Scotland in harness

Politics works like a cart drawn by a number of antagonistic, independent-minded horses. Two or three are usually hitched to our cart of state, each wanting to pull along a different line. The direction the cart goes might be wobbly, but it usually ends up as a rough middle way between the course that each would take if it were hitched up alone.

If you like to whip your metaphors beyond exhaustion, you can have all kinds of fun with this. A one-party state is a cart drawn by one horse, with the rival horses hiding behind hedges and covertly lobbing stones at the beast, trying to upset its progress. Russian politics will soon be a harness of half-a-dozen ponies trotting along neatly, taking orders from the retired carthorse striding alongside. France’s horses are happy to accept extra-large nose bags, in exchange for altering their line a little; perhaps so as not to annoy some small animal en route. Italian politics involves horse’s heads, but only in the non-metaphorical sense.

Here in Scotland, we have our own version. We have two horses, one of which wants to take a particular course, towards its own vision of how the country should be run. Meanwhile, the other horse is sitting down on the tarmac demanding to be hitched to a different cart.

As the physicists amongst you will have noticed, this causes certain problems. For normal politics to work, for politicians to be able to debate commonplace issues like health, education and transport, the constitutional questions must be settled. What the basic framework of a state is, and where its borders lie, matters far more than any policy on schools or hospitals. Until these questions are broadly agreed across the political class, normal politics will take a back seat.

No one can play a game without knowing what the rules are. If the two sides disagree about what the rules should be and try to make it up as they go along, you can be sure that most of their time will be spent arguing about them.

The SNP and Labour are the only two contenders for power, and only one of them wants to work inside the current framework. The other finds little real ideological difference between it and its rival, only its commitment to tear up the current rules. Scottish politics is a carve-up between an unreflective centre-left party that believes in independence and an unthinking centre-left party that believes in unionism.

In post-devolution Scotland, we’ve managed to invert the usual model of politics. Usually, a country is governed by a political system where the rules are fixed, but the policies swing between two visions. Whereas Scotland’s main parties are agreed on their policies, and instead tug the constitution to and fro. It is a ludicrous way of doing things. It is as if UKIP were always the large minority party at Westminster, unable to win independence from the EU, but not interested in much else.

Nothing can be done while the Scottish question remains unsettled. Politics up here is not a left-right battle, nor a Millian tug between progress and reaction. Constitutional matters are the big battleground, and the battles of ideology are reduced to nothing but piddling little disputes over banning airguns and happy hours. The elephant in the room will need to be kicked out before there’s any space for the parties to spread out.

Scotland can’t afford this wrangling and indecision. We have swathes of the country stuck in a rotting world of twentieth-century socialism, unable to move on. Welfarism has turned parts of the country into deserts of opportunity. The Scottish education system used to be something we prided ourselves on. Now, it is only the deluded who think so.

Amongst the political class, there's no desire to think outside the old consensus of soft leftism. There are no new ideas, not even any curiosity about different ways of doing things. We trudge on, obsessed with the constitutional question, trying to solve deep-rooted social problems by passing ever more prohibitions, more directives, more initiatives, and failing to see that the levers of power are clanking freely in mid-air.

There is no appetite in the country for any shift away from the mushy socialism that 80% of the Parliament backs, not while the constitutional question hangs over it all. Scottish politics is stagnant, unwilling to decide firmly whether it wants independence or not, and until it does, unable to move on from it. But the great obstacle is that independence can count on the unyielding support of about 30% of the population, just as it has for decades, which guarantees both that the SNP will remain a major party and that it won’t win a referendum.

Unless we decide, and both sides accept the constitution, there’s no chance of any other kind of progress. The two parties crowd together on policy, sticking close to the populist consensus, so as to save ammunition for the big struggle. It’s an endurance contest, the two sides trying to wear each other down until one gives in. It is a waste of time that we really don’t have.

Scotland produces many talented, clever, interesting people who can do great things, as a quick look around London will tell you. Until we figure out what we want to be as a country, we'll stay squabbling in the middle of the road.