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Title Marking the Card : the Scottish Parliament at 1000 Days Provided by the author(s) and University College Dublin Library in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite the published version when available. Title Marking the card : the Scottish Parliament at 1000 days Author(s) McCrone, David Publication Date 2002 Series IBIS Working Papers; 24 Publisher University College Dublin. Institute for British-Irish Studies Link to publisher's http://www.ucd.ie/ibis/filestore/wp2002/24_mcr.pdf version This item's record/more http://hdl.handle.net/10197/2181 information Downloaded 2013-09-13T13:14:02Z Some rights reserved. For more information, please see the item record link above. MARKING THE CARD: THE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT AT 1000 DAYS David McCrone IBISIBIS working working paper paper no. no. 24 5 MARKING THE CARD: THE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT AT 1000 DAYS David McCrone Working Papers in British-Irish Studies No. 24, 2002 Institute for British-Irish Studies University College Dublin IBIS working papers No. 24, 2002 © the author, 2002 ISSN 1649-0304 ABSTRACT MARKING THE CARD: THE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT AT 1000 DAYS The first term of the Scottish Parliament is more than half-way to completion, with fifteen months to run. This paper assesses what it has achieved, and its prospects. It is important to appreciate that (a) there is no uniform game-plan for devolution in the UK; and (b) that the so-called “Scottish anomaly”, a self-governing Scotland within a unitary British state, has a dynamic of its own. The paper reviews the out- comes of the parliament in the context of people’s expectations, and argues, by means of recent surveys, that while Home Rule has become the prevailing consen- sus in contemporary Scotland, people are by no means averse to a parliament with extended powers and responsibilities. Publication information Paper presented to the IBIS conference Renovation or revolution? new territorial politics in Ireland and the United Kingdom, University College Dublin, 3 April 2002. BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION David McCrone is Professor of Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. He spe- cialises in the sociology of Scotland and the comparative sociology of nationalism. He has been closely involved in the making of the new Scottish Parliament, and in the election studies associated with it. His recent books include Understanding Scotland: the sociology of a nation (Routledge, 2001; first ed. 1992); The sociology of nationalism: tomorrow's ancestors (Routledge, 1998); The Scottish electorate: the 1997 general election and beyond (Macmillan, 1999); Politics and society in Scotland (Macmillan, 1998; first ed. 1996); and Scotland—the brand: the making of Scottish heritage (Edinburgh University Press,1995). MARKING THE CARD: THE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT AT 1000 DAYS David McCrone In reviewing the first 1000 days of the Scottish Parliament, it is necessary to put it in long-term context. The first thing to be said is that “devolution” in the UK looks like a haphazard system, because there is no alternative. There is in no grand design, because none is possible. None is possible, in essence, because the dynamics and trajectories of the three non-English territories of the UK (containing some 9 million people) are quite different, to say nothing of the micro-politics relating to the English regions which dance to a different tune. Scotland has a strong sense of itself as a founding partner in the British state by the Treaty of Union in 1707. It was at no point in its history a colony of England, but entered the Union, at the time plainly against the will of its people who had no say in the matter, as a power trade-off: ac- cess to economic markets in England and its territories, in exchange for consolidat- ing England’s northern frontier against foreign—mainly French—intrusion. The Un- ion was, by any account, a marriage of convenience between the two sovereign na- tions, a “mariage de raison” in the language of Scotland’s oldest and former ally (McCrone, 2001). The price of this marriage was a Union with a contradiction at its heart. What began as Great Britain and was later formalised as the United Kingdom was, post-1707, a unitary state with a single legislature, but was in essence, multi-national (MacCor- mick, 1998). To be sure, to English constitutional theorists like AV Dicey, it was an incorporating union, the extension of England by any other name (and means). To the Scots, on the other hand, it was a quasi-federal arrangement, with autonomy over the institutions which mattered in the governance of Scotland—law, education, religion, local burgh politics, its money system—remaining firmly in Scottish hands. When England proposed to abolish the right of Scotland’s commercial banks to