A quiet election for a tired and poorly Scottish parliament

Scottish party manifestos pledge extra spending without addressing huge challenges facing the next Scottish government – likely to be SNP again despite almost 20 years of underachievement in power. John McLaren sets out four lessons to learn from the state we are in.

The upcoming Scottish election takes place at a time of great uncertainty and change, not that you’d know it from a quick glance at the main Party Manifestos.

When the last election took place, in 2021, the country was in the midst of the COVID pandemic, an event that still casts a large shadow over the provision of public services and the state of public finances. Added to this we now have the economic impacts of the energy and geopolitical crises, stemming from the wars in the Ukraine and the Middle East. Meanwhile, the double blow from Brexit and the Financial Crisis of 2008-9 linger on in the background, dampening economic dynamism.

In the case of Scotland, such challenges arrive on top of the difficulties that successive Scottish Governments have had in improving performance in the key areas of health (NHS and longevity) and education (Schools and Higher Education), let alone the ferry system.

And yet we go into the election with a tired looking SNP, facing many of the same challenges that it has already failed to address successfully, set fair to win most seats by far. 

What are the main lessons to be learnt from such a state of affairs?

The first lesson

Severe financial constraints will continue to apply over the next parliamentary term. The Scottish Fiscal Commission, and others, have highlighted the funding gap that already exists and there is little prospect of Westminster coming to the rescue. The wars in the Ukraine and the Middle East mean that the Defence budget needs to rise after decades of decline. Energy infrastructure may also need prioritising and the economy – and related tax revenues – is not forecast to show signs of any great recovery.

So far, the Scottish Governments response to such spending pressures has been to raise taxes and to use one-off windfalls to meet recurring funding costs. Eventually such an approach will no longer be viable. 

Unfortunately, none of the parties have been open and honest about these emerging fiscal challenges in their manifestos, as pointed out by both the Fraser of Allander Institute (FAI) and the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). The FAI sum this up in their review of the SNP manifesto – “This then is another manifesto consistent with a collective bout of fiscal denial displayed by Scottish parties across the board”. While the IFS states – “In a pattern familiar by now from several other manifestos in the devolved elections, the SNP manifesto pledges additional spending…without credibly saying how it would pay for this.” Disappointing, if not entirely unexpected.

The second lesson

Little is likely to change in the running of Scotland, meaning a lack of radical policy options to address the challenges faced.

Most of the SNP-led government’s self-proclaimed ‘successes’ have been decrees – free tuition fees, free prescriptions, free travel, child payments. They might cost money, but they involve little in the way of developing policies that successfully overhaul the day-to-day performance of key public services.

Take health as an example. After over a quarter of a century of a Scottish Parliament being in place, life expectancy remains the lowest in Western Europe and the gap has not closed but widened. That is a terrible indictment of successive Scottish Governments. To not just be unable to catch up, never mind overtake, some countries, but to actually fall further behind, illustrates the inadequacy of policy and imagination in this area. 

On education, the failure of the ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ to meet its original aims is increasingly obvious but the willingness to acknowledge this and move on remains absent.

The inadequate ferry system serving the island communities is an interesting case in point. It should personify how a Scottish Parliament can improve matters by being closer to the unique challenges posed, and yet the reverse has been true.

The third lesson

Priorities matter, in terms of how funding is spread around.

n its bid to express its different priorities from the UK Government, the Scottish Government has championed the child benefit payment as a way of reducing child poverty. It could be argued that this has been at the expense of health funding, which is now, in per capita terms, lower in Scotland than in the rest of the UK. This has reversed the long term, spending advantage position that Scots previously benefitted from.

Would the £500 million being spent on the Scottish child payment achieve better results if it had gone into the NHS, or childcare, or mental health services? Such spending choices could also help explain why the Scottish NHS has been slower to recover from the pandemic than in England.

On education, the choice to avoid charging tuition fees leads to a Higher and Further Education system that is increasingly operating in financial crisis mode, to the detriment of institutions and students alike.

The fourth lesson

Concerns how poorly Scottish politics and the Parliament operate.

We have a government that has been led by the same political party for almost twenty years, with a poor record of achievement, that is on the verge of comfortably winning another election. So, while unloved, the SNP still gets the support, not just of those for whom independence is the foremost issue, but of many others besides. This suggests that they are still seen as the best party to ‘stand up for Scotland’, while other parties are still seen as ‘franchises’ of their bigger UK operations. Such a view is borne out by the collapse in Scottish Labours support since UK Labour came to power at Westminster. Whether this is a fair judgement or not is difficult to say, but the lack of devolved party funds, essential to any functioning political party, continues to undermine their independence.

The problem of other political parties being incapable of holding the incumbent government to account is compounded by the poor record of the Parliamentary committees in this matter, where voting continues to follow along party lines.

Unaccountability makes avoiding responsibility easier and the improving of public service performance more difficult. It means that the failure to achieve lauded targets, as with child poverty or educational inequalities, goes unpunished. It allows John Swinney to highlight a boost to NHS funding in the SNP’s manifesto launch without being seriously challenged and to keep claiming his top priority is eradicating child poverty, without providing any detail as to how this might be achieved.

Why are other parties so unconvincing?

For other parties the conclusion is possibly even grimmer. Why are they unable to reassure an electorate that they could improve on a flagging governing party with a poor track record? What is it about how they conduct themselves and put over their ideas that is so unconvincing? If the SNP are seen to lack much in the way of drive and ideas, what does that say about the others?

In summary, the big challenges posed domestically and internationally are not being addressed at this time. The prospects for meaningful change to respond to a new world order are poor. What should have been a rowdy debate has turned into a quiet election. Despite the retirement of more ‘class of ’99’ MSP’s, the reenergising of devolutionary politics that is so desperately needed seems as far off as ever.

How do you turn a failed experiment into a successful one? You start again. But how do you start again when everyone within the failed system seems comfortable with its failure? 

Feature image: Muted Tweet, Tommy Perman and Rob St John, Open Close installation, Royal Mile Festival Fringe 2017