One of the greatest ironies of these past 15 years of Scottish home rule is that Labour never really got devolution.
Sure, it talked a good game. From Donald Dewar all the way through to Johann Lamont, the Scottish Labour Party championed its achievement in creating the Scottish Parliament as if that, in itself, proved its passion for the cause of devolution. But there has always been a big gap between what Labour said – “we are the party of devolution” – and what it did.
Its real attitude was exposed in the contempt with which the party treated the very first parliament, in 1999. Those who had hoped for a new parliament of fresh Scottish talent were sorely disappointed. Labour pushed a load of hopeless ex-councillors, party time-servers, trade union lackeys and dull bureaucrats and assorted yes-men into the parliament – instead of searching out a new generation of leaders.
It used Holyrood as a reward for those who had done their time but were considered not good enough for the Commons – and when you look at some of Labour MPs Scotland has elected over the last 30 years, you can tell that the bar must have been pretty low already.
Then came tension between the MSPs and MPs. It started back in 1999 and it has never gone away. The MPs looked down on the MSPs and the MSPs treated the MPs with suspicion – and referred to them as “London”. Both teams vied for control of the party and, usually, the London-based end seemed to win.
This did change, at least on the surface, with the election of Ms Lamont two years ago. She made sure she became the leader of all of Scottish Labour, not just the Holyrood parliamentary group (until then, the leader of the Scottish Party was also the leader of the UK Labour Party). Officially, she was in charge of all those 41 Scottish Labour MPs at Westminster but did they ever really acknowledge it? Hardly ever, and this was the start of her demise.
It was their constant back-biting and bitching that pushed her to the edge. And, when she went, she left blaming London Labour’s tendency to treat the Scottish party like a branch office. The final straw for her was the move by the London leadership to sack the General Secretary of the Scottish Labour Party, Ian Price, apparently, without any reference to her.
If true, this shows that, 15 years on, Labour still doesn’t get devolution. Devolution means trusting the people at a local level to make decisions. It means learning to let go, not control freakery. It means not imposing your will from above. It also shows, not only has Labour learned nothing from 15 years of devolution but, more importantly, it has learned nothing from the referendum and the upsurge in Nationalist support too.
Ultimately, this is about power – it always is in politics. This is why those Scottish Labour MPs disagreed with Ms Lamont, this is why they muttered so loudly behind her back that she had to go and this is why they are now fighting to have one of their own number elected as Scottish Party leader.
But what Labour’s UK chieftans have never accepted is that power is shifting. It is shifting to Scotland and, with every transfer of responsibility from Westminster to Holyrood, so those MPs have less of it to wield.
This is what devolution is all about but, once again, Labour’s Scottish MPs have shown that, 15 years on, they still don’t get it.
Comments