What Scotland can learn from Iceland about how to run a country

The New Year is only five days old but already each of those dates will have been ticked off in some politician's countdown to May 7, 2026. I admit I can't tell you off the top of my head how many days or weeks are left until the election. I don't do countdowns.

But as a Scot as much as a politician, I am one for whom that parliamentary election date looms large. It is, after all, the day when many Holyrood stalwarts, and new blood, hope they will have the chance to change Scotland’s future.

With four months to go, we are beginning to feel the excitement of the possibilities it might offer. After nigh on two decades, we may have the chance to move the SNP out of power, along with their pre-occupation with constitutional gripes and inability to offer progress for Scotland on any front, and instead build a government that invests in our public services.

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Iceland's parliament and the Labour-Lib Dem coalition during the early years of Scottish devolution show what can be achieved if politicians are prepared to be constructive rather than confrontational (Picture: Jeremie Richard) | AFP via Getty Images

Working together in the national interest

To do that most effectively, we will most likely have to turn back to the ethos that the framers of devolution originally envisioned: collaboration. It may be that the only way to bring to an end the years of wasted opportunity and neglect of our public services is to work together to remove the SNP and put those record financial settlements from Westminster to good use.

The current settlement in the November 2025 UK Budget alone offers £820 million on top of a record settlement in June of last year.

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While I have disappointments about how the UK Labour government might be spending in other areas, I do acknowledge the significance of investment here in projects like GB Energy, Grangemouth and the exascale supercomputer at Edinburgh University.

What we need is a Scottish Government prepared to work with Westminster for all our benefits.

Adopting the Icelandic approach

We have an example from the first decade of devolution under the Labour-Lib Dem coalition of what that can be achieved: free personal care, free bus travel for over 60s and the first steps to free university tuition.

I have talked before about Iceland, but what struck me there was what can be achieved if you are prepared to be constructive rather than confrontational.

Their parliament is smaller than ours, and the acrimony which so often infects ours is absent. I can’t help but wonder what we could achieve with a similar approach.

Perhaps a new administration could work to do more for the islands with those UK Government financial settlements rather than leave them, as the SNP has done, without promised ferries.

Or fix those hard-pressed public services, support our small businesses, protect our National Health Service and ensure projects like the new Edinburgh Eye Pavilion get the funding they have long been promised.

What we need in 2026 is to elect parties who will serve us better, in every part of Scotland. There are just four months left for our Holyrood politicians and hopefuls to convince us that they have the vision to build a better future.

We should challenge them at every opportunity. Demand answers to our most pressing economic and social problems. Maybe the country would be better if we elect those who get our church roofs fixed.

Christine Jardine is the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Edinburgh West