Voice of the people ... or just the voice of Nicola?
NICOLA Sturgeon’s Citizens’ Assembly idea is dead on arrival and the First Minister has no one to blame but herself. The idea behind such groups is to invite representative members of the public to explore complex policy issues in a structured way, in order to inform national debate.
The assemblies are supposed to be independent of government and non-party political. Their remit is to gather evidence and suggest ways forward.
In no country where they operate are they designed to be a battering ram to further a government’s stated cause.
Yet be in no doubt that the version unveiled by the First Minister this summer is anything other than an independence stitch-up.
We know this because she all but told us so herself. Unveiling the assembly alongside her plans for a second referendum – and mentioning ‘independence’ 37 times between her statement and responses – it was hardly as if she was trying to hide it.
Even the co-chairman of the new body, David Martin – a former Labour MEP hand-picked after he said Brexit was enough to make him back Indyref 2 – said it was a ‘mistake’. He tried to claim the assembly would not be one-sided.
Unfortunately, he did so while flanked by independence campaigner and activist Lesley Riddoch and senior Nationalist MP Joanna Cherry, on a discussion panel on which no one from the pro-UK side was represented. Ms Cherry released a video in support of citizens’ assemblies, saying such a body was ‘the perfect way’ to move Scotland towards independence. It was a comment that betrayed exactly what the SNP wants to use it for.
The Scottish Government’s adviser on citizens’ assemblies, Dr Oliver Escobar, told a newspaper he was ‘fuming’ at Ms Cherry’s comment. He said his job of trying to get Scots to trust the format was now ‘ten times harder’.
Citizens’ assemblies have worked elsewhere because they’ve never been such an obvious sham. It’s precisely because of the naked purpose of the assembly’s formation that the Scottish Conservatives and, to their credit, the Lib Dems, won’t be taking part.
Even Nationalists have been appalled at the amateurishness of the conceit, with pro-independence columnist Neil Mackay writing that ‘the SNP couldn’t have made a bigger mess of the planned Citizens’ Assembly if it tried’.
Robin McAlpine, director of the Common Weal campaign group, noted it among a number of missteps symptomatic of the ‘cackhanded way Sturgeon has led the case for independence’.
So with SNP politicians bragging about how the assembly will advance the independence cause, two main political parties refusing to participate, the Government’s own adviser left ‘fuming’ at the way it’s been presented, the cochairman of the body admitting the launch announcement was a ‘mistake’, and even Nationalist commentators acknowledging the plan is holed below the waterline, surely Miss Sturgeon should rethink the whole misadventure?
It’s going to cost a fortune, too. All participants are being handed £1,200 for their trouble, as well as having travel, accommodation and childcare expenses covered.
ADD in meeting costs, administration costs, expenses, whatever the co-chairs will be paid, wages for civil servants, publicity and live-streaming costs, and suddenly half a million pounds looks a conservative estimate.
If the SNP has already decided on the conclusion it wants, then we don’t need a Citizens’ Assembly to get us there. That’s what the SNP uses the Scottish parliament for.