With the media almost crowing at what is seen as a significant decline in the current interest in Scottish independence, this seems a good time to do some clinical dissection.

The Independence issue

It was always unrealistic to imagine that a canny country like Scotland could successfully be asked to vote for independence after only a part of its first nationalist administration.

It was equally unrealistic to expect this canny nation to vote in advance for something whose details would be developed later and embraced by a positive initial vote for independence, should that be the outcome.

The devil is in the detail. It would be a foolish voter who would commit in advance to support a notion until its specific shape and operation was known.

Support is one thing, Trust is another. No political party is trustworthy, even when they ask for support for a worthy cause. Some political parties may, for the time being, be less corrupt than others but power indubitably corrupts and this should never be forgotten.

Of course Scotland could survive and prosper as an independent country – when the tine is right and if it is willing to make short term sacrifices and work hard for that success. But if the country is minded to explore independence at whatever point, it should not be asked to do less than sign off every line of the measures proposed to bring it about.

Scotland may often be given pigs in pokes masquerading as gifts but it is unlikely, knowingly, to buy one.

At the moment the issue of independence is a dangerous distraction:

• dangerous for a country that needs a government with its mind solely on the job of getting us through this recession and what will be a very long recovery period, emerging  in the shape and  spirit to grow with gusto;
• dangerous for the SNP itself, in forcing it to dissipate the efforts of a capable but slender team between demands of government that have never been so weighty and campaigning for an independence which is not  now immediately germane.

What Scotland needs is good government. This alone, depending on which party delivers it, will – rightly – underpin confidence in opting for  independence or for unionism. The job in hand is government, not campaigning for independence. The main issue, as far as the SNP is concerned, is in fact a by-product.

The capacity to govern

The current administration, in its first two years of office, showed that it can deliver good government. The widespread esteem in which it has been held for that period has been due to Scotland’s welcome for its first taste of serious government, concerned to plan long into the future to sustain the country’s development.

That has been a unique experience not just in Scotland but in the UK. Forward planning is less a British characteristic than is muddling along for a series of short term political advantages and fudging crises when they arise. This is not government. It is no better than average housekeeping.

The SNP Government has also shown Scotland the advantage of having a party in power which is its own master; which – agree with how it sees this or not – manifestly has nothing but the interests of the country at heart; and which is not under instruction from a superior authority elsewhere.

Without independence and with the alternative political theatre of Westminster seats to be filled in the interests of each of the political parties, this small population of Scotland is stretching its abilities too widely and Holyrood is the lesser for it.

When the Labour / Liberal Democrat administrations were in power here, they had far more MSPs to draw from than does the SNP but the shallowness of their talent pool was equally naked.

First Minister, Alex Salmond, in composing his minority Government, made the strategic decision to have a small ministerial cohort, many with multiple briefs.

This has the advantages of:

• creating a tight and well informed team, capable of swift collaborative action;
• disguising the shallowness of talent available to the party (as to all the other Holyrood parties).

In effect, Salmond understood his choice to be between:

• limiting the numbers to be given ministerial responsibility – and overworking them;
• creating the requisite number of briefs, knowing that there would be many inadequate performances.

Reasonably enough, he went for the quality option and in the first two years, that paid off. The country got a calibre of competent and energetic government it has not previously known and it grew more confident in the experience.

Now however, over two years into government and with an unexpected and historically unprecedented recession to confront, the strains on the team are showing. There is a sense of tiredness that will be even more real than it is apparent.

• John Swinney was unable to kick into touch the ridiculously strident and fiscally unjustifiable tantrum Glasgow threw and sustained under its diva Leader Stephen Purcell, over the cancellation of the Glasgow Airport Rail Link GARL).
• Alex Salmond, in moving Michael Russell to Education has had to assume the complex Constitution brief himself, as it clearly requires more than Fiona Hyslop has to bring to it.
• There has been evidence of the unsteadiness that comes from weariness. When the hounds of the opposition packed against Fiona Hyslop, both she and the First Minister in exasperation suggested that the Government might remove schools and education from local government responsibility – and then retreated from the notion. Yet this has its merits and a healthy debate on them could have been constructive.
• There has also been evidence of forms of misjudgment themselves testifying to tiredness, forgetting the old salesman’s saw of promising small and delivering large. The sheer hubris in predicting a trouncing of Labour in Glasgow North East was bound to be an agent in defeating the expectations it propelled into being. And it was.

