Twenty years of SNP has turned Holyrood into parliament devoid of vision

It was never meant to be like this, for those who placed faith in Holyrood’s reforming potential. Twenty years of one party rule have turned it into a Parliament devoid of vision; churning out Acts that change nothing; a chamber characterised by low quality debate and an executive which measures success by avoidance of accountability.

Will May 7th change any of that? The signs are not promising but there is long enough for people to think. Do they really want more of the same … the same faces… the same excuses …the same grievances … the same mediocre outcomes?

We are on our third First Minister since Scotland last went to the devolved polls. We’ve had a pact with the Greens, come and gone. We have had millions spent on doomed excursions to the Court of Session and Supreme Court.

What, conspicuously, we have not had is any improvement in policy areas for which the Scottish Government is responsible. Attainment and poverty gaps widened; educational standards plunged down international rankings; NHS waiting lists lengthened; local government is impoverished.

As public money is now being sprinkled around like alms for the grateful poor, the SNP’s hope is not to convince us anything will get better; only that, without them, it might get worse.

Mr Swinney’s launch was accompanied by the slogan: “Both votes SNP to deny Farage influence in Scotland’s Parliament”.

After 20 years, that is the best they have to offer – “Fear not Hope”. It is pathetic and fortuitously, Lord Offord and his motley crew are already rendering Swinney’s ace card redundant.

Five years ago, off the back of her Covid media exposure, Nicola Sturgeon won a mandate to deliver the agenda which her manifesto promised. The ball was at her feet to turn rhetoric into reality – about the NHS, education and the other staples of devolution.

But Ms Sturgeon’s shallow politics were never about delivery as opposed to self-promotion and tactical advantage. If these advanced the cause of independence, it might have been a bonus for her. But that, one suspects, was not much of a priority either.

Instead, she comprehensively blew her chance to move Scotland forward while promoting divisive minority agendas nobody had voted for. When devious ruthlessness was required to advance these ends, Ms Sturgeon never flinched. Eventually, it all caught up with her.

So, within two years, Sturgeon begat Humza Yousaf whose eminently forgettable period in office lasted a year and a week. To be fair, Yousaf was lumbered with the Sturgeon legacy and the political necessity to ditch the Greens. The manner of doing so led to his own departure.

Then they sought refuge in the hands of Swinney. The fact his fingerprints were on every previous policy failure as well as the fine print of the Green deal was irrelevant if he could salvage the ship. Maybe he will – but what a poor judgement that would be on Scotland’s expectations and memory.

Some of the statistics were flung at Swinney at the final First Minister’s Questions. In 2021, when he was in charge of education, the SNP promised 3500 extra teachers. In reality, there are 850 fewer. In 2021, there were 7500 homeless children and a promise to end that scandal. Today, there are 10,000. And so wearily on, through every available metric.

It is a long time since there was any vision of how the powers of Holyrood could be joined up to change the fundamentals; to make our society better educated, more highly skilled, more aspirational, more socially cohesive. Anything radical which might drive meaningful change has been shied away from.

A Scottish Government should revel in the potential for doing things differently, not as a competition but because that is what devolution was supposed to be about. There are so many policy areas where political creativity could flourish under Ministers who cared or understood.

These individuals have rarely existed throughout the past 20 years and not at all since 2014. That is why there is now such a desperate need for fresh thinking and new faces.

The greatest success of the Sturgeon/Yousaf/Swinney years has been the avoidance of responsibility. One scandal followed another but nobody is held to account. Billions have been wasted on doomed enterprises while no Minister carries the can.

As Nicola Sturgeon departs from Holyrood, the greatest success to her name is the suppression of information that would cast light on the failed prosecution of her predecessor. Scotland’s highest court has been ignored.

The Information Commissioner states: “I can no longer trust the government to handle this information unsupervised”. To those whom these words should indict, all that matters is that they have got away with it.

When it comes to case studies which sum up the past five years, a ferry debacle of almost unbelievable incompetence and cost must be near the top of any list, and certainly mine. It is difficult to overstate the damage done to island economies and morale.

As it reached a new nadir this week, with eight ferries out of action, please remember one crucial fact. No Minister or civil servant has ever lost their job as a result. Accountability does not exist so long as they stick together. Only the islands pay the price.

Therein lies the metaphor for Scotland in general and the warning for its future. Until there is a Scottish Government devoted to proving what devolution is capable of delivering, with nowhere else to hide, we are doomed to more of the same.