|
Take bull by the horns
over election timing
Respect!? Don’t make me laugh. Scotland’s politicians were conned.
Respect from Westminster is just another weasel word when applied to Scotland. But don’t let’s get mad, getting even is much better.
When David Cameron visited Holyrood a couple of days after he was elected
(if not by Scots voters) most people welcomed his promise of a respectful working relationship with Holyrood.
Sceptics kept quiet as the new PM and Alex Salmond gave a fair impression of two guys who really enjoyed being together.
This particular sceptic had already written to the Presiding Officer about the harm to Scotland’s best interests by holding the 2015 Westminster elections on the same day as that earmarked for the Holyrood election.
Considered
Danny Alexander, the Inverness Lib Dem MP, who was David Cameron’s Scottish Secretary before being moved to fill the no. 2 slot at the Treasury, assured me the matter had been raised and that opposition such as my own was being respectfully considered.
So far, so good. He meant what he said, of that I’m sure, and another of his Scots
Lib Dem colleagues and I established a line of communication for further discussion, if any were needed.
I didn’t believe the clash of dates had occurred because someone down there had something against Scotland. Once again, I thought, Scotland had been forgotten, overlooked by politicians and civil servants alike in Whitehall and Westminster.
I was too generous. The argument against two elections on the same day was clear and being properly addressed, or so we believed. But instead, the Coalition Government had the effrontery to tell us by press release that our pleas had been dismissed. To add insult to injury, they’ve decided next year’s Holyrood election should share a day with the Alternative Vote referendum.
Virtue
I’ve written again to Alex Fergusson. Since Westminster is stringing us along we should take the bull by the horns and go for five-year fixed term parliaments. Far from being a hammer to crack a nut, my request is an exercise in making a virtue out of necessity.
There’s now a pattern to our present four-year Holyrood Parliaments. Following elections, it takes the best part of the first year to put back in the box destructive party political electioneering.
In the middle two years, MSPs should work together more constructively but then in the pre-election period MSPs begin jockeying inside their parties for a favourable position on the Regional Lists and the parties start gearing up for the election.
So the productive, bolder policy-making phase ends and in the present Holyrood session, we’ve also had the distraction of a drawn out Westminster election, further distorting the conduct and temper of business, and arguably, making all-party efforts to combat the economic crisis impossible.
Another year would lengthen the positive part of the cycle, allow Holyrood the attention it should have during elections and may bring about a better quality of governance, at no extra expense.
|
Margo
MacDonald
