Why John Swinney's 'day one' referendum plan sums up 19 years of SNP misrule

The first steps of a government after an election can tell you quite a lot about its priorities. The New Labour government in 1997 came in with a bang, making the Bank of England independent and planning the steps towards Scottish and Welsh devolution within days.

Whatever else can be said about that government in the long term, those first actions sent a message about what Tony Blair’s administration was about and what it intended to achieve.

By the same token, it says a lot about the priorities and the imagination of John Swinney and the SNP that the very first action they intend to take as a new government – should they emerge victorious again in the polls next week – is to push another vote in Holyrood on another independence referendum. Mr Swinney’s ‘day one’ referendum plan sums up 19 years of SNP government.

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John Swinney should be focussing more on public services than a renewed drive for a referendum on Scottish independence (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell) | Getty Images

More important things to worry about?

Quite apart from the fact that the last 12 years have seen plans for a second referendum announced almost on a weekly basis (I am old enough to remember when the 2024 election was supposed to be a “de facto” referendum), it speaks volumes that this is considered to be the SNP’s first priority. Thank goodness we do not have anything more important to worry about!

It may well be that, with Keir Starmer’s Labour in continuing disarray and the SNP expected to benefit as a result, Mr Swinney sees no risk in rallying his activists with one more march up and down the referendum hill. If the SNP think they are going to win regardless of what they do, what’s the harm?

The harm, of course, comes in the fact that the rest of us have to live with the consequences of a government that puts arguing over referendums ahead of every other issue. We have all seen what has happened to public services over the last decade of SNP referendum wrangling.

Degraded ferry services on the west coast; declining education scores; the infamous “eye off the ball” on sky-high drugs deaths; the list goes on. These are the issues that Scottish ministers have chosen to de-prioritise over the years, and are choosing once again to neglect today.

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Global economic disruption

All that would be bad enough were it not for the fact that our world has become demonstrably more turbulent in the last decade – to say nothing of the last few months.

Perhaps some people can look at the Middle East on fire, Russian threats in our waters and to our European neighbours, and the ongoing global economic disruption, and think that the first order of business for MSPs should be to vote on another referendum. I suspect most of us, however – even if you are sympathetic to the idea of independence in the abstract – see it as complacent self-regard at best.

It all speaks to a party that has lost sight of the difference between SNP pet projects and our country’s best interests. By putting another referendum as his “day one” objective, ahead of education, health, transport or any other issue, Mr Swinney has told us all exactly where his priorities lie. It is now up to us all to determine whether that is good enough for Scotland.

Alistair Carmichael is the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland