Labour Hame | Lifting Scotland | 7 February 2025

Written by Kirsty McNeill MP, reproduced from Labour Hame here.

Many of us will have recently celebrated the life and work of Robert Burns. His works give us insight into the human condition, but he was also never shy of expressing a view on the politics of the day. And today I think he’d lament that this country he loved has developed a form of politics that is essentially declarative, more interested in the press release than the plan, the announcement than the achievement.

The Scottish Government has been reduced to declaring any number of causes a priority, without actually doing anything that might demonstrate that meaningful prioritisation has taken place. For example the First Minister, or, as I believe we are now supposed to call him, ‘Full On John’ (O wad some Power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as ithers see us) has taken ‘personal control’ of the NHS in Scotland.

And where has that got us? Nearly one in six Scots on a waiting list. Nearly half a million of us have waited over 8 hours in Scottish A&E departments. And, most shockingly of all, health inequalities are widening and life expectancy is declining.

What about the climate emergency? Burns was so far ahead of his time when he lamented that I’m truly sorry man’s dominion, Has broken nature’s social union. I don’t think he could possibly understand how SNP MPs could justify voting against GB Energy, or their belief that nurses should pay more tax than oil and gas giants.

And I could weep when I think about how many Scottish kids of extraordinary talent never get the chance to become a Rabbie Burns – or a Jackie Kay – because they are trapped on the wrong side of our attainment gap.

All these failures reveal a lamentable gap between rhetoric and reality, between declaration and delivery. And, worse than that, this gap has been not just painful for everyone who actually needs Scotland’s public services to work, it’s been punishing for the Scottish taxpayer. Because there’s only one thing worse than bad policy, poorly implemented, and that’s bad policy, poorly implemented, with an enormous price tag.

By the time of the next Holyrood elections the SNP will have had just shy of 20 years in continuous administration. And whatever the polls say today, do any of us really think that the Scottish electorate, the canniest on earth, will think at that moment that the nationalists deserve another chance?

I don’t believe that they will. But I equally don’t believe that Labour can, or should, simply plan for a pendulum swing to us. After all, The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.

No, we have to have an argument about why we don’t just need a change of government at Holyrood but why Scots would benefit from a Labour government in Edinburgh working with a Labour government down the road. That requires a clear-eyed account of the state of the nation – an understanding of where we are and, crucially, why we are where we are.

Here is mine, and it’s in four parts. We have a problem around growth, a problem around political dysfunction, a problem around centralisation and a problem around accountability. And the answer to all four is Scottish Labour.

Let me explain why.

The first part of my diagnosis is that the UK faces a growth crisis. Our productivity is too low and our wages too stagnant. Too many people can barely get by, never mind get on. And as our Secretary of State for Scotland Ian Murray has said, the challenge is particularly acute in Scotland where we inherited not only an economic crisis and a series of crises in our public services, but an industrial crisis too.

That’s why Scottish Labour MPs and MSPs have had to work so hard to make progress on Grangemouth and Harland and Wolff – because when the Labour government took office in July there simply was no industrial strategy for Scotland’s workers. That’s why we are so focussed at the Scotland Office on both the government’s growth mission and the work of the Industrial Strategy Council, making sure that growth is a lived reality all across Scotland.

And it’s why we were so pleased to secure £1.4 billion for local growth projects in Scotland at the recent budget, alongside the record settlement for Scotland’s public services delivered by Scottish Labour MPs and voted against by the SNP.

The second is that Scotland has suffered for 14 years from a Tory government in Westminster and an SNP government in Edinburgh whose political strategies were symbiotic. Each traded on conflict with the other and the interests of the people of Scotland came a distant second to pinning the blame.

The Prime Minister could not have been clearer that we’re calling time on that. The resetting of relations between the two governments will be judged by its depth and duration but it is already allowing for a calmer, more outcomes-oriented way of doing business.

That’s not just my assessment but the assessment of the businesses, public sector leaders, charities, arts organisations and local government colleagues I speak to across Scotland. If I were to make a word cloud from every conversation I’ve had since I got this job the single biggest word would be ‘relief’ – relief that there is finally a government whose animating spirit isn’t the desire to divide and enrage people but instead to focus on making life better for all.

The third pillar of this analysis is that Scotland is far too centralised. The Scottish Parliament is now quarter of a century old. I’m a child of it – the vote in favour of a Scottish Parliament is the first ballot I ever cast. And let’s never forget that Labour is the party of devolution – that our current constitutional settlement is the product of the deep thinking and unwavering love of Scotland of the giants of our movement.

That is why I think the public should feel insulted by the frankly daft line of questioning to which we are sometimes subjected in the Labour party – about whether Anas agrees with Keir about everything.

So let’s be clear, sometimes different levels of government – and different levels of the Labour party – do have different takes on things. That’s how devolution was designed to work – designed, by us, its biggest defenders.

Devolution has come of age when it comes to the relationship between the two parliaments but I’m afraid devolution within Scotland is still in its infancy. That’s because devolution is not only a process but a habit of mind – one which is integral to Labour’s intellectual tradition but which the SNP has never acquired.

It should be dawning on the SNP, when they look at their own party, that centralising power in the hands of a few rarely creates something well run.

And what is true for a party is true for a nation – power should be dispersed widely and wielded accountably. But the SNP’s instincts remain towards tightly centralised power and not towards vibrant, responsive local government and powerful institutions rooted in our communities.

And that leads me to the fourth pillar of my diagnosis. This centralisation has led to an accountability crisis in Scotland. This is what Anas laid out in his new year speech setting out a new direction for Scotland. It cannot be right that there are more quangos in Scotland than there are MSPs.

The SNP has hoarded power in Edinburgh and then governed through a series of bodies dependent on £6.6 billion of public money, meaning the buck never has to stop with them. And it has meant that this quango class – many of whom are fantastically able and public spirited – operate at one step removed from either communities or the elected representatives who serve them.

All of which means our public services have remained essentially unreformed for years, without the driving imperative that comes from knowing you are answerable to parents, to patients and to passengers.

There will obviously be much more to say about Scottish Labour’s policy prescriptions much closer to the next election, but Anas has been clear: we will no longer accept a political culture in which politicians aren’t accountable and the path that is chosen is always the one of least resistance.

And if I am right, and these are the four main maladies afflicting Scottish politics today then we should be confident that we have the solution to each of them. But, more than confident, we should also be angry. We should be nursing our wrath to keep it warm, because all of these political failures have real consequences for the people and places we love.

It is possible to create a future where everyone is safe and everyone has enough. It is possible to restore nature’s social union. It is possible to become the version of humankind that Burns believed we had it in our power to become.

It is possible, but not inevitable. Delivering a Scottish Labour victory in 2026 is the main way progressives here in Scotland can help bring it into being. Let’s get on with winning that election the only way we ever have: together.