Holyrood election unlikely to alter the messy future of capital politics
no reflection on the individuals, but with only five days to go before this dreary Scottish Parliament election campaign is over, how many voters recognise their MSP, never mind the candidates from which they must make their choice?
I imagine more than a few of our representatives might at one time have expected facial recognition in the street on a par with the King and Queen Camilla, but the sensible ones will have learnt that only the relative handful of voters who follow politics closely know who they are. Fewer care.
Of Edinburgh constituency MSPS Angus Robertson, Ash Regan, Alex Cole-hamilton, Ben Macpherson, Gordon Macdonald and Daniel Johnson, maybe the first three would ring bells – a senior SNP minister, an EX-SNP minister and rebel, and the Libdemas’ leader – but the others not so much.
And by this time next week at least two will be gone, Mr Macdonald into retirement having risen without trace and Ms Regan having at least had the guts to stand up for what she believed when push came to shove on reality-denying gender recognition reform, but is highly unlikely to be rewarded with a seat as an independent on the regional list.
The polls suggest it could also be goodbye to Messrs Robertson and Macpherson, the SNP’S former Westminster leader and current culture secretary having his coat peg shoogled by the Greens’ Lorna Slater in Edinburgh Central, a constituency that has acquired student bedsit land in Sciennes and Marchmont, and less than fertile nationalist territory in leafy Merchiston. The recent minor kerfuffle about Mr Robertson’s flit to live in Linlithgow, something he made little secret about, won’t make much difference.
Mr Macpherson, the affable tertiary education minister, could be on his bike if enough people in the new seat of Edinburgh North Eastern and Leith, which now includes grungy Abbeyhill, are wacky enough to vote for someone who wants to abolish prisons, the Greens’ Kate Nevens. But the constituency has also acquired more traditional Craigentinny, Mountcastle and Willowbrae, districts I used to represent, and he should hang on. Just as interesting – which probably means not very − is the amount of double-jobbing expected after the election, with a cohort of current Edinburgh councillors likely to become MSPS, and anyone expecting a dramatic improvement in the quality of debate in Holyrood, or an injection of vision in the government ranks, need not hold their breaths.
For parroting the party lines, there are few better than the council’s SNP group leader Simita Kumar, and with fellow nationalist councillors Kate Campbell and Euan Hyslop could be heading down the High Street, along with the Libdems’ Sanne Dijkstra-downie and, if he nicks between Mr Robertson and Ms Slater in Central, Labour’s James Dalgleish. Five by-elections can’t be ruled out, but I doubt local activists will have much enthusiasm for extending their campaign into the summer so some local charities can expect a small windfall when, as has become the custom, MSPS hanging on as councillors donate their £25,000 council salaries.
If she succeeds Gordon Macdonald in Edinburgh South Western, it would be difficult, but not impossible, for Ms Kumar to continue as group leader, and unless Adam Mcvey fancies his old job back it could mean another chance for former transport convener Lesley Macinnes, who lost to Ms Kumar two years ago, which probably says it all. Alternatively, it could become a contest between Kate Campbell’s partner, the Craigentinny/duddingston councillor Danny Aston, or the moderate Forth ward councillor Stuart Dobbin.
Whatever changes the SNP group has to make after the election, it won’t make any difference to the way the authority runs for the remainder of this term, and the ramshackle Labour jalopy will stagger along, with reluctant leader
Jane Meagher strapped to the driving seat to an increasingly bitter end.
The council election next year is even more unpredictable than the outcome of the parliamentary vote next week and, if anything, the chaos of the last four years could be even worse if a Reform group emerges to splinter the political make-up even further, and the SNP group tacks even harder to the left, if that’s possible. The nationalists may well remain the biggest single party and their fellow travellers in the Greens might pick up more seats, but if a Reform group does emerge then its co-operation might be needed to maintain current arrangement among the Unionist parties that shuts out a Green-snp administration. That will be difficult for what’s left of Labour and the Libdems.
Attention is turning to adopting a “Cabinet” approach, where decisions are taken by a group of senior councillors each with responsibility for council functions such as housing and transport, while the committees scrutinise the decisions, but don’t take them. It was tried before under the Labour administration 20 years ago, but it had an absolute majority under the old first-past-the-post voting system.
A “coalition of all the talents” approach was mooted more recently but rejected because of an unwillingness in the SNP and Labour groups to work with the Conservatives, who preferred to empower the Greens. The problem with any major change to streamline the system and accelerate decision making is it’s likely to sideline many of the councillors expected to vote for it. Putting administrative efficiency ahead of party interests would be a rare, if not unique, event. In the unlikely event of turkeys wanting to bring Christmas forward, the best hope is that there are enough new councillors who might be persuadable before they fully understand how the current arrangements works.
Just as this dreadfully lacklustre election will return the same old uninspiring, high tax, low ambition SNP government, Edinburgh is likely to be stuck with the same old council machinery that contributes more to global warming for all the hot air councillors produce than it does for local growth and prosperity.
The whole system needs blowing up, but as it spawns the next generation of party hacks in Holyrood, what are the chances of that?