In an age of nepotistic knighthoods, dodgy peerages and now even returned CBEs, it is easy to understand the general cynicism around the honours system. Too often it is used to reward politicians for failure rather than success, loyalty rather than achievement, and party rather than principle. None of that, however, applies to Jackie Baillie, who will today officially become the first sitting MSP to be invested as a Dame at a ceremony at Holyrood Palace.
The Scottish Labour member bestrides the devolution era like a colossus. Elected for her constituency of Dumbarton at the first Scottish parliament election in 1999, Dame Jackie has held it – much to the SNP’s chagrin – at every election since. This makes her the only non-nationalist to continuously hold the same seat over 25 years of devolution. Her reputation is so strong locally that at the 2021 election, even as Scottish Labour slumped to its worst result of the devolution era, she increased her majority by almost 1,400 votes, helping to deprive Nicola Sturgeon of her much-coveted SNP landslide in the process.
Jackie’s staying power means that she is still in Holyrood to see the resurgence of the party she has served for 25 years, and the folly of those colleagues who demanded it must sell out to survive.
Such political longevity has – for better and worse – given Dame Jackie a ringside seat for Scottish Labour’s brief success and extended decline. Following Donald Dewar’s victory in the first Holyrood election in 1999, she rose to become Minister for Social Justice and founded a widely-respected homelessness taskforce, work that was included in her damehood citation. This was a period where the promise of devolution had yet to be tainted by questions of constitution and referenda, and Dame Jackie thrived in it.
It was during these heady early years that she also began to cement her reputation as a great parliamentary character. Often seen clad in a black cape, or driving her red Volkswagen Beetle, Baillie – who was born in British Hong Kong to a Scottish mother and Portuguese father – quickly became known for fixing opponents with a stern gaze over her trademark reading glasses, perched precariously at the tip of her nose.
Such flourishes were backed up by strong, but never aggressive, parliamentary performances, where she could engage with both passion and irreverence as the occasion demanded. As Alex Massie has put it, Dame Jackie ‘both loves to wind-up the SNP and is good at it’. Yet it was out of office that she would prove indispensable not only to party, but also to country.
As Scottish Labour fell from triumph to tragedy, she became a ballast of moderation and prudence. A ruthless backroom organiser, Dame Jackie persuaded, browbeat and cajoled Labour colleagues into maintaining at least an outward semblance of professionalism during a decade of widespread and unproductive panic. It is indicative of the party’s turmoil after its first defeat in 2007 that she has twice had to serve as interim leader amid repeated leadership contests, in one instance in 2017 even having to replace a previous interim leader who was himself forced to resign.
Her greatest achievement in this period was keeping Labour as a party of the Union. Following its drubbing at the 2015 general election, there were increasingly loud calls – particularly from the left – for the party to drop its opposition to independence, support another referendum, or both. Such a move would have made Sturgeon’s task to break up the UK considerably easier – not least when Jeremy Corbyn was UK Labour leader – and it was Dame Jackie, almost through sheer force of personality alone, who stopped it happening.
Similarly, despite being a great political survivor, she has never allowed party to trump principle. In particular, she has repeatedly spoken up in favour of the Trident nuclear deterrent, based at Faslane in her constituency, despite internal opposition in the Labour Party. As her damehood citation itself states, she has ‘not always taken politically convenient or comfortable positions, but instead has always put principle and the good of the country first’.
Dame Jackie’s staying power means that she is still in Holyrood to see the resurgence of the party she has served for 25 years, and the folly of those colleagues who demanded it must sell out to survive. Of course, the challenges facing a possible Labour administration after the next Holyrood election in 2026 will be immense. But the fact her party is once again in a position to beat the SNP is in no small measure down to Dame Jackie, who has rightly been recognised as a giant of the devolution era.
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