It may seem perverse when the furore around the Salmond allegations is in full flood to be distracted by a column from former SNP politician and cabinet secretary Kenny MacAskill in yesterday’s Herald, entitled Why I weep for the Scottish Parliament that might have been (you need a subscription to read it so if you haven’t seen the article, you’ll have to take my interpretation of it on trust). But it contains unintended lessons the SNP should learn.
Jim Naughtie did a piece on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning on Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond’s political relationship (from 1:46:15 as long as it’s still on the BBC website). He concluded:
We can’t know how this story will play out except that it won’t have a happy ending.
MacAskill acknowledges the current goings on when he writes
Far from members returning to a legislature eager to debate the great issues of state, it’s likely to be introspective if not convulsed by debates over impropriety and personal conduct.
His analysis of what has gone wrong – Salmondgate apart – is fascinating for what it says about both the SNP and the wider separatist mindset. It’s a masterclass in viewing the past through rose-tinted specs and seeing only what everyone else has done wrong to thwart progress towards an independent Scotland.
Consider.
First, the 2014 referendum campaign, which for Kenny ‘was a time of great optimism with widespread political discourse across the country’. According to him, ‘other than one minor egg-throwing incident, magnified out of all proportion, it was conducted in a fair and dignified manner’. His referendum clearly took place in a universe parallel to mine.
Then once it was all over, ‘loyalist thuggery [was] unleashed, the likes of which hadn’t been seen on Scottish streets for generations’. Really? The reality was not much more than one evening in Glasgow’s George Square when a tiny number of idiots from both sides chose to provoke each other.
Again, ‘criticism of independence being divisive and splitting communities was hyperbole if not total rot.’ Not true. Many came forward to say how the referendum had split friends, work colleagues and families, sometimes bitterly so.
As sometimes happens, the detail of his words reveal unintended truths. His hoped-for outcome of the referendum was nothing to do with so-called modern civic nationalism but ‘the restoration of independence for an ancient nation’.
He believes that ‘the debate now stands on whether powers have been removed from Holyrood’. Does it? I thought the opposite had happened with the additional devolved powers from the Smith Commission.
He can even find grievance in a name change with ‘the Scottish Office has even been rebranded as the UK Government in Scotland’.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, there is an overblown sense of Scotland’s importance in 2014 when ‘the world … was also watching and waiting to see what Scotland did’.
And he throws more into the mix – Brexit, the EU, Trump and racism all get mentions.
What he doesn’t do is turn the light upon his own party and government. Not one mention anywhere of their own contribution to what might have gone wrong. For example:
- the sucking of power and public services into the centre and away from local communities– economic development, water and sewage, police, and fire and rescue
- never-ending problems with Police Scotland and its governance
- the botched named person scheme
- the unnecessary and now abandoned (?) takeover of British Transport Police
- the decline of educational standards, and teacher shortages
- ever-lengthening NHS waiting times, and more staff shortages
- the poor record of parliament in scrutinising the executive and its legislation (not solely the SNP’s fault but as the party of government for ten years they bear a major responsibility)
- .. and so on. I’m sure other examples could be added.
If Mr MacAskill wants to weep for a parliament that might have been he needs to turn his gaze away from what everyone else has done wrong to the failure of his own party.
I too weep for the parliament and our government but for very different reasons.
The Nation said No Thanks! 
Fraser, sorry but this is nonsense
1. You are probably right that it was more than an egg blown up out of all proportion (which it was). It included, for instance, that nice unionist who kicked a pregnant Yes supporter in the stomach. The Unionists who attacked an elderly man for doing no more than giving out Yes leaflets. Do I think the Yes side was all sweetness and light? No, but lets not pretend that both sides dont have their share of nutters. If you are getting toward the argument that the referendum was divisive, well any question with a binary answer will be divisive. Won’t it? If the problem then is the nutters, should we allow them to suspend the normal operation of democracy, by not asking questions such as these which often will be fairly fundamental?
2. Actually if you check back, the Square was originally full of Yes supporters, licking their wounds, who were charged by a bunch of thugs. I wont associate them with BT, for that would be utterly wrong, but it was equally clear whose side they were on. Check this from the Mirror (not exactly an indy supporting newspaper) https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/glasgows-george-square-turns-ugly-4290576
3. Re your first paragraph see my first paragraph. But more than that – if we compare the Scottish Referendum to the EU one, I would say that ours was an oasis of calm IN COMPARISON – for one thing no one died!
