Sorry, but the Big Yin was right about the pretendy parliament
IT was in February 1997 that Billy Connolly summed up his opposition to the prospect of Scottish devolution.
‘I don’t want a pretendy government in Edinburgh,’ he said, ‘and a rush of carpetbaggers along the M8 to join it.’
He also warned that plans for a Scottish parliament, which won public approval seven months later, would be ‘just another expensive layer of government’.
If you read our story on Saturday about Holyrood chiefs lavishing nearly £2million on a new lighting system (each ‘lamp cluster’ has 129 bulbs to represent the number of MSPs), you might be nodding your head in agreement.
Of course, Connolly’s words, which to me were all too prescient, will be seen as utter heresy to the legions of bureaucrats, spin doctors and quango bosses spawned by devolved politics.
The 20th anniversary of the devolution referendum has been marked almost reverentially by many, including former First Minister Jack McConnell.
Yesterday he was quietly retweeting praise for the ban on public smoking introduced in 2006 under the administration he ran in coalition with the Lib Dems.
Never mind that a similar ban came into force south of the Border soon afterwards.
But there is plenty of evidence that many of us don’t buy into the self-congratulation of the last few days — even if we run the risk of being denounced as party-poopers.
Fewer than half of voters believe devolution has improved Scotland’s health and education service or its economy, according to a Panelbase survey at the weekend.
Some 19 per cent said Scotland should remain in the Union while getting rid of the Scottish parliament.
It is worth remembering also that the turnout for Holyrood elections hovers around the 50 per cent mark.
Would it make any difference if the parliament no longer existed; if it vanished overnight with all its preening egos and grotesque vanity — the self-regard that mocks the hard-pressed taxpayers bankrolling the entire charade?
Let’s measure the gap between what was promised for Holyrood — and the reality of what it has delivered.
It was meant to improve public services — but some of the most important ones have gone backwards.
Another ‘expensive layer of government’ has foisted a dumbed-down curriculum on pupils now outperformed by their counterparts in former Soviet bloc nations.
Our classrooms are among the most crowded in the developed world, and even the SNP admits state education is a postcode lottery (though the unlamented former SNP MP John Nicolson paid for his honesty by losing his seat).
Performance on NHS waiting times has sunk to a record low and patients face soaring delays, with hospitals across the country failing to meet key treatment targets.
The expectation was that Holyrood and the Scottish Government would revitalise local democracy, and whip incompetent councils into shape.
But what a dreadful mess our cack-handed, small-minded local authorities make of almost everything, from Third World roads to bin collections.
Tony Blair, who confessed in his memoir that he was never a ‘passionate believer’ in devolution, said after the electorate backed the creation of the Scottish parliament 20 years ago that ‘the era of big, centralised government is over’.
But under the SNP we’ve seen the launch of Police Scotland — a floundering behemoth forced into being as a cost-cutting vehicle, whose myriad faults mean anyone who chooses to run it is almost destined to fail.
The current chief constable, Phil Gormley, is currently on ‘special leave’ on his full salary (£212,000 a year) as multiple bullying allegations against him are investigated, while his predecessor was forced to quit after a string of calamities.
Justice Secretary Michael Matheson is content to watch mutely from the sidelines at a police service that has become a machine dedicated to destroying the reputations of those appointed to lead it.
And the Named Person scheme — ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court last year — was approved by a parliament that, as Donald Dewar said, is meant to ‘share power with the people’.
Mr Dewar also hoped that the parliament would end ‘argument and dispute’. Some hope…
The parliament itself cost more than £400million to construct and was the subject of a major inquiry, so the building itself was a source of dispute that to some extent is still going on 13 years after its official opening.
It then became a focal point for more constitutional agitation by the Nationalists, who plunged the nation into a referendum whose shockwaves continue to paralyse meaningful political debate today.
As for bringing government closer to the people, in geographical terms this is unavoidably true — but again the effect has been counterproductive.
Having to listen to Patrick Harvie’s right-on bleating about Trump and transgender toilets is reason enough to join the ranks of those who want control over Scottish politics to be restored to Westminster.
The cut and thrust of dynamic debate rarely troubles the Holyrood chamber under its costly lights — just listen back to
a few soul-sapping seconds of stand-in Labour leader Alex Rowley at First Minister’s Questions last week.
Some of the MSPs who sit on committees which were meant to be an adequate substitute for a second chamber (one is surely enough), have about as much inquisitorial flair as a wet sponge.
But most of us don’t listen, because we’re not masochists, or might even have businesses to run — notwithstanding the constant threat of another referendum, or tax hikes.
Earning about £62,000 a year at our three-day-a-week, ‘family-friendly’ parliament, our tribunes are largely a Central Belt breed with an extraordinary lack of understanding of rural Scotland.
They can relax with their subsidised snacks and booze, or recline in their offices’ ‘think pods’, gazing down on the humble pedestrians below (and thinking up new taxes for them).
In Kafka-esque fashion, this is an institution that is dedicated to its own self-preservation, without having any clear idea of why its on-going existence is a good thing for Scotland.
It demands — and for the most part receives — new powers, most notably over welfare and taxation: indeed, it is bloated with power.
Yesterday Nicola Sturgeon was demanding even more.
But many of the powers the parliament has won until now have been squandered or abused.
The machinery of the civil service has been hijacked as an engine to foment social and political division.
In 2014, it cost £15.8million to run the independence referendum, while £1.2million was spent publishing the White Paper on independence — which now reads as if it was co-authored by Lewis Carroll.
We’re stuck with Holyrood, and while 19 per cent of the population would be happy to see it razed to the ground (a waste of cash but an improvement to Edinburgh’s skyline), there is no immediate prospect of its disappearance.
In any event, if in a parallel universe devolution could be undone, Enric Miralles’ monstrous building should continue to stand — as a physical reminder of the hubris and folly that led to its creation.
