Conversations
in a
small town
Rear Window
6 May 1999
Thom Cross
Why the little steam
there was in this campaign
is running out
Alf Young’s election notebook
Campaigns that were meant to be crucibles to test competing visions and ideologies have been turned into games of political charades.
Nearly 50 years on and we are still wrestling with the consequences of our waning economic power. For the rise of Germany and Japan in the 1960s now read the rise of China, India, Russia, Brazil and other would-be economic super-powers today. Where, in the wake of a massive banking crash and recession, does that leave us? Can renewable energy and a perpetual council tax freeze underwrite the future prosperity of all five million of us? The opening question on the BBC’s Big Economy Debate on Sunday was simple: Where are the new jobs going to come from? All the panelists agreed that, thanks to the fiscal squeeze, jobs in the public sector would be lost. Apart from that promised renewables revolution and a small business renaissance, they rather ran out of answers to where the new private sector jobs to take up the slack would be created.
And that, I sense, goes a long way to explaining why this election campaign is fast running out of what little steam it generated at the outset. Voters instinctively know that our would-be MPs or MSPs are no longer brave enough – this side of the votes being cast – to level with them on big issues like international competitiveness or intergenerational equity which have been festering for decades unresolved as parliaments come and parliaments go. Campaigns that were meant to be crucibles to test competing visions and ideologies have been turned into games of political charades.
The main party manifestoes in this election broadly mimic each other’s promises. They vary only in the small change of implementing this pledge or that. This being Scotland there is, of course, the national question. With the SNP and Labour head-to-head in the polls it is entirely possible that another nationalist minority government could be running Scotland for the next four years. Independence or union is surely not a small change issue? It is not. But even its proponents haven’t tried to make it the centrepiece of their appeal to Scottish voters to give them a renewed Holyrood mandate. With one poll ranking a referendum on independence 22nd out of 24 policy priorities for voters that isn’t really surprising.
The big pitch is who can manage devolved government best. And on that the policy distinctions begin to melt away. Convergence is the name of the game. The main parties all want a council tax freeze, at least for the first two years of this next parliament. But none of them want to talk about what that might mean, cumulatively, for councils’ ongoing capacity to deliver even key services. Or whether an extended freeze might mean an extended pay standstill for local authority staff.
They all want more small businesses to create more jobs. But we’ve had more than 20 years of trying to boost Scotland’s small business birth rate with precious little to show for all the effort. The top line objective of the green energy revolution is now 100% renewables by 2020. But even if that improbable target were reached, no one wants to talk about how Scotland’s electricity demand would be satisfied on still days when the wind turbines don’t rotate. The only way would be to import dirtier sources of power from elsewhere.
Modern politicians only engage with hard and complex choices and their consequences after each mandate has been secured. Each campaign focus is increasingly on pitch and tone, managing expectations and minimising gaffes. But unlike X-Factor or Strictly Come Dancing we are not switching on in our millions in anticipation. More of us don’t even bother to vote. I’ve seen and heard nothing in this campaign so far that convinces me that depressing trend is about to change any time soon.
Alf Young is an award-winning journalist who writes regularly for the Scottish Review
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