The ministerial successes

There have been two equal lynchpins of this Government’s success: Deputy First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon and Cabinet Secretary for Finance, John Swinney.

Nicola Sturgeon is clearly on top of her brief. She has also been consistently impressive for her lucidity and decisiveness. She has not evaded either responsibility or the truth – as seen in her handling of the early swine flu outbreaks in Argyll and Renfrewshire; and in her straightforward admission that her party’s performance in the Glasgow North East by-election was a major disappointment.

John Swinney, in the key role of Cabinet Secretary for Finance, has been the engine of this Government’s success. He has shown himself able and keen to play the long game. He has been analytic, methodical and resolute in the face of pressure and criticism. Rarely seen but much respected, Swinney exudes the integrity that has no truck with spin.

He has been well served by Minister for Enterprise, Energy and Tourism, Jim Mather, Argyll’s MSP. Jim Mather has shown himself willing to work impossible hours on an impossibly complex brief, to do so with significant success and to work carefully and non-confrontationally, always seeking the consensus that is his political mantra.

Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment, Richard Lochhead has been another obviously capable minister, While he has work to do to convince that he is as committed to the conservation side of his brief as to the commercial side of it, he has been positive and proactive in his strategies and energetic in his pursuit of them.

Michael Russell has, as a Minister, toured the hot spots of Environment, Constitution, Culture and External Affairs and is now Cabinet Secretary in charge of another – Education. Universally recognised to be an authoritative and persuasive operator who takes no hostages, he assumes control of a brief which, in Scotland as in the UK, has been the victim of incessant and ill-focused meddling, leaving over a quarter of adult Scots illiterate and innumerate. He will be busy.

This group of Ministers are the keystones of the current Government.

Beyond and below them, as is the case across the Scottish Parliament and for reasons discussed above, the prospect is rather thinner. This limits the First Minister’s choices and it leaves overworked ministers carrying multiple responsibilities with  no relief on the horizon. Splitting the briefs of capable ministers is simply not feasible in such circumstances.

The needs of constituencies

If, realistically, the ministerial team cannot be enlarged and briefs split, other ways to ease workloads must be found.

A solution here might dovetail with a parallel political imperative – the meeting of constituency needs and expectations.
At the best of times, no engaged minister can look after a constituency as assiduously as an MSP who does not have to carry such additional responsibilities.

In cases where ministers are carrying multiple responsibilities, there is a real danger of capable MSPs losing their constituency seats through the impossibility of attending fully to complex and ever-changing local issues.

In the case of the current SNP Government, this danger is enhanced by its very probity. The SNP does not go in for the pork barrel politics so historically beloved of Labour and Conservative governments.

This leaves it without the traditional means of pacifying restive constituencies.

In UK as well as in Scottish constituencies, there has long been a need for formal arrangements to see equable attention paid to the needs of constituencies whose elected representatives become government ministers.

Ordinary MSPs will press the case of their constituencies. even against the stance of a government of their own party. An MSP who is also a Minister is far less free to do this, constrained by the known demands of the bigger picture for which her or his government is responsible.

Constituencies with MSPs who become ministers are denied the advantages of the adversarial while enjoying the reflected glory of being represented by a political star. Recourse to the pork barrel was the staple answer to this predicament but, as we have noted, the SNP government disdains such tactics.

There is a need for nominated deputes to cover the constituency duties for MSPs who have been made ministers – to keep in touch with communities, to attend meetings on the issues of the day, to identify and approach sources of external assistance for constituency projects on behalf of the minister, to conduct preliminary negotiations with, for example, businesses and local government and to brief the MSP /minster on the cases for specific Government action that arise.

The devising and adoption of such a system would render political representation more equitable, ease the workloads of ministers while protecting their earned constituency interests and be an effective way of nurturing emerging political talent.

Ministers in any government and constituencies that end up being represented by ministers, equally need this sort of easement.

The image at the top of this article – of the debating chamber at Holyrood, is stitched together from multiple images by its photographer and copyright holder, Klaus with K. It is reproduced here under the GNU Free Documentation licence.

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