I quit as a journalist to become an MSP in a desperate attempt to get answers, but all I’ve encountered is secrecy and arrogance from Sturgeon’s SNP
SHRILL SNP politicians love to shriek and point fingers at the political system in Westminster with a production line of increasingly hysterical hyperbole. Talk about a lack of self-awareness. They must wander around the Scottish parliament with their eyes shut and ears closed.
Battling for answers was part of the grind during my near threedecade career as an investigative journalist. Exposing the dirty world of organised crime was difficult and often dangerous, but it seems like a stroll in the park compared with my frustrations of being an MSP.
Nicola Sturgeon and her wellpadded coterie of nationalist obsessives have devoted their lives to breaking up the UK. She presides over a vast and self-serving establishment apparatus in Edinburgh which is best defined as smug, secretive and arrogant.
When freedom of information law was first enacted at the turn of the new millennium, I recall being promised that public bodies would willingly release info – no matter how uncomfortable it might be.
I’m embarrassed to admit that I actually fell for this spiel. As the years passed, the law became neutered by transparency-hating officials who found increasingly smart alec ways of withholding information from the public.
And it is that same culture that contaminates Sturgeon’s government and seeps through our devolved parliament which rarely feels like anything other than an expensive concrete talking shop.
Sturgeon’s testimony last week at the parliamentary committee investigating her government’s corrupt and obscene ferries fiasco is worth watching.
My Scottish Conservative colleague Craig Hoy, who’s also a former journalist, did a magnificent job of quizzing the First Minister with concise, focused and well-researched questions.
But it felt like a rerun of her infamous performance at the Alex Salmond scandal committee – both being masterclasses in selective amnesia and sleekit evasion.
Sturgeon likes to remind journalists about her supposedly high intellect with the over-arching tone being that she knows best, she is always right and the paying public really must learn their place and show their respect.
As a reporter, I became infuriated at the SNP establishment’s highhanded war on transparency, accountability and scrutiny. I thought that I could do more good in parliament than outside of it. Now, having spent 18 months in the political bubble, I’m not so sure.
Debate is strictly controlled. Opposing voices are stifled. Questions are rarely ever answered.
In recent weeks, I decided to express some of my frustrations with a series of videos that I filmed outside the building. I had wanted to ask Ministers about serious issues including the sexual assault of a female police officer who blew the whistle on a boys’ club culture; the revelation of 500 sex offenders being allowed to change their names; and warnings about thousands of police jobs being axed due to SNP budget cuts.
Unfortunately, my questions were not picked and remain unanswered. I understand that parliamentary time is finite and that other MSPs also have important issues that truly matter to the people of Scotland. But even had my questions been selected, I ask whether it would have made any difference.
I’ll give a recent example in which I asked Justice Secretary Keith Brown about a Chamber of Commerce warning that youths are using free bus travel to assemble in Glasgow city centre to commit crimes and antisocial behaviour. While I didn’t expect any meaningful or insightful response, Brown instead made the following nonsensical assertion: ‘It would be nice, on occasion, to hear one or two good things said about the police by Conservative members.’
Another option for MSPs is to lodge formal written questions. In my experience, the answers typically provided are as feeble and sparse as what is usually yielded by a freedom of information inquiry.
During the pantomime of First Minister’s Questions, Sturgeon causes me to squirm with her pathetic routine of deflecting from her government’s many failings by blaming the UK Government.
Her answers, mostly read from her giant ring-bound folder of scripts, go on interminably yet rarely contain anything of substance. I pity school pupils in the public gallery for having to witness this tedium and I am reliably informed that even the parliamentary authorities seem to agree with my party that it does not work.
Supine SNP politicians should take a long, hard look at themselves. Backbenchers at Westminster take pride in asking hard questions on behalf of constituents, which is in stark contrast to Sturgeon’s seatfilling Holyrood automatons.
Many of them appear to serve the sole purpose of offering up softball questions to allow the First Minister to grandstand on matters often not devolved to Holyrood.
On one occasion a nationalist MSP read out a closing speech, crediting the previous speakers as is customary. The problem was that he was the first speaker. Thankfully, the presiding officer spared further blushes by telling him to sit down.
There was another recent episode where an SNP member asked Sturgeon a question. The First Minister began reading out an answer from her big folder. It took a while to realise that she was reading the wrong scripted answer to another planted pro-government question.
Holyrood was created with lofty goals of achieving ‘a better politics’. It’s failing to deliver. There’s nothing new about politicians dodging scrutiny. That’s old hat. But our Scottish parliament is broken, and it needs fixing.
It is frustrating, farcical and
It rarely feels like anything other than an expensive talking shop
After 15 years in power, they continue to turn the screw on free debate
sometimes unintentionally amusing, but the consequences are real and harmful. Secrecy and the shutting down of scrutiny hammers taxpayers and breeds a regime in which no one is held to account.
Take the costly scandals of the ferries, the Salmond complaint process, the Crown Office’s Rangers malicious prosecutions – not a single person has been held responsible for any of it.
An over-mighty government breeds arrogance in legislation. Look at some of the laws that it has produced since 2014. The flawed Offensive Behaviour At Football Act. The hated Named Persons policy. The unworkable Hate Crime Act. And now, it’s railroading through the deeply concerning Gender Recognition Reform Bill.
Time after time, the SNP rushes to act without limitation, aided by its nationalist pals the Greens, and the people of Scotland suffer the consequences.
Make no mistake – the fault here lies with SNP Ministers and especially Sturgeon herself. If they chose to be open and accountable, the parliament and all of Scotland would benefit.
After 15 years in power, they continue to turn the screw on free debate while complaining about the need for more powers but refusing to use the ones they already have. This can’t go on. We will only be able to improve Scotland if we improve how parliament works and that means removing this rotten SNP cabal from power.