A look at the landscape of Scottish Politics after 10 months of SNP minority control…
Scotland is a very different place right now. Oh the lochs are still there, you can still drink your way from lowlands to highlands on the whisky trail (at a slightly higher premium thanks to the Chancellor) and the haggis hunting season is about to start once again in earnest, but the old order changeth.
Following the introduction, by Liberal Democrat MSPs, of STV for local government elections, Labour lost control of many fiefdoms that it had ruled with an Iron fist for a generation. The roll back of Labour dominance extended from urban to rural regions across the country and there is a genuine recognition that they haven’t yet come to terms with this. Coalition administrations are the order of the day and some strange bedfellows have been brought together in the process.
But the biggest changes to have been wrought are undoubtedly within the Scottish Parliament itself. On its best ever night and floated on the momentum of six figure donations from across corporate Scotland, the SNP came to power with a single seat advantage over Labour. That solitary seat cost Labour their grip on power and Jack McConnell his job. In a demonstration of principles over hunger for power, the Liberal Democrat group in the Scottish Parliament resisted the overtures of the SNP and elected to go into opposition leaving the nationalists to govern alone.
To give them their due, they’ve had a pretty good year so far, with some easy wins based on the delivery of populist promises such as the freezing of the council tax and the removal of bridge tolls over the Forth and Tay rivers.
But even now the wheels appear to be coming off the nationalist wagon. It started on the day that the SNP brought their first budget to Parliament. It took just 18 seconds for the SNP to ditch the first of their landmark promises when they decided to abandon their key pledge to repay all Scottish graduate student loan debt in full. Many commentators have remarked that their wafer thin majority may have actually been delivered by students voting for this exact promise. Many more policy u-turns like this one and the SNP experience of minority government may indeed turn out to be a short one.
* Alex Cole-Hamilton headed up the Lib Dem List of candidates for the Mid Scotland and Fife region in the 2007 Scottish Parliamentary elections, and stood against Gordon Brown in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath in the 2005 general election. Alex has kindly agreed to write a monthly column on Scottish politics for Lib Dem Voice. We are currently looking for someone from Wales to do the same. If you’d like to volunteer, please contact our commissioning editor, Stephen Tall at [email protected].
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8 Comments
The universities tend to be strongly unionist, so it’s no surprise the SNP don’t care much about them. Unfortunate, since the universities are the key to Scotland’s future prosperity.
Not forgetting the disgraceful Trumpton affair, & the axeing of the Edinburgh Airport Link & now the foot-dragging over the Waverley line reopening.
To be fair, heavy rail projects often run over budget. Though I can’t say I’m pleased at the unsafe half single/half double track proposed for the Waverly Line.
The Trump affair is a disgrace, I agree. What’s the point of a site of special scientific interest if someone can just come along and build a town on it?
It seems unlikely that a Labour /LibDem coalition supported by the Tories (or a Labour/Tory one supported by the Libs), which would be required to make the SNP government a short one, would be able to pay off student loans without some extraordinary cuts elsewhere. I would be interested to see how the Libs propose doing it.
Particularly if you are going to spend an extra billion on the Edinburgh Airpot & borders rail links, not to mention £7 billion on a Glasgow-Edinburgh bullet train.
Anax, the trouble is that while the local Lib Dem councillor did the right thing on the Trump application, the party at Holyrood and the party in control in Aberdeenshire have bent the knee to Donald Trump just as badly as Alex Salmond has.
That response shows how totally divorced from any concept of liberalism the Scottish Liberals are, which in turn explains their failure. The locals overwhelmingly disagree with the asertion that this £1 billion investment should not be permitted.
The Lib Dems never suggested that all student debt could be written off. There was talk of scrapping the graduate endowment, which the SNP has done (and we supported). One assumes that we wouldn’t have left the universities with the poor funding deal the SNP gave them.
It’s true the party is split on the Trump deal. It’s still a bad idea. The jobs created will probably end up being filled by immigrants, given Aberdeenshire is a wealthy area with little unemployment. One wonders if the SNP would have been so keen if Trump hadn’t dredged up some Scottish ancestry.
The point made was that the SNP’s role in government will be short because they have failed to end student debt. I find that improbable but it would require the replacement government to end this debt. As you almost acknowledge that is a non-starter.
The party worse than split on the Trump investment. Activists were clearly against it & the only reason Nicol was merely de facto against it, rather than openly so, is that the public are for it.
What it comes down to is the the the LDs are, by instinct as Annax proves, against anything that would smack of economic success or liberalism whereeas the Scottish public are in favour of these.