Time to Stop Rewarding Failure.

Politicians who need devolution to fail are game playing. It's all of us that lose out.

On my wall is a letter from Donald Dewar sent to me on the day the Scottish Parliament opened in 1999. I remember the excitement of opening that pale blue envelope with the seal of the First Minister on it. Back then as a student activist and volunteer in Labour’s HQ, I happily sacrificed my academic studies to be part of winning the referendum to create a Scottish Parliament and then winning the first elections. In the letter, the first First Minister wrote about the duty he now had “to bring better Government and a fairer future to Scotland.”

Looking back at the early days of devolution it was assumed that would be the motivating engine of political life in Scotland: to make devolution work. Re-read the 1997 White Paper presented by Secretary of State Donald Dewar and it is full of the language of partnership between the UK and Scottish governments:

“will need to keep in close touch…Good communication systems will be vital….Departments in both administrations will develop mutual understandings covering the appropriate exchange of information, advance notification and joint working….the vast majority of matters should be capable of being handled routinely among officials of the Departments in question…”

This assumed leaders acting in good faith. A generation on, the hope that political leaders would be so mature feels naive. Looking up at Donald’s statue in Buchanan Street it is hard to imagine any political leader today cast in bronze in recognition of their uniting influence on the country.

Today we’re governed in Edinburgh by an aimless nationalist party that sees devolution as a political barrier to be torn down and in London by a visionless party that offers only destructive ‘muscular unionism’.

Our governments today simply aren’t trying to pass the same test of success that Donald Dewar the Secretary of State for Scotland or Donald Dewar the First Miniter was. The motivation isn’t making the partnership work, it’s creating political opportunities. On every issue where the two governments need to work together, they instead are spoiling for fights that they hope can motivate their shrinking voter bases.

Why pick up the telephone and make things work when you can keep the pot boiling by exchanging angry letters via the media? If devolution works then the SNP will struggle to pretend that the case for independence still has a pulse. If devolution works then the imaginary threat of independence cannot be used to keep the Scottish Tories on life support.

Nationalism and ‘muscular’ unionism have poisoned the promise of devolution. They undermine accountability for the failure to deliver. When your governing purpose is conflict, failure to work together for the good of the people is its own reward.

If you doubt it watch Lorna Slater’s interview on the BBC’s Sunday programme this morning. The ‘Green’ minister’s management of the deposit scheme has been a calamity yet at every turn she is able to excuse her own failures by claiming it is the inflexibility of the UK government that is to blame. A row that, in practice, is about whether glass bottles are recycled in our bin collections or at a return point is hyped up as a “democratic outrage”.

Until relatively recently, the Conservatives understood that the way to defeat nationalism was to deny them the oxygen of grievance. Now they rely on the same atmosphere to survive. It suits the narrow political strategies of both governing parties to reframe every issue as a unionist v nationalist fight.

This morning we can see the protection of marine areas being set up in these same terms. This is going to happen again and again over the months ahead. You might hope that politics should be about giving everyone a stake in a growing economy, caring for our most vulnerable, lighting up the minds of our young people, or enriching our cultural life. You would be wrong. It’s not about winning anything. It is about keeping this fight going for as long as possible.

Each of these manufactured conflicts is, of course, also set up as a test for Labour to fail. They are an invitation to pick a side. But the choices are not between unreasonable nationalism and unbending unionism, neither of which are in the interests of Scotland. As the polls point to a change in government in London, there is an opportunity to let the air out of these balloons and get back to fulfilling the early promise of devolution: better governance for a fairer society.

I reckon voters have diminishing patience for game-playing. Life is a struggle, people are knocking their pans in to make ends meet, they want those that govern to cut the crap and work together to make things better. They want mature leaders not bickering children.

In this context, Labour shouldn’t be afraid to reclaim its status as the party of devolution. A conservative party that expects credit for its fights with the devolved Parliament and an SNP that wants to end devolution can never be its advocate. Labour should confidently talk both about the things we can do better closer to us and the things that it makes sense to do working with our neighbours. Devolution and cooperation are not incompatible, they just rely on grown-ups being in charge again.

UPDATE: as soon as I pressed send on this issue I read this story about Kier Starmer suggesting he is willing to work with our devolved government on new ideas to tackle the drug death crisis. With more deaths in the news over the last few days, this is encouraging - although it can only be a small part of a bigger effort.

In case you missed it…

• YouGov has released new predictive modeling for the general election in Scotland. It suggests the SNP will lose 23 seats to Labour - with Angus MacNeill, Patrick Grady, and Mhairi Black among those falling to Labour. Significantly, another set of seats held by the SNP on this projection are only done so by extremely small margins. Seats like Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock; Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East; Edinburgh North and Leith; East Renfrewshire; or North Ayrshire and Arran all need just a slight further movement to Labour to fall.

• One of those likely to be heading to the House of Commons is Torcuil Crichton who has provided the sort of voice on the ferry scandal that SNP parliamentarians have failed to find. He writes in a week when new figures brought the scale of the ferries crisis into focus - more than 17,000 ferry journeys were canceled or delayed last year. Although, in fairness, one SNP MSP has had the courage to speak out on Ferries this week, although it was to complain about the service between Penzance and the Scilly Isles.

• The headline numbers in the latest political monitor from Ipsos were less worrying for the SNP. The pollster has a stronger voting intention and a narrow lead for yes on the constitutional question. However, when you look at the trend you see that their lead over Labour, and the Yes lead, has halved since Christmas. One in seven yes voters who were voting SNP in December have left the party. Labour will be pleased that Anas Sarwar is the only Scottish leader with a positive approval rating.