The political parties in Scotland should be grateful for the voters’ short memories.
It was Scottish Labour who shouted the loudest and longest about the transformative impact Home Rule would have on the nation. Local services like education, health, transport and the environment would be unrecognisable after a few years of local, rather than Westminster, decision-making, they said.
Yet, as its critics always predicted, the reality of devolution has proved disappointing. And despite being latecomers to devo-enthusiasm, it’s the SNP, who have since replaced Labour as Scotland’s dominant political force, who find themselves in the firing line for the many and varied failures of devolved policy.
Perhaps it’s because the unlikely promises made on devolution’s behalf were made so long ago. Perhaps it’s because those promises were made by a different party.
Whatever the reason, Scottish voters remain supportive of both the institution of the Scottish Parliament, despite its failure to deliver the transformative change that was promised, and the SNP itself, despite their having been the policy-makers in Scotland for the last 15 years.
Given the SNP’s record in government, it can only be a matter of time before political gravity kicks in and voters choose to start holding the nationalists to account for what they’re actually delivering (or not delivering), rather than allowing themselves to be distracted by the constitutional debate at which the SNP are so expert.
Today, in many ways, Scotland is becoming a failed state. Economic performance is woeful. Drug and alcohol problems have surged, there is a failure to engage seriously with the challenges the country is facing, and the drive for independence has fractured society in an endless culture war.
In 2020-21, the Scottish Government had a punishing deficit of more than 22 per cent, compared to around 15 per cent for the UK as a whole.
The average Scottish worker’s earnings stood at £675 per week, according to House of Commons research published last December, compared to the English figure of £705.
In 2019-20, the last year before Covid changes had an impact on grades, the proportion of school pupils passing three or more higher level exams was 43 per cent, lower than any year from 2015 onwards.
Scotland lagged behind the rest of the UK in nine of 13 productivity indicators tracked by the Confederation of British Industry and KPMG in an index produced last December, which found high levels of workplace sickness absence, slower average broadband speeds than the rest of the country, and a decline in business investment as a share of GDP.
And in 2020, there were 1,339 drug-related deaths – the highest level since records began – followed by another 1,295 the following year.
**Law of unintended consequences**
The charge sheet of failure is a long one, as you would expect from a party that has been in government since 2007. Economically, growth in Scotland has generally lagged behind that in the rest of the UK over the last 14 years, and the blame or credit for failures and successes in the job market are frequently disputed by UK and Holyrood ministers.
But when it comes to those areas that are indisputably devolved, there can be little doubt that Scottish ministers have an awful lot more to explain than to celebrate. That much-heralded transformation of Scotland may well materialise one day, but we’re as far from it today as we were when Donald Dewar was hitting the campaign trail in favour of a Yes vote in the 1997 devolution referendum.
One of the proudest claims of the SNP government lies in the area of higher education: Scottish students still receive free university tuition while English, as well as foreign, students have to pay full fees. In fact this is a policy the SNP inherited from the previous Labour-Lib Dem Scottish Executive.
But the law of unintended consequences has played its part in making this policy extremely troublesome for ministers – and even more so for Scottish students.
The obligation on universities to provide free tuition for Scottish undergraduates has meant that such “funded” places have become severely rationed, while fee-paying students from abroad (and their cash) are welcomed with open arms.
In practice this has curtailed the opportunities of school leavers from poorer, working class backgrounds, who now find it more difficult to find a university place than students from a similar socio-economic background in any other part of the UK.
In Scotland’s schools, the challenges are even greater. Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, voluntarily offered a seemingly courageous challenge in August 2015, in advance of the following year’s elections to the Scottish Parliament.
So determined was she to close the drastic attainment gap between schools in poorer and wealthier areas, she announced: “Let me be clear – I want to be judged on this. If you are not, as First Minister, prepared to put your neck on the line on the education of our young people, then what are you prepared to? It really matters.”
She was right: it does really matter. Individuals’ life chances are often decided at school by exam results and the quality of the education they receive.
But the inspiring rhetoric didn’t keep pace with results. After seven years of under-achievement, the Scottish Government quietly announced that the targets they had set for the narrowing of the attainment gap were being scrapped.
