As Nationalists settle into government, they need to accept 'the state' is not the same as 'the party'
THE turning of the year is a time of ritual. Families cleave together, communities genuinely commune, strangers are greeted like old friends, resolutions are made. An important part of that New Year ritual is the desire to look forward, to leave the
past behind, to contemplate what might be, rather than ruminate on what might have been.
A good time, then, to ask "whither Scotland?" and to consider how the Scottish National Party intends to lead the nation. And, indeed, whether it is capable of doing so.
Only the most fanatical political partisan could deny that the SNP's ascent to power has had a rejuvenating effect on the Scottish body politic. There is a sense of excitement, of thrilling uncertainty, and not a little pride that the Scots have dared to be different.
One of the reasons the SNP took power was that the dull competency of the McConnell era had been replaced by an arrogant complacency. Ministers too long in power, too comfortable in office, turned from politicians into administrators.
Although, to his credit, the former First Minister fretted in his last months in office over the assumption that power would be retained, many of his colleagues did not share his fears. They paid the price in May.
In their place came a new, vigorous government, anxious to prove that it could do something with its new-found power.
At first, the SNP under Alex Salmond, Scotland's first Nationalist First Minister, demonstrated that it would do things differently. It was populist but popular.
It was populism with a purpose, sending a message to voters that the Nationalists cared not just about the constitution but about things the electorate cared about – council tax, bridge tolls, hospital ward closures.
But, as they have settled into power, another side of the SNP has emerged, of which the voters are, as yet, unaware: the side which demonstrates that the party's conduct in office reflects the primacy of its goal of independence.
So, Kenny MacAskill, the justice secretary, has spent much of the past month in "battles" with Westminster over aspects of law and order. Some of these are important, such as measures to control air weapons, though the solution is far from obvious, even if Holyrood were given legislative powers.
Others are simply picking fights for the sake of it, as shown by the ridiculous row about police officers supervising lorry inspections. MacAskill says Westminster intransigence is stopping the freeing up of "hundreds of hours" of police time. But, once you calculate that the more than 16,000 police officers in Scotland work more than half a million hours a year, this is exposed for what it is: cheap political posturing.
But there is something more serious here. The attitude of MacAskill – and of others, such as Richard Lochhead, the minister for blaming Whitehall for the problems of all the fish in the sea – shows that the SNP is in office but still in the mindset of opposition.
There is a reason for this. The Nationalists are not a party united by ideology. There is a huge gulf between those on the free-market right economically and those who have views that Lenin would recognise. Only one thing unites them: the cause of independence. They are the outsiders' party, the anti-establishment party, the party that is different from all others, put upon, persecuted even, by the forces of the Unionist Magesterium.
Although it has been largely hidden from the public by the party's brilliantly ruthless spin machine, in government, this attitude manifests itself in ways that should trouble those who care about the important division between political parties and the state.
When Mohammed Atif Siddique, from Alva, was convicted of terrorism offences in Scotland, there were some at a senior level in the Scottish Government who would have condemned the justice system in similar terms to those controversially used by the lawyer Aamer Anwar.
What people of that mindset seem to be unable, or unwilling, to understand is that they have taken the responsibilities of office. They make the law, they administer the law. In some respects, they are the law.
Yet, because Nationalists see themselves as underdogs, because their urge is to side with people who, in their world view, are outside the prevailing orthodoxy, there is a dangerous assumption that the cause of independence puts them above and beyond the law; that the end justifies the means.
For, when all the sophisticated rhetoric is cast aside, Nationalists have an unremitting belief, a faith. For them, independence is the only way for Scotland. Independence is patriotism. Patriotism is independence.
Of course, support for civil nationalism is a perfectly legitimate belief. What is dangerous is the unspoken assumption that those who take a contrary view are somehow heretics or not "properly Scottish".
In his government's document on independence, Salmond highlighted the words of the champion of Irish home rule. Charles Stewart Parnell said this: "No man has the right to set a boundary to the onward march of a nation. No man has the right to say: 'Thus far shalt thou go, and no further'."
Parnell was right. But there is a corollary. It is also true that no man, and no political party, has the right to assume that the onward march of the nation can be realised by their beliefs alone. No political party has a monopoly of wisdom. And no political party has the right to subvert the state to its own ends.
If it is to become a legitimate party of government, the SNP will have to accept this important constitutional principle: that the state is not the same thing as the party. If it cannot, or will not, draw that distinction, the consequences for Scotland are ominous.
The full article contains 986 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
