{"id":3132,"date":"2016-04-21T14:33:01","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T14:33:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/?p=3132"},"modified":"2025-12-27T13:17:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T13:17:00","slug":"a-new-democratic-settlement-for-scotland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2016\/04\/a-new-democratic-settlement-for-scotland\/","title":{"rendered":"A new democratic settlement for Scotland"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Decentralisation and community empowerment are, the First Minister told us at this week\u2019s launch of the SNP\u2019s election manifesto, aka her \u201cjob application\u201d, core aims of the new Scottish Government she will form and lead early in May \u2013 in just two weeks from now.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

We believe that devolution of powers from London should not stop here in Edinburgh – it should continue on down to all of the diverse communities that make up our wonderful country. The decisions that affect our lives should always be taken as close to us as possible.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This laudable affirmation of \u2018subsidiarity\u2019 hardly squares, however, with the realities of the exercise of political and administrative power in contemporary Scotland. The SNP under Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell, its CEO and her spouse, appears to be the closest exemplar we\u2019ve got of the democratic centralism that marked the old Communist Party of the Soviet Union \u2013 or today\u2019s AKP under Recep Tayyip Erdogan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not much room for dissent: its 54 MPs all back scrapping Trident, remaining in the EU, keeping the Queen, etc; its annual delegate conference (with a rare blip on, say, land reform) sticks to the platform\u2019s agenda and decisions; its MSPs sitting on Holyrood committees do what the Sturgeon cabinet tells them to do \u2013 or undoes what it previously thought at the same executive\u2019s behest. David Cameron would die for this degree of disciplined unanimity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John Swinney\u2019s 2016 budget settlement passes virtually the entire burden of spending cuts (\u00a3500m) onto local authorities with barely a whiff of public complaint at his diktat from SNP councillors who will have to live with the consequences. (Those who do speak up such as the leader of the party group in Edinburgh are swiftly booted out.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, this picture of life inside the SNP was \u2013 off and on \u2013 challenged at an Electoral Reform Society debate in Glasgow just hours after Sturgeon and some 1400 party members held aloft the manifesto bearing the portrait of the dear leader. \u201cDoes Scotland have a predominant party problem?\u201d was the theme (from the excellent eponymous pamphlet just issued and available to download here<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrew Tickell, law lecturer aka @PeatWorrier, was dismissive (\u201cfolks ain\u2019t numpties\u201d) though Gerry Hassan, chairing, spoke of the start of a \u201ccourt politics\u201d around the SNP leadership. The panel, including Angela Haggerty (Common Space) and Lesley Riddoch, seemed more exercised about #BothVotesSNP, John Curtice\u2019s related ERS pamphlet<\/a> that has prompted much Pavlovian and ill-informed criticism from diehard Yessers \u2013 and about the attacks on pro-indy supporters rightly querying\/challenging SNP policies. Haggerty lamented the failure to \u201cbreak free of the old Scottish politics\u201d as presaged in 2014 or what Riddoch over-egged as \u201cthe summer of love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What new politics?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

But the discussion \u2013 enlivened mainly by ex-Labour members of the SNP \u2013 was disappointingly shallow despite efforts by the ERS\u2019s Rory Scothorne (ex-National Collective) to raise the stakes. A \u201cnew politics\u201d cannot simply mean replacing ScoLab with an oligarchic SNP in semi-perpetuity. Nor can it mean waiting until Labour does or doesn\u2019t recover and the Scottish Tories declare UDI from CCHQ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More critically, it cannot possibly mean being governed by an over-mighty executive exploiting an absolute majority to dragoon an elected parliament into backing it come what may (see P27 of the ERS pamphlet). And it doesn\u2019t mean accepting that the current d\u2019Hondt German-style system of PR (constituency and list MPs) cannot be amended (it isn\u2019t proportional enough for starters as Curtice shows).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s all very well \u2013 and right \u2013 to criticise the Westminster model of democracy (even without the recent ludicrous \u2018election\u2019 of a hereditary peer) or indeed the EU\u2019s democratic deficit. But there\u2019s plenty of scope for argument and discussion here in Scotland on a better, fairer system \u201cclose to us as possible\u201d \u2013 encouraging not only a richer civil society but that plurality of voices Haggerty wished to hear and the once-envisaged \u201ccivic forum\u201d was designed to embody. Why not, too, elect committee chairs in Holyrood and give them more powers? Why carry on with unicameral politics there? What kind of second chamber do we want? Or do we?  (<\/em>Westminster for all its faults is often asked to think again by the Lords. Many badly drafted laws slip unchecked through Holyrood \u2013 look out for the consequences of the new Private Housing Tenancies (Scotland) Act now carrying careless amendments passed without discussion or scrutiny]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This debate \u2013 like the long overdue one on federalism in the UK \u2013 needs to start right now or before Sturgeon settles in for a full period in office sustained by 75 or so like-minded MSPs while a shrivelled Labour and slightly enlarged Tory opposition, plus or minus a handful of Greens and the odd LibDem or two, fail to land a glove for maybe the full five years. And proposals for genuine decentralisation \u2013 with the risk that it will empower other parties or movements not of the SNP\u2019s persuasion \u2013 should be discussed before scores of councils are taken over by the SNP a year from now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That would be the start of a real new politics. Or is Scotland simply not as radical<\/a> as it likes to think it is?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The SNP’s 2016 election manifesto commits to a new wave of decentralising power in Scotland. But is that likely from a party that is now or on the verge of becoming the predominant one in Scotland – in semi-perpetuity? A real debate on devolving power and controlling an oligarchic executive should start now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125],"tags":[40,30,36],"class_list":["post-3132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-devolution","tag-europe","tag-scottish-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18074,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3132\/revisions\/18074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}