that being overlooked must appear an insult to any ambitious politician.' Alan Massie in the Sunday Times, 26 th December 1999. |  |
Cubie is the first positive test of the new way of doing things; and one can only smile at the thought of the pickle Labour have got themselves into.
Not even Holyrood's most enthusiastic supporters believe that the Scottish parliament has got off to a good start, "hit the ground running", as the cant phrase has it. On the contrary, its first half-year of life has been marked by uncertainty, bickering, and futility. We have had turf wars between Donald Dewar, the first minister, and John Reid, the secretary of state. That was probably inevitable: the parliament may be autonomous within its carefully limited sphere of devolved powers, but nobody supposes that the idea, let alone reality, of autonomy has been extended to the Scottish Labour party.
There can be equal certainty, however, that autonomy will eventually have to be granted. Devolution imposed a new structure on political parties, not only on the constitution. Even under the old constitution, we did many things differently in Scotland. The divergence will grow more marked, and it is inconceivable that the priorities of the Scottish Labour party will always be those of Millbank. Moreover, the more people think Labour in Scotland is controlled by party HQ in London, the more difficulty it will experience in maintaining its dominant position here.
Looking back over the year, one cannot but be struck by our native capacity for self-deception. It is true that the poll for the first Scottish parliamentary elections was dismally low, which might have suggested that many gauged the importance of the parliament just right - somewhere between a real parliament and a local authority. But that might be to credit the electorate with a greater or finer sense of realism than it deserved, for the poll was lowest in those inner-city constituencies which are also Scotland's educational disaster areas, and highest in those where people are more prosperous and better educated.
So it is perhaps fairer, if sadder, to conclude that the electorate agreed with the politicians in supposing that a parliament with fewer powers than are enjoyed by any state legislature in America, with no responsibility for defence or foreign policy, no responsibility for social security policy and administration; no responsibility for the country's fiscal, economic and monetary system, was somehow or other a real parliament, evidence of the rebirth of a historic nation. The idea, encouraged by a well-managed and occasionally moving opening ceremony on July 1, was nevertheless grotesque. And the tendency to speak of the devolved administration as the Scottish government merely emphasised the grotesquerie and fanned the delusion.
It was extraordinary to find that the Scottish National party was apparently happy to go along with the deception on the grounds, presumably, that a crust of democratic self-government will give the nation an unappeasable appetite for the whole loaf.
Perhaps the SNP is right. Perhaps they have judged the national temper wisely. That was after all what we opponents of devolution warned: that it would put us on a motorway to independence, with no exits.
But it is also possible that Dewar has judged the temper of the national more wisely, that he is right in concluding - even if not fully aware of his own conclusion - that what the Scottish people want is only an imitation of a parliament, an imitation of a government; that we are quite happy to contract out of a share, certainly an interest, in the government of the United Kingdom, and cultivate our ain wee Kailyard under licence.
Our concentration in the autumn on the absurd and insignificant so-called Lobbygate affair proved our appetite for triviality.
Lobbygate merely reminded us that in a small country with a small political class, people are likely to know each other and look for favours from those whose backs they have themselves had occasion to scratch. As it unfolded, it was difficult to know whether to laugh at the solemn self-importance of the parliamentary committee, as it inquired into whether a cabinet minister's son employed by a lobbying firm might be able to persuade a Scottish minister's secretary to put a date for some unimportant function in his diary, or to weep at the thought that our politics were reduced to this pathetic level.
In the end one laughed, thinking, like Byron, that "if I laugh at anything, 'tis that I may not weep".
But by far the most telling incident of the last year came last week when Ian Welsh, the Labour MSP for Ayr, announced his resignation from the Scottish parliament. His statement talked of family reasons, of having a handicapped son with whom he wants to spend more time. The explanation was odd, since Welsh's family circumstances don't seem to have changed since he was elected, and the parliament has boasted of how it works family-friendly hours. Indeed some mean-minded folk, like your columnist, have spoken roughly, if jocularly, about our MSPs' apparent determination to put the interests of their own families above their duty to the nation they were elected to serve.
Now from the horse's mouth, on the facing page, comes a rather different tale. It would seem that Welsh has handed back his dinner-pail because he was bored in our grand wee parliament, and didn't think he was doing any good there. One can sympathise with his clear disappointment at not being given a ministerial post, if only because so many ministerial jobs were created this summer that being overlooked must appear an insult to any ambitious politician.
We now have 22 ministers to do the work previously performed by five or six Scottish Office ministers and a couple of law officers, while we still have a handful in what survives of the old Scottish Office.
But if even if Welsh had been merely bored, who could have blamed him? We have come through a year which has diminished us; we are all less British now, but we have not seized any real responsibility for our well-being. We have been led into a land of make-believe and encouraged to think it reality.
The greatest creation of the greatest Scottish dramatist was Peter Pan, the boy who didn't want to grow up. This year we have delighted in playing Peter Pan in Scotland the never-never land. It's almost enough to make one vote SNP, if only to find our way into the real world where there is no free lunch and actions have consequences.
26 th December 1999
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