The SNP introduced the Curriculum for Excellence in Scottish schools in 2010, but nearly a decade later, the Times Educational Supplement reported that according to the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), a “decade of upheaval” had succeeded only in getting students back to where they started in reading.
No longer can Scots claim to have the best education in the world, the Curriculum for Excellence having substituted metrics on student “wellbeing” for academic excellence.
**Social policy virtue signalling**
In other social policy areas, SNP ministers seem to be strangely vulnerable to the influence of external pressure groups – perhaps a consequence of SNP MSPs having no real political conviction other than their commitment to independence. No one ever joined the SNP to campaign for higher school standards.
And so, seemingly from nowhere, there emerged the policy of the “named person”, not notably a policy that had previously been advanced by the independence movement and which immediately raised the hackles of parents groups fearing state encroachment on their own responsibilities to raise their children.
This policy would mean the Scottish Government identifying a responsible person for every child in Scotland under the age of 18, who would be responsible for that child’s wellbeing and safety. The policy was eventually struck down by the Supreme Court, which decided that some of the powers in the proposed legislation fell outside the powers of the Scottish Parliament and contravened the right to privacy and to family life.
Still, SNP ministers’ appetite for social policy virtue signalling was not sated. An essential element of the nationalist offer to voters is the concept of Scottish exceptionalism, the belief that Scots are innately more generous, more charitable than their English neighbours; in short, that they are better.
An example of this was the Baby Box, a £9 million initiative to supply new parents with some bare essentials following the birth of their child.
The laudable aim of the scheme (aside from publicity) was to provide a safe makeshift sleeping basket for newborn babies and so reduce the risk of cot death. But within a year of the scheme’s launch, the cot death charity, the Lullaby Trust, stated that there was no evidence that the scheme improved infant mortality.
Further, reusable nappies included in the box at the insistence of the Scottish Government proved to be the least popular and least effective item, with 90 per cent of new parents choosing not to use them. Still, SNP ministers insisted on renewing the scheme for another eight years, even before a £170,000 study into the Baby Box’s effectiveness – commissioned by the Scottish Government itself – had reported its findings.
But the most contentious of the SNP’s attempts at social engineering has been Sturgeon’s personal insistence that trans people should be allowed to self-identify as their gender of choice, eliminating the need for medical professionals’ assessment and the requirement to live in their preferred gender for two years before obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate (GDR).
Women’s rights groups have expressed fears that such a move erodes biological women’s sex-based rights, a claim airily dismissed by the first minister and her lieutenants. With an overall majority at Holyrood, thanks to the SNP’s agreement with the Scottish Greens, the reform is guaranteed to be implemented, even though there is a chance that Scottish GDRs will not be recognised elsewhere in the UK.
Yet still the electorate doesn’t feel disposed to punish the SNP for their failings.
The most egregious example of this willingness to forgive is Dundee, the university town with Europe’s highest level of drug deaths. In December 2020, public health minister Joe Fitzpatrick resigned his post after the death toll was revealed to have risen to another record high.
Fitzpatrick, who represents the city in Holyrood, then secured a majority that increased by 4,000 votes at the next Scottish Parliament election.
Lol fuck off Telegraph. The UK is a failed state which is why it’s rightfully falling apart.
Say the bunch of utter cunts who support the obese fuckwit transforming the UK into a pariah shithole state.
How much are you paid?
Fucking batshit insane article. What next, comparing Scotland to North Korea. Oh, wait, Stephen Daisley has done that already!
I love how the author is a former Scottish Labour MP who now advises the Conservative party. Says it all about Scottish Labour really.
TLDR: we can’t make a case for the Union.
Whatever happened to the telegraph?
It was always right wing, but it used to be a paper of repute.
But over the past decade there were the stories about Russian and Chinese editorial influence, a partnership with Facebook, HSBC influencing coverage, climate change denial, covid conspiracies, and if I recall correctly they also perpetuated anti-semitic conspiracy theories.
Is it the lack of advertising revenue due to the shift to online?
The dangers of Corbyn. Scotland should’ve listened smdh
The telegraph one day: scotland gets so many nice things from england, they’re so ungrateful!!!
The telegraph the next: scotland is an utter shithole where nothing good ever happens and if it leaves the UK it will immediately become the hunger games
10 comments
The political parties in Scotland should be grateful for the voters’ short memories.
