Holyrood is broken and Alba is proof of how far it has sunk
HOW much more unappealing can the new Alba Party get — surely it’s maxed out its quota of oddballs and unsavoury characters?
It’s a turn-off of spectacular proportions, and yet there are probably enough independence fanatics around to ensure they do reasonably well in May.
Of course, it might well be designed to put Nicola Sturgeon into an impossible position — having to rely on her nemesis to garner enough pro-independence votes.
What began as a revenge mission by a man intent on destroying his predecessor has morphed into a credible threat both to the SNP — and to the Unionists.
Miss Sturgeon presents Mr Salmond, persuasively, as a ‘gambler’ who makes grand and baseless claims — which she dutifully trotted out for years as his deputy.
She’s angry that he’s playing games with the system and in that context she might have a point — Alba has livened up the election, but also risks turning it into a charade.
The whole point of Holyrood was that it would do things differently, though on the sleaze front it appears to be on a par with Westminster — it’s just as toxic, if not worse.
High ideals gave way to the kind of power-play Miss Sturgeon now professes to despise, though it’s likely that privately she grudgingly admires her old mentor’s clever tricks.
Donald Dewar said the Scottish parliament was about making sure no one party could be in overall control, to be achieved by a form of proportional representation (PR), or list MSPs.
In this way, power could be shared with the people (that didn’t go to plan) and Labour believed it could dominate the Holyrood benches, holding sway indefinitely.
It was meant to be a way of containing nationalism or even driving a stake through its heart, but in fact it had the opposite effect — the SNP has been in office for 14 years.
Initially the SNP was against devolution, but then it used to be firmly Eurosceptic: it’s almost as if it will adopt any position as long as it’s likely to further its push for breaking apart the UK.
Parliament was a Trojan horse for the only ambition it ever cared about — it was hijacked for a single aim to which all else, including managing and reforming public services, was entirely subordinate.
Now Mr Salmond, a master tactician even if he is a tainted character who by rights should never run for election again, is using PR for a purpose at odds with its allegedly progressive goals.
It’s about settling scores and engineering a pro-separation ‘super-majority’ all at the same time — but in no sense does it truly reflect the national appetite for destroying the UK.
Backing for independence dipped in the midst of the Salmond scandal, and now it’s lucky to get above 50 per cent — while even among Scexit supporters nearly half want Covid to be wiped out before there’s another referendum.
That’s not an unreasonable demand, and yet all we’ve heard from Alba are exercises in lateral thinking about how to get past Tory blanket opposition to secure a re-run of the 2014 poll.
Street protests or illegal plebiscites have been mooted — the kind of pub-bore nonsense these people have been banging on about for decades.
But if they get a foothold at Holyrood they will be in a position to call some of the shots and mould the debate, or what little of it takes place, supplanting the spineless Greens as the SNP’s favoured lap-dogs.
Turnout is poor at Scottish elections — it was less than 56 per cent in 2016 and only 50.4 per cent in 2011 — meaning that generally about half of Scots don’t vote.
It’s hard to blame them — the last few months removed any lingering hope that Holyrood may indeed live up to the early promises that were made for it, of a 21st-century parliament that was less adversarial, more open and crucially more accountable.
It’s a world of unminuted meetings, rampant redaction, and brazen contempt for the voters.
This time around, lockdown-weary, most of us probably don’t much feel like voting, as we’re more concerned with holding onto our jobs or making sure our kids get a decent education, or at least some education, after months of school closures.
Do any of these parties truly speak to the priorities of ordinary voters — hard-pressed businesses clinging to survival, families longing for a return to normality, students hoping they can make a career in a high-tax economy shattered by a pandemic?
No, because they’re all too busy either talking to themselves or to their support base, the ones who could be trusted to turn out to vote in the midst of earthquake or famine.
Between these extremes there are a lot of Scots — most of us, in fact — who are sick of what devolution has become, and of what it has allowed the Nationalists to do.
Their needs are relatively modest and yet they’re fed a diet of dross about English oppression and told to make do with implausible claims about baby boxes when they ask for concrete evidence of a domestic policy agenda.
There are plenty of us who saw through Holyrood from the start — but we’re too far down the road of devolved politics to turn the clock back.
Yet apathy isn’t advisable — we can be sure Miss Sturgeon would work with Mr Salmond, however much it stuck in her craw — her old boss knows her too well.
True, it wasn’t long ago that he was suggesting his erstwhile colleagues in her inner circle were plotting to have him jailed — but, well, that was last week.
Politics is a sport for opportunists where principle is an optional extra; maybe in the fullness of time Mr Salmond will have a Cabinet position — what a reunion that would be.
Tory leader Douglas Ross is right to suggest that Unionist parties should respond to the formation of Alba by banding together.
It’s likely not to get off the ground — shrill, anti-Tory hysteria is still preferable to constructive alliance for Labour and the Lib Dems — but it’s worth a try.
Boris Johnson should hold firm against the independence cause and continue to insist it’s going nowhere, but it’s undeniable that a separatist ‘super-majority’ would be dangerous for the Union.
Whatever the outcome of the election, we shouldn’t be in any doubt that devolution has been found wanting yet again — and emerges from this squalid episode as deeply flawed and in desperate need of renewal.
It’s not just frayed around the edges, it’s broken, and it’s time there was an intervention from some grown-ups — perhaps a Westminster select committee could look at what on Earth has gone wrong.
Thanks to the SNP’s cack-handedness, there’s an inquiry roughly every five minutes in Scotland — would another one really be so bad?
Don’t hold your breath, and in the meantime steer clear of the assorted cranks and has-beens masquerading as democrats — whatever guise they assume.
*This column appeared in the Scottish Daily Mail on March 30, 2021.
