After 20 years, it’s time to put the people first...
IT is customary in matters of politics for the Queen to be entirely neutral. The monarch remains above the debate of the day, neither endorsing nor condemning those who seek to govern. But those who have listened closely to her carefully worded interventions over the years will have noticed she is a master of subtext.
During the 2014 Scottish independence referendum campaign, Her Majesty was very careful not to express a view on which way people should vote. But her remark, overheard by a freelance journalist as she left a service at Crathie Kirk near Balmoral, that she hoped voters would ‘think very carefully about the future’ was seen by many as a call for caution among those tempted to vote in favour of the break-up of the United Kingdom.
While the Queen’s remark was explained away as an innocuous comment, the private fury of senior SNP figures suggested her real message got through, loud and clear.
Yesterday, 20 years after she spoke at the opening of the newly convened Scottish parliament, the Monarch – accompanied by Charles as Duke of Rothesay – addressed MSPs and the public who had gathered inside the Holyrood chamber. Her speech was brief and warm.
She spoke of the proud day in 1999 when new members gathered to celebrate Scotland’s first parliament in 300 years. She reaffirmed her affection for Scotland and her ‘great pleasure’ at seeing the country grow and prosper. So far, so bland.
But it was when she spoke about the meaning of the word parliament that we glimpsed her true feelings.
‘It is,’ she said, ‘perhaps worth reflecting that at the heart of the word parliament lies its original meaning: a place to talk. I have no doubt that for most of these last 20 years this striking chamber has provided exactly that, a place to talk.’
THEN here came the softly covered barb: ‘But of course it must also be a place to listen, a place to hear views that inevitably may differ quite considerably, one from another, and a place to honour those views.’
Politicians across the spectrum are hugely enthusiastic about listening as a concept – but rarely do it.
No MSP has been more guilty of refusing to listen than First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. Since the convincing defeat of the Yes campaign in 2014, she has pointedly ignored the wishes of the majority of Scots.
Rather than turning her attention to important matters such as the NHS, our failing schools, or the justice system, she has devoted herself to agitating for a second referendum that most Scots do not want – every bit as big a monomaniac as her predecessor Alex Salmond.
Looming large across yesterday’s proceedings was the late Donald Dewar. Scotland’s first first minister, who led the devolution campaign of 1997 and spoke with such lyricism at the official opening of the parliament two years later, was a serious man with serious intentions.
Eccentric, unable to disguise his contempt for fools, and equipped with a wit so dry it could have emptied a reservoir, Mr Dewar was the father of the Scottish parliament.
It was difficult, yesterday, not to wonder how different Scotland might have been had his untimely death in 2000 not ushered in the disastrous first ministership of Henry McLeish and his drab and rather apologetic successor Jack McConnell. Alex Salmond’s rise to power was no doubt assisted by the poor calibre of his Labour opponents.
Scottish Labour, led to Holyrood 20 years ago by a man of high principle and great intellect, is now little more than a sideshow, a marginalised force that exists to try to sell the concept of Corbynism to a Scottish public that isn’t buying.
When the Scottish Labour leader rose to speak yesterday, the extent to which this once important party has fallen was evident. Richard Leonard is no Donald Dewar.
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, a politician of talent and substance, spoke with passion about her belief in devolution but she cannot assume her party’s revival in Scotland will endure, even with the help of a weak Labour Party. She has to listen carefully to Scots who find the idea of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister deeply disturbing.
When the Queen addressed newly elected MSPs in 1999, she said the test for Scotland and its new parliament would be to harness the strengths of its people to shape the future across Scotland. This, I suppose, was a statement of the obvious as much as it was a challenge to members. And MSPs from across the spectrum have generally used their power wisely. Yes, there have been mistakes and, yes, there continue to be failings in key areas such as education and health, but it would be wrong to suggest the Scottish parliament has not achieved at least some of what Mr Dewar hoped and the Queen urged in 1999.
BY answering a demand for a politics that is closer to the people, it shows it understands the needs of Scottish communities in a way Westminster, often frustratingly staid and distant, was not always able to do.
When Ms Sturgeon spoke of the 290 Acts passed at Holyrood in the past two decades, she was including such genuinely progressive and lifechanging legislation as free personal care for the elderly and the ban on smoking in public. Few would argue Holyrood has not made a positive difference to life in Scotland.
Yet those of us who remember the early days of the new parliament must admit our politics is now more fractured than it ever was. Among that first intake of MSPs were men and women who found political agreement as easy as conflict. They believed that through working together, listening to opponents, better outcomes could be reached.
The current crop of MSPs is, by and large, unpleasantly tribal. Bad ideas are defended along party lines, even in the face of evidence, and the concept of argument in good faith is, depressingly, often absent.
So it is not only Nicola Sturgeon who should heed the Queen’s words about the need to listen. Every man and woman elected by the Scottish people should open their ears and minds to the words of opponents. By working together, putting the people before their parties, they’ll achieve so much more in the years ahead.