All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The SNP Government may not be corrupt in the financial sense, but there are worrying signs that Alex Salmond's absolute majority in Holyrood is breeding elective dictatorship.
The Offensive Behaviour at Football Bill has been driven through Parliament in the teeth of sustained and considered opposition from all the other parties – Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and the Greens. Mr Salmond once said that he didn't have a monopoly on wisdom and that he would listen to Parliament. On this issue he hasn't.
It raises again a question that was posed by Lord Steel when he stood down as Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament. The former co-chairman of the Scottish Constitutional Convention said there was a danger inherent in a single chamber parliament, like Holyrood, that bad legislation would be passed because there is no upper house, no revising chamber, to give it a second look.
His concerns were dismissed on the grounds that Holyrood did not require a "House of Lords" because it was elected on proportional representation, and therefore no one party could dominate it. Holyrood was designed to be a parliament of minorities in which parties would be forced to seek co-operation and consensus –unlike in Westminster, where the House of Commons is conventionally dominated by a single party possessing an inflated majority thanks to the first-past-the-post voting system.
All that changed in May 2011. The SNP achieved what few thought possible: an absolute majority of seats in a proportional election. The founding fathers (and mothers) of the Scottish Constitutional Convention never envisaged a result like this. The very system was designed to prevent it.
Holyrood is in danger of becoming a one-party state. The Presiding Officer is effectively chosen by the Government, the committees are dominated by the Government, votes are invariably won by the Government. It is time to ask whether this is what Scotland had in mind when it voted for home rule – all the more so since this could be the template for the government of an independent Scotland.
Mr Salmond's election victory was a remarkable achievement. But now more than ever he needs to remember what he said in his acceptance speech as First Minister back in May 2007: "This Government will rely on the strength of argument in parliament and not the argument of parliamentary strength".
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