Poisoned, partisan – no wonder the public are tired of a tribal Holyrood
IT’S not a good sign when a sketch writer worries about a breakdown in civility at Holyrood. Parliamentary rammies are our bread and butter; a debate that goes off smoothly is a waste of good ink. Yet last week’s rancorous bout of First Minister’s Questions left me cold and, if I’m honest, troubled.
I am no schoolma’am. I can zing with the best of them and the surest way to my heart is by needling a political rival with a well-timed put-down. But alongside the cut and thrust of political combat, something is festering – contempt. For parliament, each other and the very idea of civil and persuasive politics.
The fracas at FMQs should give us pause. For those lucky enough to have missed it, Thursday’s session saw Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie accuse Nicola Sturgeon of lying, she branding him ‘a pathetic attention-seeker’ and MSPs bawling at each other and the Presiding Officer when he tried to intervene.
It was like watching one of those Ewing family brawls on Dallas, with Ken Macintosh as Miss Ellie, threatening to burst into tears if JR and Bobby didn’t come to their senses. All that was missing were the shoulder pads and ten-gallon hats.
Cacophony
It was hardly an isolated incident. Since Richard Leonard became Labour leader, I can count on one hand the number of his weekly questions I have been able to hear in full. The cacophony of Nationalist heckling has drowned out the rest. At Westminster, Tory MPs try to throw Jeremy Corbyn off his game by bellowing across the chamber – but eventually they settle and listen, even if more out of curiosity than courtesy.
By contrast, the SNP benches, ministers included, often caterwaul right through Mr Leonard’s queries. There is neither curiosity nor courtesy – but an uneasy sense that no question, no dissent can be tolerated.
This was thrown into stark relief during the debate on repealing the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act. One of the less luminous stars in the Nationalist firmament warned MSPs that scrapping the law, as all four opposition parties are committed to doing, ‘plays right into the Tories’ hands. Many of them would be happy to see the Scottish parliament treated with contempt and derision; and I fear that will be the consequence of a decision to repeal the Act’.
The notion parliament is undermined by voting against the Government is absurd, but perhaps not surprising. One of the under-examined, and counterintuitive, side effects of the independence referendum was the weakening of the Scottish parliament, which took a back seat as politics shifted to rallies, meetings and street stalls. For two years, MSPs saw their primary roles as advocates for a constitutional struggle. Their position as scrutineers of legislation and ministers became a secondary concern.
Even after the referendum, Holyrood did not go back to its old job right away because the SNP’s determination to overturn the result held parliament hostage to the whims of a potential Indyref 2. That threat removed by the voters, MSPs have been able to resume the day-to-day business of improving Bills and keeping the government honest.
Still, the belligerence of 2014 remains. There are MSPs who believe colleagues a few feet away are out to undermine the Scottish parliament, the Scottish people and even the idea of Scottish nationhood.
Just as dismally, there are members who dismiss their opponents as brainwashed, flag-waving fanatics incapable of independent thought. The referendum injected a poison into the political bloodstream that has still not been drained.
Improbable as it might seem in 2018, Holyrood was sold to the voters as more consensual and less partisan than Westminster. The voting system, the public petitions committee and even the semicircular debating chamber were hallmarks of what was rather grandly called ‘the new Scotland’. We now know the devo-idealists were setting up a forum for accentuating divisions over the constitution. That doesn’t mean Holyrood can’t return to its early ideals; it just has to be more hard-headed about them. Holyrood can be more than a platform for insulttrading and divisive identity politics.
Most MSPs are middling – and some shouldn’t be allowed out without supervision – but there are a handful who are examples of what the parliament could and should be. They cross party lines and hail from various points on the ideological spectrum; but they stand out for their ability, open-mindedness and conscientious approach to public service.
Fair-minded
Take the SNP’s Mairi Gougeon and Ben Macpherson. Both are proud partisans for independence but, hard as it might be for confirmed Unionists to accept, they are more than the sum of their party’s talking points. Mrs Gougeon has contributed serious and substantial scrutiny of the Brexit process. Mr Macpherson is a fair-minded questioner on the justice committee. Falling on the boundary with his constituency, I can vouch for his endeavours as a local MSP.
Nationalist ideologues would struggle with Tories Miles Briggs and Adam Tomkins. Mr Briggs’ efforts to secure justice for dementia sufferers have been commendable. Professor Tomkins has brought forensic legal insight to the chamber, in his probing of constitutional matters and the Scottish Government’s ill-drafted state guardian legislation.
The same could be said for Labour’s Jenny Marra and Monica Lennon. Then there’s Alex Cole-Hamilton, who reconciles his competing interests in common sense and the Lib Dems.
Late last year, a poll showed one in five Scots wants to abolish Holyrood. Show the voters last Thursday’s FMQs and the proportion would be infinitely higher. If the Scottish parliament is to restore its standing with devo-sceptics, and the public at large, it cannot be the Holyrood of insults and imputations. It has to be a Holyrood that has moved on from 2014, led by the very best of its members.