Few of Nicola Sturgeon’s promises have aged worse than her pledge to be ‘the most accessible First Minister ever’. The SNP launched its council elections campaign yesterday but refused to invite any print journalists: an effective press blackout designed to shield the party’s leader from questions on policy. Some newspapers declined to cover the event; others denounced it as a sham.
As Conor Matchett of the Scotsman points out, the move is in keeping with the party’s long-term media strategy: a broad distrust of the print press and a belief that independence and SNP support will be won online and on TV and not through legacy media. Newspaper sales have halved since the SNP came to power: why risk an awkward stand-off at the launch going viral when you can release hand-picked images instead?
Few governments welcome interrogation: in a nationalist party like the SNP, questions are often conflated as criticism of the state itself. Michael Simmons and I have written about this in this week’s Spectator, explaining how the SNP’s preference for secrecy leads to worse outcomes. We chose to focus on the Ferguson shipyard saga but there are other episodes we could have used like the bailouts of Bifab and Prestwick airport or the botched Rangers FC prosecutions.
The record makes for bleak reading. But there are now signs of a belated fightback. The Alex Salmond trial triggered a civil war that laid bare much of the SNP’s internal workings and Holyrood’s institutional shortcomings. Sturgeon’s opponents in Edinburgh and in London ought to study these closely and seek to strengthen the checks and balances on her power.
The Scottish Conservatives, for instance, have woken up to the SNP’s centralising tendencies. Sturgeon and others like to present independence as an emancipatory project while preferring to hoard power in the Central Belt. Tories north of the border have therefore begun championing an alternative vision of devolution that gives powers back from Edinburgh to local councils. Westminster’s vibrant eco-system of think tanks and pressure groups is also largely absent in Holyrood; former Tory MP Luke Graham will be launching the British Civic Institute later this month to address this.
In London, there are plans for the forthcoming Queens’ Speech to include measures for UK-wide data collection hubs, allowing proper metrics to be kept of public sector services across Britain. This will help curtail the SNP’s tactic of ‘data divergence’ – pulling Scotland out of international league tables to hide poorly performing schools and hospitals.
Such initiatives are unlikely to topple the SNP from their seemingly-unassailable status as the natural party of Scottish government. But what they might achieve is a more accountable form of Scottish government: one less prone to waste, mismanagement and unnecessary secrecy.
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