4. The debate now actually is the relative degree of influence of the WM and Holyrood Parliaments – basically can the former just barge in whenever it likes and tell Holyrood what to do, or take powers and use them themselves. If you disagree with that – as I am sure you will – bear in mind that such as fishing and agriculture are not, and never have been, reserved. Instead of doing the “right thing” and saying they are putting these things on the Reserved List (Appendix 5 of the Scotland Act if memory serves me – maybe not ?) we now have what is described as “the rapists charter” where a motion denying consent at Holyrood can still be treated as consent. How much sense does that make to you. Pure guff, actually, particularly after Mundell going to all the trouble to include Sewell in the most recent Scotland Act, but then having the Supreme Court decide its a political convention and will never have any protection in law!
I will leave you to your view of McAskill – its not unknown for Kenny to get things wrong after all. BUT, on those four points above, I would humbly suggest it is you who are wrong and in the case of the Square as a matter of fact.
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I don’t know who Fraser is (it’s not me) but thanks anyhow for your comments. I won’t respond to your four points – folk can read and make their own mind up (as they can with what I wrote). Just one thing – somehow I knew someone would come back on the detail of the George Square business. The context was the nonsensical hyperbole of MacAskill’s statement and I see no reason to change my words. True that I wasn’t there but I sense you weren’t either.
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I cannot remember a report in a serious media source which does not put the responsbility on anyone other than the “Unionist” thugs who charged the Square. Have a look at this please from the Guardian (consistenly against independence – for Scotland at least) which puts the blame on “a group of skinheads believed to have marched from the loyalist pub the Louden Tavern in nearby Duke Street.” https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/19/violence-glasgow-scotland-loyalists-attack-independence-supporters
Beyond that, what should the Yes supporters have done? Run away (some did). Was their fault not to run away?
Btw, sorry about “Fraser ” – I was getting you confused with Fraser Whyte (with a y even)
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A brief follow up. I went from writing my first comment to Twitter to find that @GlasgowAlbum, who was in George Square that day, has just tweeted – ‘I was in George Square when the trouble happened. My take is It was started by Loyalists up for a rammy, but there were plenty on the other side up for it.’ So I guess (dis-)honours probably go to both sides. A far cry from MacAskill’s words.
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Here is the full post Roger. It was almost friendly early on. Everyone will have a different take. This is mine. http://glasgowalbum.blogspot.com/2014/09/referendum-day-1-loyalists-and-yessers.html
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Thanks to said @GlasgowAlbum who’s linked a blog he wrote on the subject (immediately above). My apologies, I’d forgotten it.
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We might have had a decent parliament had we had the talent pool to come up with 129 people who were all at least somewhat competent. Alas, it has been proved from day one that we don’t – to paraphrase Cassius, the fault is not in our MSPs, but in ourselves, collectively, for not being good enough. No amount of ‘independence’ (or, indeed, change of parties in government) will fix this, and, given the collapsing standards in our schools and universities, things are only going to get worse. The only possible fix is the suspension of the Scottish Parliament, the return to the pre-1999 status quo, and the Government taking a chainsaw to our education system. But that’s unlikely to happen, because no one has, or probably will ever have, the guts to propose this, let alone drive it through. That said, a systemic collapse in our public services, which is by no means impossible, might be enough to bring this about by default.
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What wujeanty said, with knobs on.
I’m not opposed in principle to a subsequent re-establishment (although, as I’ve said in the past, I think Holyrood is the wrong level to which to devolve most of its powers; Scotland isn’t “too wee”, it’s still too big), but it’s abundantly clear, two decades on, that, even if we had the best and wisest statesmen in the world at Holyrood, the Scotland Act created a constitutional bodge-job that’s in desperate need of repair, especially in light of Brexit, which was never anticipated by its authors. The powers that will return were never reserved to Westminster because nobody ever expected them to return. In effect, they were reserved to Brussels. I apologise for introducing the EU angle, which I know will be controversial to most here, but it’s unavoidable: the grandly-titled “Parliament” is simply a European regional assembly, intended, as part of the “Europe of the Regions” programme, to implement the EU’s ever increasing areas of policy while weakening the grip of the existing member states. (I know… now you’re imagining me in a tinfoil hat. But nobody can deny that it’s fulfilled the latter purpose admirably.)
But regardless of whether you believe that or not, it’s now in the past. Instead of this endless shouting-match over who has the “right” to these powers (as a libertarian, I’d argue that nobody does, but don’t expect to be heard), it’s time to stop, take a deep breath, and work out a solution, from first principles if necessary, that a) is acceptable to – if not perfect for – all, and b) actually fits the established British constitution.
Personally, for what it’s worth, I think the rot actually set in with the 1974 local government “reorganization”, which was actually a great deal more than a simple re-drawing of boundaries. While the old counties and boroughs weren’t actually sovereign (an idea which is well worth considering, by the way), they were lot closer to it, having much more discretionary power, than today’s local authorities. Rather than obsessing over “us”, Holyrood, and “them”, Westminster, this is the depth at which we should be thinking.
But our politicians, on all sides, are too dimwitted for that.
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