MSPs might not like it, but voters have a role to play in our democracy
DEMOCRACY is a fine idea in theory but it’s the practice that has always been a problem. The Gender Recognition Reform Bill is another reminder of that. Whatever its merits as a piece of legislation, it cannot be said to have been clamoured for by the voters. In fact, polling suggests they are not sold on the Bill and are hostile to at least parts of it.
Yet there is next to no doubt that it will become law. When Holyrood voted on the Bill at stage one last week, something very unusual happened: Nationalist MSPs showed some independence. Specifically, nine of them. Despite being whipped by their business manager to vote in favour of the Bill, two Nationalist backbenchers abstained and seven voted against. This included Ash Regan, who had to resign as community safety minister to do so.
Over the weekend, much of the reportage and analysis has focused on what this rebellion, the biggest since the SNP came to power 15 years ago, might mean for the stability of the Government and the First Minister’s grip on power.
The answer in both cases is: not much. This was a protest on a specific piece of legislation at the heart of a highly specialised, but strongly felt, debate about sex, gender, identity and what the law should say about each.
Hostile
Polling suggests deep reservations among the public. They are not hostile to trans rights but they object to some of the central details of the new Bill. Only one-fifth of Scots support lowering the minimum age for changing gender from 18 to 16, with 62 per cent opposed. Given our sharp political and constitutional divisions, it’s hard to get 62 per cent of Scots to express the same view on anything. That there is such a solid block of opposition to the Bill ought to give our lawmakers pause for thought.
Not a bit of it. The Scottish Government is pressing ahead as though the public was staunchly in favour. As was once said of the Bennites in the Labour Party, SNP ministers refuse to compromise with the electorate. Leadership is sometimes about following public opinion and sometimes about leading it. That is a tenet of liberal democracy and common examples given are the decriminalisation of homosexuality and the abolition of the death penalty.
This principle isn’t wrong but it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that its advocates are pretty selective in how they apply it. The difference between leading public opinion and disrespecting democracy seems not to lie in any objective precept but in the political underpinnings of any given reform.
Another example is the Hate Crime Act. During what passed for parliamentary debates on that legislation, polling indicated scepticism among the general public. One survey found that 64 per cent of Scots believed only ‘words that incite violence’ should be subject to criminal sanction. Put in practice, this view would do for several pieces of legislation, not just the Hate Crimes Act. Nevertheless, the point remains: this was and is a profoundly controversial Act which enjoys limited public consent for its far-reaching provisions.
It was not as controversial for MSPs. Although 64 per cent of voters expressed fundamental reservations, when the legislation reached its final stage at Holyrood, 64 per cent of MSPs voted to make it law. There couldn’t be a more dramatic illustration of how unrepresentative the Scottish parliament is of the Scottish people.
Or take the removal of the defence of reasonable chastisement for parents who smack their children. It’s a deeply emotive issue but regardless of whether you supported the change in the law or not, it is possible to agree that the gulf between voters and MSPs on this issue was another democratic red flag.
In October 2018, polling showed that less than one-third of Scots supported changing the law to make parents who physically discipline their children guilty of assault. One year later, Holyrood voted to do it anyway, with 65 per cent of MSPs voting in favour of the reform. Once again, the issue is not what you think of smacking. It’s whether you think it societally healthy that Scotland’s parliament is so thoroughly uninterested in Scotland’s views on how the country should be run.
A disconnect between the governing elites and the populace is a feature of most liberal democracies. The reason Scotland’s disconnect is fascinating is because it was created in the course of trying to fix an earlier disconnect.
In the 1980s, it became commonplace in Left-leaning political parties, campaign groups and media outlets to complain of a ‘democratic deficit’. The term was used to describe the gap between how Scotland voted in general elections and the political character of UK governments.
It was held to be democratically insupportable that Scotland kept voting for Labour social democracy but kept getting Tory Thatcherism.
By devolving legislative authority to an autonomous Scottish parliament, there would be one democratic body where the Scottish electorate, collectively taken, could be guaranteed to get the governments and policies it voted for.
Once again, though, we are in the realm of theory and practice. In theory, Holyrood has closed the democratic deficit. While the Tories have won every Westminster election since 2010, despite a majority of Scots not voting for them, the SNP has been returned time and again at Holyrood, along with a parliament that better reflects the political composition of the electorate. Plus, this parliament is more accessible, whether through its petitions mechanism, its physical presence north of the Border or its focus on five million rather than 67 million people.
That’s the theory. In practice, Holyrood is no less distant than Westminster. It’s distant in different ways, but distant all the same. With devolution, Scots get the rough balance of parties they vote for but that is where the democratic improvements end.
In establishing a Scottish parliament, we gave new institutions to our existing political class at the same time as massively expanding that class. There is now a governing caste at Holyrood every bit as political, socially and institutionally remote from the average Scottish voter as the Westminster elite is from anyone north of Watford.
Like the ranks of Westminster insiders, professional Holyrood is monocultural in a very important way. Regardless of party or government department or directorate, the ruling class of Holyrood is overwhelmingly, unthinkingly progressive.
Suspicion
It assumes the answer to any problem is more government spending. It views the public sector with rose-tinted glasses and private enterprise with suspicion. It distrusts tradition. It resents common sense. It genuflects to anyone or anything that invokes terms such as ‘communities’, ‘inclusion’, ‘stakeholders’, ‘best practice’ and ‘the evidence says’.
In the Holyrood bubble, equality is indisputably good and liberty a woolly and possibly dangerous concept. Religion is superfluous, except when bishops and ministers condemn welfare cuts and preach disarmament. And if ever in any doubt about anything, either pass a law to ban it or pass one to make it mandatory.
The Gender Recognition Reform Bill is the latest manifestation of this deeply unhealthy state of affairs. It is legislation born not of public demand but of the efforts of little-known, taxpayer-funded lobby groups and the yellow-blue-redgreen blob that has pushed much of the democratic spirit out of Holyrood.
Protecting the rights of minorities is an important function of liberal democracy and while I disagree with the MSPs who voted for the Bill at stage one, I am in no doubt that most who did were motivated by good conscience and the best of intentions.
But democracy cannot be a five-yearly rubber stamp, with the voters allowed a say at the ballot box then ignored until next polling day. To be substantive, democracy has to be a process rather than an event, a collaboration not just between ministers, lobbyists and activists, but with the public too. Like it or not, the majority has to be allowed some role in democracy.