IN April last year, I asked Nicola Sturgeon what she hoped to achieve during her time as First Minister. Her reply was thoughtful, and also heartening, and I’ll quote it at a little length. “You only get one shot at being First Minister. If you don’t set yourself up to fail you’re not actually trying to use it for anything. If you go into anything you do in life saying I’m not going to try that because I might fail… take that attitude and you never achieve anything. You know, I want to go to my bed every night knowing that whatever you think about me or whatever anybody else thinks about me, I’ve done what I think is right. If I apply that principle I won’t always get it right but I’ll be able to look at myself in the mirror in the morning.”
Well, this is the week she can finally start living up to those words. Governing is a hell of a thing when you have elections to fight and referendums to lose. For obvious and perhaps understandable reasons, the day job – the schools, hospitals and economy bit – can get lost in the fog of war. Electoral contests are a different type of game: angles must be judged, positions taken, corners cut. Elections are short, sharp shocks, governing is (or should be) a longer, blunter instrument. This isn’t a Nat problem, it’s just politics.
Ms Sturgeon – and Scotland – finds herself in unfamiliar territory. The next three-and-a-half years, God and Theresa May willing, are something of a blank canvas. Between now and the next Holyrood election in 2021, Ms Sturgeon’s task will be to focus on the day job: the school, hospitals and economy bit. The rest of us can take a breather from what has become the rather onerous task of being an active participant in contemporary Scottish and British democracy.
This, now, is the moment Ms Sturgeon must set herself up to fail. In the Programme for Government that she will set out today she must show a level of ambition for Scotland within the current devolved framework that, 20 years on from the vote that gave legitimacy to the rebirth of the Scottish Parliament, at last starts to deliver on that institution’s under-explored potential.
Will the First Minister seize the opportunity? Or will she confine herself to the populist handouts, anti-Westminster whingeing and body-swerving of complex choices that have too often defined her party over its decade in government?
As one of life’s optimists, I prefer to believe the former until I’m proved wrong. And from the bits and pieces I’ve picked up it seems like there will at least be some oomf in her statement.
For example, Ms Sturgeon is expected to announce the establishment of a National Investment Bank, its creation to be overseen by Benny Higgins, the brilliant chief executive of Tesco Bank who is standing down from that role after a decade. Mr Higgins will bring to the task the discipline and focus of a long and successful career in high finance and ensure the much-needed rigour of the private sector is a founding principle of what is likely to be a controversial agency that sits behind the private banks, has access to market funding and supports infrastructure projects and small and medium-sized businesses with cheap levels of funding.
For some, perhaps fairly, the new bank will be seen as a sop to the hard left – an indication that the Nats have taken fright at the advance of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour. One of the main proposals in Mr Corbyn’s manifesto for June’s General Election was the creation of a UK-wide investment bank. A Scottish version has also been backed by pro-independence groups such as Common Weal.
But I’d hope there’s more to this than simply playing to the base, and the recruitment of the well-respected Mr Higgins suggests so. The key will be to ensure the body has sufficient funds and the ambition to make a real difference in sectors such as technology, biosciences and renewable energy, which have to be a crucial part of the future Scottish economy. It will also need independence from its political masters and their short-term games: the treatment of Scottish Enterprise, which has done good work in this field through its own mini investment bank but seen its budget chopped and changed as has suited the political mood, is something of a red flag. The UK Government’s privatisation of the excellent Green Investment Bank just a few years after it was set up and before it had realised its full potential was driven by depressingly narrow ideology.
The right has an allergy to these types of large-scale state interventions, fearing they will waste public money, crowd out the private sector and skew markets. However, public trust in the private sector to deliver desired outcomes and to do so with anything approaching a care for the good of society is at a low. Voters need to see the re-establishment of state agency – that government can make a difference where it’s needed and is not simply a plaything of international finance and corporate behemoths. In the end, what will matter is that the new investment bank does what it does well. It deserves cross-party support as it attempts to find its feet.
I’ve long believed the Nats’ best route to their goal of independence is to govern effectively, ambitiously and realistically. Too much of their time has been spent decrying what’s done elsewhere, appeasing producer interest groups and avoiding radical innovations that might split their existing pro-independence community. This behaviour is never going to persuade mainstream Scotland, concerned as it is with its children’s education, its parents’ health and the condition of its wallet, to make the leap. The outpouring of goodwill that followed the recent opening of the new Queensferry Crossing is a good example of how ambitious activity – doing big stuff – can improve the national mood and draw us together in patriotic feeling.
Ms Sturgeon is also expected to reshuffle her Cabinet in the coming days. She could do worse than take a fresh look at the key economic departments. Derek Mackay, the Finance Secretary, was once tipped for big things but has failed to impress – he is seen as a wet blanket with little authority or steel. Keith Brown, the Economy, Jobs and Fair Work Secretary, is a classic, straight-talking political bruiser who deserves a place in the frontline but lacks the skills to run such a key, policy-heavy department. Further, there are growing grumbles within the civil service about the importance placed on presentation and the media over the quality of what is being presented.
Some simple steps could give Ms Sturgeon’s Government a much-needed shot in the arm. Over the coming weeks she must begin to take them.
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