SNP dreamed of parliament, now respect has gone
Wlackeys with a point to prove, these were all experienced political campaigners who have seen something very distasteful happen to parliament.
Ask any opposition MSP and they will give you example after example of how the SNP has used its majority to force through everything it wants and squash all dissent – however valid.
This was never supposed to happen. The Holyrood committee structure was set up to do the job normally taken by a second chamber, to scrutinise legislation, hold the Government to account.
It is now abundantly clear the committees are no longer doing their job because they have been neutered by the disgraceful acquiescence of SNP backbenchers too deferential and lacking in backbone to stand up to their leader.
Holyrood’s much-vaunted committee system has become a disgrace. It is far worse now than at HENEVER I try to conjure up a vision from the days when politicians were respected, I never get any further than The 39 Steps – the 1935 film, I mean, not the book.
The key scene is the one where Robert Donat as Richard Hannay stumbles by mistake into a political meeting in the Highlands.
He then makes a fiery political speech, full of passion and strength, without actually saying very much. But it is his appearance and attitude that seems to carry the most authenticity. There he is, in his three-piece tweed suit, an innocent man on the run from police but exuding integrity, authority and independence.
Those were indeed the days when politicians were respected. They were public servants who knew their first – and overwhelming – duty was to their constituents. Their second duty was to parliament and party considerations came way down the list.
Nowadays, politicians are no longer respected by the public. Polls usually put them below estate agents, bankers and even, I have to admit, journalists.
Part of this is because they are seen as self-serving, grasping, greedy hypocrites who would sell their grandmothers for ministerial advancement. But it is also because of the way they conduct their politics, putting their parties before their constituents and government before parliament.
Last week, opposition politicians went public to berate the Scottish Government for its treatment of parliament. They accused Nationalists MSPs of sucking up to the Government so much that parliament was no longer able to do its job.
This has been brewing for a while. For months, opposition MSPs have been grumbling, muttering and complaining about the arrogant, dismissive and undemocratic way in which Alex Salmond and his MSPs treat Holyrood.
The dam had to break and, last week, it did. Labour MSP Hugh Henry referred to a ‘cult of obedience and slavishness’ in the SNP. Tory MSP Mary Scanlon talked of the current regime being ‘more dictatorial than democratic’. Lib Dem MSP Tavish Scott talked of the ‘ruthless’ use of ‘iron discipline’ by the SNP to ‘railroad’ everything it wants through parliament.
These were not junior party any time since its inception and Mr Salmond and his Ministers are entirely to blame. Everyone knows the First Minister runs his office with an iron fist. Those who have worked for him have revealed that he barely brooks any dissent and shouts and bawls at those who displease him.
NOW, it would seem, he has imposed this approach on parliament too. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is being allowed to get in the way of the referendum – so the SNP uses its majorities on the committees to suppress all negative reports and criticism.
It is bad enough now, when the parliament is being forced to pass bad laws on devolved issues. But how much worse could it get if we became independent? We would then have the same parlia-
JOHANN Lamont tells a cautionary tale from the mean streets of Glasgow. The Scottish Labour leader was more or less minding her own business last week when a dog ran out and bit her on the leg.
When she remonstrated with the owner, he looked at her leg and concluded that, because her jeans
ment – crucially, without a second chamber – and an administration railroading through changes on such important subjects as welfare or foreign policy, without properly consulting MSPs.
Mr Salmond wants to portray himself as a statesman on the world stage; but by quashing the merest hint of dissent in parliament he appears more like an insecure, tinpot dictator.
If, like me, you like to hark back to an age when politicians were like Robert Donat in The 39 Steps, then the approach of an arrogant and domineering First Minister like Mr Salmond is both frightening and depressing.
The SNP spent decades saying it wanted a Scottish parliament; now it is treating it with disdain. If the SNP is so contemptuous of the one institution it claims to revere above all others, what would it do if it was running an independent Scotland?
were still intact, the bite couldn’t have been too bad. ‘But it’s sore,’ she replied. Clearly now stuck for a response, the man replied in perhaps the only way he could.
‘I think you are doing really well in politics,’ he said – and ran off as fast as possible.