It was Scottish Labour who shouted the loudest and longest about the transformative impact Home Rule would have on the nation. Local services like education, health, transport and the environment would be unrecognisable after a few years of local, rather than Westminster, decision-making, they said.
Yet, as its critics always predicted, the reality of devolution has proved disappointing. And despite being latecomers to devo-enthusiasm, it’s the SNP, who have since replaced Labour as Scotland’s dominant political force, who find themselves in the firing line for the many and varied failures of devolved policy.
Perhaps it’s because the unlikely promises made on devolution’s behalf were made so long ago. Perhaps it’s because those promises were made by a different party.
Whatever the reason, Scottish voters remain supportive of both the institution of the Scottish Parliament, despite its failure to deliver the transformative change that was promised, and the SNP itself, despite their having been the policy-makers in Scotland for the last 15 years.
Given the SNP’s record in government, it can only be a matter of time before political gravity kicks in and voters choose to start holding the nationalists to account for what they’re actually delivering (or not delivering), rather than allowing themselves to be distracted by the constitutional debate at which the SNP are so expert.
Today, in many ways, Scotland is becoming a failed state. Economic performance is woeful. Drug and alcohol problems have surged, there is a failure to engage seriously with the challenges the country is facing, and the drive for independence has fractured society in an endless culture war.
In 2020-21, the Scottish Government had a punishing deficit of more than 22 per cent, compared to around 15 per cent for the UK as a whole.
The average Scottish worker’s earnings stood at £675 per week, according to House of Commons research published last December, compared to the English figure of £705.
In 2019-20, the last year before Covid changes had an impact on grades, the proportion of school pupils passing three or more higher level exams was 43 per cent, lower than any year from 2015 onwards.
Scotland lagged behind the rest of the UK in nine of 13 productivity indicators tracked by the Confederation of British Industry and KPMG in an index produced last December, which found high levels of workplace sickness absence, slower average broadband speeds than the rest of the country, and a decline in business investment as a share of GDP.
And in 2020, there were 1,339 drug-related deaths – the highest level since records began – followed by another 1,295 the following year.
**Law of unintended consequences**
The charge sheet of failure is a long one, as you would expect from a party that has been in government since 2007. Economically, growth in Scotland has generally lagged behind that in the rest of the UK over the last 14 years, and the blame or credit for failures and successes in the job market are frequently disputed by UK and Holyrood ministers.
But when it comes to those areas that are indisputably devolved, there can be little doubt that Scottish ministers have an awful lot more to explain than to celebrate. That much-heralded transformation of Scotland may well materialise one day, but we’re as far from it today as we were when Donald Dewar was hitting the campaign trail in favour of a Yes vote in the 1997 devolution referendum.
One of the proudest claims of the SNP government lies in the area of higher education: Scottish students still receive free university tuition while English, as well as foreign, students have to pay full fees. In fact this is a policy the SNP inherited from the previous Labour-Lib Dem Scottish Executive.
But the law of unintended consequences has played its part in making this policy extremely troublesome for ministers – and even more so for Scottish students.
The obligation on universities to provide free tuition for Scottish undergraduates has meant that such “funded” places have become severely rationed, while fee-paying students from abroad (and their cash) are welcomed with open arms.
In practice this has curtailed the opportunities of school leavers from poorer, working class backgrounds, who now find it more difficult to find a university place than students from a similar socio-economic background in any other part of the UK.
In Scotland’s schools, the challenges are even greater. Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, voluntarily offered a seemingly courageous challenge in August 2015, in advance of the following year’s elections to the Scottish Parliament.
So determined was she to close the drastic attainment gap between schools in poorer and wealthier areas, she announced: “Let me be clear – I want to be judged on this. If you are not, as First Minister, prepared to put your neck on the line on the education of our young people, then what are you prepared to? It really matters.”
She was right: it does really matter. Individuals’ life chances are often decided at school by exam results and the quality of the education they receive.
But the inspiring rhetoric didn’t keep pace with results. After seven years of under-achievement, the Scottish Government quietly announced that the targets they had set for the narrowing of the attainment gap were being scrapped.