is- sue their own banknotes, no less than a Tory—Walter Scott—rallied the nation to oppose it, and successfully. The implications of what Neil MacCormick has called the Scottish anomaly, namely, that the northern kingdom retained considerable control over its governance until, ironically, the extension of democracy gave power to the English majority, did not begin to unravel until well into the 20th century. Things might have been different if Ireland had been granted, and accepted, Home Rule (a prelude to Home Rule all round), but this was not to be. Not until Mrs Thatcher’s rule in the 1980s did the contradiction begin to unravel. With the election of Tony Blair in 1997, the logjam began to shift. The term “devolution” might be the one London prefers (and it suits its centrist mentalité) but that is to imply that power is delegated, thereby retained. The old Liberal term Home Rule is, in Scotland’s case, nearer the mark, for it im- plies an extension of what was already a considerable system of self-government, IBIS WORKING PAPER NO. 24 IBIS WORKING PAPERS NO. 24, 2002 but one which required a legislature to stabilise it. In short, recovering a parliament in 1997 was, for the Scots, at the same time a large but also a small step. EVENTS, EVENTS… No-one can doubt that the period since 1997 has been a hectic and unpredictable time. Harold Macmillan who was British Prime Minister forty years ago once presci- ently remarked that what affected politics most were “events, dear boy, events”. Certainly, there has been no shortage of “events” in the short life of the parliament. It is now into its third First Minister, perhaps recalling Lady Bracknell’s comment that to lose one is misfortune (and the untimely loss of Donald Dewar was certainly that) but to lose two seems like carelessness. The resignation of Henry McLeish was surely avoidable, but in the goldfish bowl of Scottish politics, even the smallest mistakes or errors of judgement are punished severely. It is always a risky business to predict the future, so let us begin by reviewing events since 1999. It seemed at the time, and based on the opinion polls, that La- bour would win about 50-55 seats, and the SNP 45-50. In the event, Labour won 56 and the Scottish National Party (SNP) 35, but we were fairly certain that a Labour - Liberal Democratic coalition was the most likely outcome, and so it proved. What none of us predicted was that the small Scottish Socialist Party and the Scottish Greens would have a small but articulate presence, nor that Dennis Canavan would trounce Labour in Falkirk West. All in all, we got the kind of government we ex- pected, and once they got the hang of coalition politics, Labour and the Liberal- Democrats worked more or less harmoniously in tandem. There were a few quite public policy disagreements, notably over university tuition fees, causing Labour to instigate an enquiry (chaired by Andrew Cubie), and long-term care for the elderly, but the coalition held tolerably well. There is a well-worn political saw that one’s op- ponents are to be found in other parties, but enemies are in one’s own. So, by and large, it proved. All parties had their internal troubles, none more than Labour, where a fair amount of fear and loathing emerged when Henry McLeish resigned, and Jack McConnell took over. Harold Macmillan’s “night of the long knives” seemed like a tea party by comparison, as rivals were dispatched swiftly to the back benches. THE JOURNEY The first Scottish elections were always likely to produce no party with an overall majority, and so it proved. As the biggest party with 56 seats (43% of the total; sig- nificantly above its proportional share of the constituency vote of 39%), Labour was always most likely to link up with the Liberal Democrats, its erstwhile partners in the Constitutional Convention, who won 17 seats. The SNP’s strength across Scotland ensured that it would be the second party, but its failure to break into Labour’s con- stituency vote was something of a disappointment to its leaders. The Conserva- tives, with double irony, benefited from the proportional voting system (which it op- -2- McCrone / Scottish Parliament posed) by winning all of its 18 seats from the list system in a parliament it had fought tooth and nail to defeat. What marked out the parliament as belonging to quite a different family of legisla- tures than Westminster was the proportion of women MSPs elected—37%—which put Scotland in the top rank in terms of gender equality. Labour was the most suc- cessful in this respect, with 50/50, having set its procedures to produce the desired outcome. The SNP leadership had lost the battle to “zip” its lists (women and men alternately), but still managed a 43/57 split. The Liberal-Democrats (somewhat to their chagrin), and the Conservatives (who set their face against gender equality from the outset) could only manage 5 women MSPs out of 35 between them.
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