Change is the only way to make progress

Those inhabiting Scotland’s corridors of power need to radically rethink the way the system of government works in order to make life better for all of us, writes

PARTY politics is a double-edged sword. We need political parties in order to coalesce people around a broad set of ideas, so that voters can ask those people to form a government to run the country. That’s a good thing.

However, there is a flip side. Being a party politician or staffer, or perhaps worse an activist, tends to tribalise people and render them largely unable to see reason or appreciate nuance.

This often leads to unsubstantiated braggery, which hovers around our politics like the smell of spoiled milk. That’s perpetually annoying. It also leads to emotional decision-making, and therefore underperformance by people who, in other walks of life, would be successful.

Most damagingly, though, this clouded perspective can often stifle good government, with our rulers considering their administration to be performing better than it actually is and therefore not being prepared to change course. In short, they begin to believe their own publicity, and we all suffer.

In Scotland, as in all democracies, there is a healthy dose of all of this. But there are also a few examples, on all sides, of politicians and advisers who are able to take a more dispassionate view of the performance of their tribe. These people are of real value – they’re the change-makers. The Scottish Government has a good few of these rare beasts in its ranks of ministers and advisers. It is now that they need them.

The SNP has been in government in Scotland for almost 14 years. I am hardly spoiling the upcoming Scottish Parliament election for Herald readers when I say that another five years beckon, perhaps as a majority, perhaps as a minority. And although there are some route maps to either the Conservatives or Labour inhabiting Bute House after the 2026 elections, they are narrow and require the sort of expert steering that neither or those parties have so far shown themselves capable of.

So the SNP it will be for 19 years, for sure, and likely for 24 years. It’s an astonishingly long time to be in government, and represents the defiance of all accepted political gravity. With this longevity, and in truth with very little competition, it is devilishly difficult to stay fresh, to stay on top of the job, to innovate, to change. Time, then, for these changemakers. Let’s forget the opposition hype; this is not an incompetent government. It is a government run by a group of extremely intelligent and committed people who, like all governments, can point to some successes and some failures.

However, it is a government which is increasingly running into trouble in the key areas which really matter to voters. The recent IPSOSMORI/STV polling will not have gone unnoticed; although trust ratings were high across the board, they were lowest on the issue of our schools. We are not short of old tropes about Scotland having a world-leading education system, but we are short of evidence for it. The system is centred on the wishes of councils and unions, which invariably run counter to the needs of pupils and parents, who are often treated as an afterthought, at best, and an inconvenience at worst. Results are mediocre.

And it is iniquitous; if you want to make it to medical school and be a doctor in Scotland, for instance, there are a huge number of state schools in Scotland where statistics show that outcome is impossible. The ugly truth is that opportunity is maximised only for those children whose parents can afford a house in a good catchment area. And despite the Thursday night clapping and the “Thank You NHS” signs, healthcare is another looming source of trouble. As with schools, the facts render the national narrative delusional. Our NHS has 20 per cent fewer doctors per head than the OECD average. We have barely half the average number of hospital beds per head. We have less than half the number of MRI scanners, and one-third the number of CT scanners per head. We scrape into the OECD top-20 for survival rates for major cancers – colorectal, breast and cervical. We perform even worse – outside the top 20 – in mortality rates for heart attack, haemorrhagic stroke and ischemic stroke.

Some fairly radical change is required for the next term of SNP government. It should start with the Cabinet, and not just the people in it, but the structure of it. They have a unique opportunity to do this: one-third of the Cabinet is standing down at the election.

I’d reduce the number of Cabinet secretaries and expand the number of ministers sitting underneath them. The structure and relationship between Cabinet secretaries, ministers, and the special advisers who serve them, has become confused to the detriment of progress. Take rural affairs. The rural economy is bound up in sustainability, climate change and energy, yet these issues are split across, at my count, three ministers and four Cabinet secretaries, and that’s before we bring the matter of local authority planning into it. There are other examples, when we get into the weeds of this – the splitting of finance and economy, for instance. Better to have a top-level Cabinet reduced in size to, say, eight secretaries, with an expanded team of ministers with much clearer, more focused, more accountable remits.

Being in government is hard. Being in government for more than a couple of decades is harder still. Fundamental renewal is not a concession of failure, it is an acknowledgement that progress is impossible without change.

Changing structures doesn’t change outcomes, but it’s a good place to start.