Yesterday’s edition [19th October 2014] of The Sunday Herald carried manifesto statements by each of the three candidates for the Deputy Leadership of the SNP and, in the case of two of them, candidates for Deputy First Minister to incoming First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon. [Angela Constance does not wish to be considered for Deputy First Minister of Scotland.]
The three are: Transport and Veterans Minister, Keith Brown MSP; Angela Constance MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Training Youth and Women’s Employment; and Stewart Hosie MP, SNP Treasury spokesperson at Westminster.
What each chose to say about themselves and about the principal focus of their respective potential roles could not have been more revealing.
All three affirm their continuing commitment to Scottish independence but two of the three – Constance and Hosie, talk about little other than their intent to continue in their individual ways to promote the independence agenda and to recruit for it.
The only candidate focused on the business of government – which is, of course, what the SNP are electorally tasked to deliver – is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the candidate with substantially the greatest experience of government of the three of them.
Keith Brown, Minister for Transport and Veterans – and with a markedly successful record of managerial and personal performance in both roles – talks of the policy and management of development of Scotland’s infrastructure. If the country is to be economically successful, it is arguable that nothing is an important as the calibre of a forward-looking strategic development and delivery of a capable infrastructure.
Brown is also the only one to define the role and responsibilities of the party’s Deputy Leader – seeing it as consciously working to support the Leader and therefore to focus on taking specific kinds of responsibility.
He talks of the need to address the views and needs of the 55% who voted against independence; and of the government’s direct responsibilities to that majority. Unusually, Brown talks of ‘good grace and good humour’ in saying: ‘The depute leader has to speak to those who don’t agree with us, find common ground, help take Scotland forward. We need common purpose for our nation’s future.’
Constance, on the other hand, says that ‘the election for the next deputy leader is about how we best tap into the talents of members old and new, how we work with the wider Yes movement and continue to make the case for independence, head, heart and soul’.
It is ironic that Prime Minister David Cameron,leader of the SNP’s favourite scarecrow, the Conservatives, is the source of Ms Constance’s ‘head, heart and soul’ commitment – as the first to add ‘soul’ in his own pre-vote declaration of commitment to unionism.
Hosie, speaking of the campaign now for more powers for Scotland, says: ‘The next opportunity we have to do that is the 2015 General Election. But I do not believe that election should be a re-run of the referendum. It is Scotland’s chance to hold Westminster to account, to hold ‘their feet to the fire’ ensuring that they keep their promise to deliver devo max.’
The metaphor of ‘holding their feet to the fire’ is horrifically – primitively – vicious and retributive. It was uttered by the current First Minister, Alex Salmond in the campaign. It speaks sharply for the unevolved instinctive barbarity of the nationalists – and it is Mr Hosie’s manifesto statement.
Moreover, ‘devo max’ is not what was promised; and a formally federated United Kingdom is the best way to achieve just that – and indeed the best way to marry the strengths of independence with the strengths of unity.
In what may be a reference to an idea he floated shortly after he declared his candidacy, Brown talks of setting up a ‘Youth Academy’ – so that young people can have a formal voice in the future of Scotland.
His earlier description of this been as an academy for activists – which is not quite the same thing. Both would be ill advised for a variety of reasons. Tutoring activists would be an alarming extension of the pronounced centralist totalitarianism of the SNP.
Tutoring young people in specific political engagement could, at best, simply breed even more of the young political mechanics that have devastated politics across the UK.
These come straight from university to work in the parliaments as interns and special advisers – with no life experience and no serious work experience whatsoever outside politics and education to guide their their political perspectives and shape their ‘advice’.
And at worst, tutoring young people in political engagement would breed more of the blinkered and tribal monomaniacs of which Scotland has seen far too many in the recent indy campaign.
A civilised society is one that strives for unity, ignoring divisions and working on unifying common cause, not one that sets out to make divisions sharper and to achieve factional ‘victory’ of some kind. The means validate the end.
