Ayr by-election 2000

'0n the evidence of your commitment thus far, perhaps your successor will prove to have more staying power. It wouldn't be that hard.' Ruth Wishart on Ian Welsh MSP in the Herald, 30 th December 1999.

Chance was a fine thing

by Ruth Wishart in the Herald

In contrast, we must presume that the article from his own keyboard is a true and unvarnished record of how Holyrood lost its first Member. It makes fascinating reading. It tells us, for instance, that a parliament's success can only be judged in decades to come rather than in 'the cold light of a new dawn'. Strange then that the career of a parliamentarian can be measured in weeks and that Mr Welsh's boredom threshold has already been breached.

Mr Welsh has been stung by criticism of his apparent invisibility; his failure to table motions, ask oral questions, or impact on debates. He points out with some asperity, and indeed some justice, that an ability to make noise or craft a soundbite should not be mistaken for hard political graft. However, as any other new MSP will tell you, the committee system and the level of expectation, correspondence and requests for hearings from the electorate and both private and public sector bodies offers a more than challenging workload for those prepared to buckle down to the unglamorous business of making the fledgling system work.

That this held little appeal for Mr Welsh can be gleaned from his telling admission that he was 'strangely marginal to the process of government' and his glum acknowledgement that 'there has been a generation jump in the front-bench line-up'. This seems to be to translate as 'I have not been given a Cabinet post and it looks likely that I won't get one, so why hang around?'

Now it's only fair to admit that I have not met Mr Welsh (remarkably few people have in his Holyrood role), and I have little knowledge of him in his previous incarnation as council leader in South Ayrshire.

So I'll happily take his word for it that he led one of 'the most innovative and progressive councils in Scotland' and take as read his long list of personal local achievement, even though I suspect one or two other Ayrshire politicians such as George Younger and George Foulkes might be surprised to learn that the saviour in chief of Prestwick airport was none other than Ian Welsh, that tireless chap who also delivered the A77 extension. But none of that gives him a divine right to expect preferment in the brand new Parliament.

In fact, one of the positive attractions of Holyrood was that it opened doors to new talent with new ideas rather than emerge as a recycling plant for ambitious local councillors.

His sentiments about the style of the new politics are rather easier to share. Most of us yearn for 'a new politics of emerging consensus', and regret with Mr Welsh the inability of some participants to avoid 'an underlying venom, an unaccountable urge to get stuck in, a preference for the square go'. The cut and thrust of robust debate is a healthy tradition, knee-jerk badmouthing of other party spokespeople, or instinctive rejection of other parties' ideas should not be encouraged in the 21 st century.

Mr Welsh tells us that some years ago he decided to 'eschew the art of harsh political invective against opponents' as his contribution to the new politics. Mr Phil Gallie will be pleased about that. The man Welsh beat by 25 votes for the first-past-the-post seat in Ayr is described by his opponent as a 'dial-a-quote politician', a 'professional populist' who is 'philosophically puerile', 'insubstantial, fleeting, working off the substance of other people'.

Gosh, Phil, wonder what he'd have called you if he hadn't given up insult.

Then there is Mr Welsh's confirmation that he is not leaving the Labour Party to which he is 'proudly and inextricably bound.' Maybe. But he is leaving the Labour Party with the not inconsiderable embarrassment of facing a by-election in the most marginal of seats, not because of any major crisis but because, he says, it's difficult to adjust to not being a big cheese when the big decisions come along. If I were in charge of the Labour Party's electoral machine in Scotland, I would not have a picture of Mr Welsh on the bedside table right now.

But there is one other matter above all which Mr Welsh might have considered before jumping ship with such unseemly haste. Anyone at all interested in the political process in Scotland has personal knowledge of people who longed to be part of the first Scottish Parliament for three centuries. Some of them failed to become candidates despite being significantly brighter than those empowered to select or reject them. Some of them were not high enough on their party list to benefit from the new proportionality.

All of them would have felt privileged to participate in Holyrood at any level, to get their teeth into the new committee system, to work their socks off to prove to the cynics and the doubters that Holyrood enhances the democratic process and will slowly but certainly come on to a powerful game as it learns and grows.

They didn't get a chance. But you did. And, having barely yet got wet, you've decided you're far too important a fish to be languishing at the shallow end of the big political pool.

Far too talented for the backstage slog. Actually, Mr Welsh, there is another far less flattering diagnosis. Maybe you are just too selfish. Maybe your ego is more important than the reputation of parliament, the lost hopes of those who weren't given a chance to stand, and the frustration of your own party at having to go back to the polls in a very dodgy seat.

But, on the evidence of your commitment thus far, perhaps your successor will prove to have more staying power. It wouldn't be that hard.

30 th December 1999