Scotland must beware those selling hard-left or hard-right revolution

On my office wall is the original of one of my favourite Frank Boyle cartoons from the Edinburgh Evening News, marking the first election for the new Scottish Parliament in 1999 and the already rising costs for the building.

Titled Dewarassic Park, it features the then four main party leaders as dinosaurs, the Pteranadonald (thick-skinned bird-like creature), T-Ecks (not as ferocious as once feared), the McLetchiedon (dull grey creature, bored its prey to death) and the Libdemasaurus (harmless yellow creature with few predators).

It was only 27 years ago but, with the passing of former Lib Dem leader Jim Wallace at the untimely age of 71, they are all dead, and all at an early age; Donald Dewar at 63, a year after the cartoon appeared, David McLetchie at 61 in 2013, and Alex Salmond in 2024 at 69.

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Support for Nigel Farage's Reform UK party has been rising in Scotland (Picture: Henry Nicholls) | AFP via Getty Images

End of an era

It’s unlikely there is a correlation between Scottish political leadership and an early demise – there are more than a few ex-Labour and Conservative leaders still knocking about – but with Lord Wallace’s death, combined with the rise of Reform, it feels like an era has finally closed.

Apart from First Minister John Swinney, only three MSPs have lasted the course since 1999 – Fergus Ewing, Kenny Gibson and Jackie Baillie − and the voters have yet to decide if any will be back. They are important not just for institutional memory but because of the ways they hold the SNP to account.

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As convener of the finance committee, Kenny Gibson has shown his party badge does not mean shying away from criticising the Scottish Government and with Audit Scotland and the Auditor General Stephen Boyle also on the case, uncomfortable moments on that committee at least are not uncommon.

But the real thorn in the SNP’s side will be Fergus Ewing if the former SNP Cabinet Secretary successfully defends his Inverness and Nairn constituency as an independent, which he might well do.

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Holyrood falling short of expectations

Whatever the result − and it looks a foregone conclusion that the SNP will be the biggest party by far – the new faces will be products of political machines and with 40 MSPs standing down, many elected in the 2003 and 2007 elections, the disappearance of a vast amount of experience and the confidence it brings will make for much more predictable outcomes.

Maybe predictability is a virtue, but when the track record of the SNP years has been a blithe dismissal of even constructive criticism, Holyrood falls well short of the expectations to which Jim Wallace and his colleagues in 1999 looked forward.

The overwhelming support for the concept of a Scottish Parliament in 1997 was in the not unreasonable belief that bringing democracy closer to the people would lead to better results, not that a more localised system of government was an end in itself.

Support for the principle remains as high as it did back then, but by most measurements, be it educational standards, health outcomes or economic growth, the Scottish Parliament has at best been a disappointment and at worst a cripplingly expensive playground for low-grade egotists.

Effective law-making

But the conclusion of the many appraisals to mark 25 years of devolution was that for better or worse Holyrood is here to stay and even the disruptors of Reform are saying they do not want to abolish the Scottish Parliament but for it to work better.

As has been pointed out many times, the parties which actively campaign for devolution to fail are the SNP and Greens, who have no genuine commitment to the collaboration with Westminster necessary for a devolved system to achieve its full potential.

Given Jim Wallace was widely regarded as a fair and thoughtful man, his critique of Holyrood, in a 25th anniversary speech to the 2024 Scottish Lib Dem conference, is worth re-examination. “Virtue signalling is not a good recipe for effective law-making,” he correctly observed, calling for robust, independent committee scrutiny to be revived, if it ever genuinely existed, with conveners elected by secret ballot of all MSPs.

He also called for a reversal of the SNP’s centralisation programme, which has led to the creation of the national police and fire services, and the stripping of resources from local authorities.

“A new balance between the Scottish Parliament and local government and local communities needs to be struck,” he said. “The extent to which parliament can rise to the challenge of reforming local government finance and revitalising local democracy should be a measure of its success in the next quarter century, if not earlier.”

Revolution not in the air – yet

But a new system of locally raised funding, less reliant on the Scottish Government’s block grant to councils, would almost certainly result in higher taxation for no improvement in services, because not in a month of Sundays would there be a commensurate reduction of national levies.

Apart from the hard-left Greens, it will be a brave party which includes local tax reform in their election manifestos unless it’s to bring it down, which the SNP, Labour and Lib Dems are unlikely to promise. The SNP pledged to replace Council Tax in 2007 and all that’s happened is a plan to copy Labour’s mansion tax and whack over 5,000 Edinburgh households in the process.

And as the SNP is about to secure another five years in charge, revolution is not in the air. But with Keir Starmer on the brink, the left tightening its grip on Labour, Greens on the rise and Nigel Farage skulking in the wings, that’s yet to come. Then no one will be talking about committees and council tax, but the beasts will be much more dangerous than the characters in Dewarassic Park.