The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Is ‘steady-as-shegoes’ at an end?
It is not often you see Nicola Sturgeon in the Scottish Parliament bar. However, with Holyrood going into recess on Thursday, the First Minister was treating her staff to an end-of-term drink. Round one for her team was a bottle of fizz. An eyebrow-raising choice you might think after her party’s morale battering at the general election forced her to climb down on her Indyref2 plans – at least for a few months. Dizzying Maybe they could have done with something more top shelf, given the dizzying spell of referendums, elections and constitutional wrangling over the past year or so. And it seems unlikely to be a quiet summer.
While Ms Sturgeon has abandoned her original timescale for Indyref2, the prospect of a fresh ballot by 2021 is as likely as ever.
That will no doubt keep her strategists busy as they seek to use the Brexit negotiations and subsequent deal (assuming there is one) to convert Scots to the independence cause.
There was also a clear signal in Ms Sturgeon’s speech to MSPs last week that the SNP’s easy-does-it approach to domestic policy had to change.
She told Holyrood that after 10 years in government they must “take stock and refresh” over the summer.
“We will set out afresh our vision for the country we lead, together with the creative, imaginative, bold and radical policies that, as far as is possible within the current powers available to us, will help us realise that bold, ambitious vision for Scotland,” she added.
That is a call, or at least it should be, to her party to deliver on the domestic front. The warnings have been there not least from the electorate.
Business leaders have been restless too. This weekend the boss of Highland Spring bemoaned the Scottish Government’s obsession with independence and called for ministers to get on with the day job.
That is a popular plea from Holyrood’s opposition parties and one that senior figures in government take to heart.
Another allegation levelled at the SNP administration is it is too timid.
We had a year without legislation other than when the budget was passed following the Holyrood election in 2016.
Meanwhile, Scotland’s schools slide down international league tables, staff shortages hamper the NHS and the police service seems to lurch from crisis to crisis.
One of the areas where the SNP has played it safe is taxation.
For a party that claims to be of the left, it refuses to use new powers to increase income tax.
It has adhered to the Tory regime other than not implementing the raising of the threshold for higher ratepayers, which amounts to a tax cut for those earning middle to high salaries.
A rise for the top earners to 50p was not pursued on the grounds it risks reducing revenues without Holyrood having the tools to combat tax avoidance. The SNP has also refused to scrap council tax, opting for a tweak instead. Problems A major problem for the Nationalists is that they face haemorrhaging the support they have enjoyed from soft No voters and undecideds to the Tories, who have captured the staunch unionist vote as well as those simply fed up with the run of elections.
And at the same time, they are being outmanoeuvred by Jeremy Corbyn on their left. There was evidence in the June 8 election that left-wing SNP voters were successfully courted by the Corbynista movement.
It has led to calls from Tommy Sheppard, the SNP MP, for his party to pursue more radical policies.
How that would square with the SNP’s determination not to rock the boat is unclear. But a steady-as-shegoes approach will no longer wash with voters crying out for progress on the basics of day-to-day governing.