The SNP introduced the Curriculum for Excellence in Scottish schools in 2010, but nearly a decade later, the Times Educational Supplement reported that according to the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), a “decade of upheaval” had succeeded only in getting students back to where they started in reading.
No longer can Scots claim to have the best education in the world, the Curriculum for Excellence having substituted metrics on student “wellbeing” for academic excellence.
**Social policy virtue signalling**
In other social policy areas, SNP ministers seem to be strangely vulnerable to the influence of external pressure groups – perhaps a consequence of SNP MSPs having no real political conviction other than their commitment to independence. No one ever joined the SNP to campaign for higher school standards.
And so, seemingly from nowhere, there emerged the policy of the “named person”, not notably a policy that had previously been advanced by the independence movement and which immediately raised the hackles of parents groups fearing state encroachment on their own responsibilities to raise their children.
This policy would mean the Scottish Government identifying a responsible person for every child in Scotland under the age of 18, who would be responsible for that child’s wellbeing and safety. The policy was eventually struck down by the Supreme Court, which decided that some of the powers in the proposed legislation fell outside the powers of the Scottish Parliament and contravened the right to privacy and to family life.
Still, SNP ministers’ appetite for social policy virtue signalling was not sated. An essential element of the nationalist offer to voters is the concept of Scottish exceptionalism, the belief that Scots are innately more generous, more charitable than their English neighbours; in short, that they are better.
An example of this was the Baby Box, a £9 million initiative to supply new parents with some bare essentials following the birth of their child.
The laudable aim of the scheme (aside from publicity) was to provide a safe makeshift sleeping basket for newborn babies and so reduce the risk of cot death. But within a year of the scheme’s launch, the cot death charity, the Lullaby Trust, stated that there was no evidence that the scheme improved infant mortality.
Further, reusable nappies included in the box at the insistence of the Scottish Government proved to be the least popular and least effective item, with 90 per cent of new parents choosing not to use them. Still, SNP ministers insisted on renewing the scheme for another eight years, even before a £170,000 study into the Baby Box’s effectiveness – commissioned by the Scottish Government itself – had reported its findings.
But the most contentious of the SNP’s attempts at social engineering has been Sturgeon’s personal insistence that trans people should be allowed to self-identify as their gender of choice, eliminating the need for medical professionals’ assessment and the requirement to live in their preferred gender for two years before obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate (GDR).
Women’s rights groups have expressed fears that such a move erodes biological women’s sex-based rights, a claim airily dismissed by the first minister and her lieutenants. With an overall majority at Holyrood, thanks to the SNP’s agreement with the Scottish Greens, the reform is guaranteed to be implemented, even though there is a chance that Scottish GDRs will not be recognised elsewhere in the UK.
Yet still the electorate doesn’t feel disposed to punish the SNP for their failings.
The most egregious example of this willingness to forgive is Dundee, the university town with Europe’s highest level of drug deaths. In December 2020, public health minister Joe Fitzpatrick resigned his post after the death toll was revealed to have risen to another record high.
Fitzpatrick, who represents the city in Holyrood, then secured a majority that increased by 4,000 votes at the next Scottish Parliament election.
Lol fuck off Telegraph. The UK is a failed state which is why it’s rightfully falling apart.
Say the bunch of utter cunts who support the obese fuckwit transforming the UK into a pariah shithole state.
How much are you paid?
Fucking batshit insane article. What next, comparing Scotland to North Korea. Oh, wait, Stephen Daisley has done that already!
I love how the author is a former Scottish Labour MP who now advises the Conservative party. Says it all about Scottish Labour really.
TLDR: we can’t make a case for the Union.
Whatever happened to the telegraph?
It was always right wing, but it used to be a paper of repute.
But over the past decade there were the stories about Russian and Chinese editorial influence, a partnership with Facebook, HSBC influencing coverage, climate change denial, covid conspiracies, and if I recall correctly they also perpetuated anti-semitic conspiracy theories.
Is it the lack of advertising revenue due to the shift to online?
The dangers of Corbyn. Scotland should’ve listened smdh
The telegraph one day: scotland gets so many nice things from england, they’re so ungrateful!!!
The telegraph the next: scotland is an utter shithole where nothing good ever happens and if it leaves the UK it will immediately become the hunger games
Someone say projection.