Farewell Cop26, now it’s time for a change in our political climate

THE delegates have gone, the police have cleared the streets and even the anarchists are having a break.

For two weeks, we’ve wrestled with the question of how to stop climate change.

But now that the Cop26 bandwagon has departed, and those of us left here have returned to the concerns of our own part of the world, it feels we could do with a decent dose of climate change after all.

Not in a meteorological sense (although an additional 1.5C does not seem quite the threat in Scotland that it does in other parts of the world). What we need is fast and irreversible change to our political climate.

Because Scotland is stuck. Not long after the SNP took power in 2007, I remember having a drink with David Cairns, the then Labour MP for Inverclyde.

Reflecting on the coming years, Mr Cairns shuddered, saying: ‘The nightmare scenario for all of us is where they [the SNP] stay in power but never get anywhere with independence, while we just sit on the sidelines and shout.’

Mr Cairns is sadly no longer with us, but his wisdom lives on. It’s not perhaps a nightmare – Scotland’s problems pale into insignificance compared with other parts of the world.

Rather, our political climate exists in a kind of endless El Nino, a huge low pressure depression that won’t budge and brings with it day after day of the same grey clouds, with the sunlight of change firmly shut out.

This may sound a little depressing, but consider the latest opinion polls. You will be forgiven for having not noticed, given they show very little is changing whatsoever.

As has been the case for the past few years, Scotland just about opposes independence, though not convincingly enough to give it the order of the boot.

Similarly, we don’t want a referendum any time soon, though many people would like to keep the option open.

Yet thanks to the solid third of Scots who really do want independence and will therefore support the SNP come what may, and another group who vote SNP just because they like the cut of their jib, the Nationalists have what amounts to a hegemonic grip on elections.

A poll at the weekend concluded that Nicola Sturgeon is on track to win 53 of Scotland’s 59 Westminster seats when Boris Johnson calls the next election. It is sometimes easy to forget just how staggering those numbers really are.

This combination of factors – overwhelming support for the SNP and lukewarm backing for their only priority – is a recipe for inertia. It maroons the SNP in office.

Shuffled

It forces them to come up with ever more ludicrous attempts at displacement activity to show that the cause of independence is still going strong. (The latest is a newspaper on independence which will be distributed to one million homes in Scotland. Good luck with that.)

And it leaves the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats to fight over the scraps. Truly, the voters of Scotland are sadists.

Meanwhile, systemic reform of our education system, our economic base and our health system, all of which are necessary, is shuffled in a bottom drawer marked too difficult.

Of course Nicola Sturgeon tips her hat to governing, but it is mostly just show. We are, as I say, stuck.

What might change this? Two things.

Firstly, the SNP could finally be honest about the current state of its independence project and set out a more realistic ‘glide path’ towards its end goal.

Such a case would acknowledge the enormous deficit that Scotland currently runs.

It would accept that Scotland needs to create sustained economic growth before going anywhere near the leap to full sovereignty.

It would dump the tedious, low drone of anti-Tory, anti-Westminster rhetoric that makes up its entire case just now and speak instead of a new form of relationship with England.

And it would argue that independence is best done well in ten years’ time, rather than badly in ten months. It would then set a course over the coming decade on how to get Scotland ‘indy-ready’.

I rate the chances of this happening under the cautious, introverted leadership of Nicola Sturgeon as between nil and zero.

It just ain’t going to happen. So let’s forget about the SNP for the time being.

What about the second option? The second way to shift the dial is if the pro-UK side effects real and lasting political climate change.

This starts by changing the weather. The SNP has done a terrific sales job on its distinctly patchy record in office. Scotland’s opposition parties therefore need to keep highlighting the truth: that on the four key areas of the economy, education, health and the environment, the SNP has rained on Scotland’s parade, and that better options are available.

Everyone knows that the SNP is focused only on trying to inch its referendum campaign forward, and that – and only that – is what matters. This has had damaging consequences for Scotland over the past decade and a half, and it needs to be made clear. There has to be some kind of alternative offer.

But changing the weather is different to changing the climate. And if the pro-UK side truly wants to un-stick the country from its current malaise, it needs to think bigger.

Too many of us (I include myself in this) see Scottish politics as a competition, a zero-sum game, which will end with either the Unionists or Nationalists coming out on top.

We envisage a moment when the forces of nationalism will be smashed by Good Old Blighty, forced to huddle in a cave somewhere off the A9. This is both silly and counter-productive.

A far better use of our time would be to focus instead on the more meaningful issue of how to help people across Scotland, whether Unionist or Nationalist, lead betterquality lives.

Principle

The pro-Union side won’t bring about climate change in Scotland by waving flags or hammering Nationalists, enjoyable though that sometimes seems.

It will come only when we can demonstrate that the things that are embodied by the Union – the notion of cooperation and solidarity, the principle of devolution and local control, and the counter benefits of scale and size – can give the vast majority of Scots the kind of life that provides them with meaning, respect and purpose.

Putting that vision into practical action isn’t easy, as the current UK Government is finding. It’s made harder when you’re faced by an SNP administration that specifically doesn’t want to help.

It also requires genuine reform of the centre of power in London so that it finally switches on to the reality of life outside the M25.

Nor will this make much of a difference overnight.

But then, as we know, when it comes to climate change, only years – and perhaps decades – of accumulated action will really make a difference.

Are we in this for the long haul? I hope so.

Because if the pro-UK team wants to lift the deep depression that currently hangs over Scotland’s political landscape, this patient, persistent work needs to begin now.