Monarch of the glens

For the first time in the parliament’s history, a single party is now in control of the Government, the legislature and its committees, and has supplied the Presiding Officer (PO).

After four years of being needled and frustrated by the other parties, it’s hardly surprising the SNP now plan to make the most of it, reviving legislation voted down in the last session and pressing ahead with an independence referendum.

Not even their sternest critics would deny the SNP have won an overwhelming endorsement to govern, but while Holyrood’s founding principles include “openness, accountability, and the sharing of power”, what -- or who -- can actually stop the SNP running riot with its majority, bulldozing laws through parliament and ignoring other views?

Alex Salmond has made a point of stressing he doesn’t have a monopoly of wisdom at Holyrood and wants to govern by consensus for all the people. However Labour claim there is now a serious “democratic deficit” at Holyrood, with the SNP holding more power than the institution’s designers ever envisaged for one party.

Last week’s election of an SNP MSP as Presiding Officer is an early “cause for concern”, a sign of sinister things to come, Labour claim, its MSPs darkly quoting Lord Acton: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

So is Alex Salmond about to live up to the El Presidente nickname bestowed by David Cameron? Is he Scotland’s Nixon-in-waiting?

On one level, Labour’s response to the election result reeks of sour grapes. Crushed at the polls, groping for a leader, it is instinctively falling back on what it did best through the last parliament -- moaning. That it was Paul Martin who was wheeled out to complain about Tricia Marwick’s election as Presiding Officer was particularly rich.

His father, Michael, was a Labour MP for 18 years before becoming speaker of the House of Commons when Tony Blair enjoyed a huge majority, staying put for nine of New Labour’s 13 years.

Neither Martin, father or son, was heard to complain about a democratic deficit in those days.

However, there is a kernel of truth in Labour’s complaining, and others feel uneasy too. It is that Holyrood lacks the democratic checks and balances to rein in a majority because the proportional way list MSPs are elected was meant to stop any party ever obtaining a majority.

The system is simply unprepared for this.

Most obviously, Holyrood is a unicameral parliament: there is no second chamber to fine tune legislation and force MSPs to think again.

In theory, the committees should compensate for this, scrutinising and revising laws, as well as delivering unwelcome home truths to Ministers. But while committees aspire to cross-party ideals, they often split on partisan lines, as the health committee did last year when it rejected a minimum price for alcohol.

The SNP majority means every committee can railroad through legislation if it chooses, and there is no risk of a comeback, no matter how infuriated the opposition might get.

The PO can also exert power behind the scenes. As well as overseeing debates and question time in the main chamber, Marwick will also chair the corporate body which oversees the parliament’s staff and services, and will chairs the bureau deciding debate topics and committee duties.

All told, the SNP has enormous power under the current system, and little to curb excesses.

To cap it all, there is the missing opposition. Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Tories are all looking for new leaders as a result of being steamrollered on May 5, leaving the First Minister effectively unchallenged in the parliament.

The No campaign against independence is likewise lacking a figurehead, letting Salmond set not only the question and timing of the referendum, but also the terms of the debate. David Cameron has said he will make a positive case for the status quo, but so far he’s the only person even trying to counter Salmond.

One Tory MP suggests the best way to save the Union may now be to tell people every No vote will be entered in a raffle “to win Pippa Middleton”. He’s joking -- hopefully.

lmosT as potent as his numerical lock on the parliament is the Salmond mythology. The First Minister hardly needs lift a finger to get what he wants because his opponents are scared witless of his supernatural wiles.

Instead of taking a deep breath and thinking what to do and co-ordinating their action, they try to out-guess Salmond’s next moves, tying themselves in knots in the process.

They are already doing it over the independence referendum and the Scotland Bill, which is currently going through Westminster, and which Salmond wants beefed up with extra powers.

The day after the election, David Mundell, the Tory minister at the Scotland Office, said Westminster might pre-empt Holyrood and hold its own referendum, thereby depriving Salmond of control over the question and the timing.

The next day, Mundell’s boss, LibDem Scottish Secretary Michael Moore, said categorically the UK Government would not hold a rival referendum.

Then this week, Moore’s boss, LibDem leader Nick Clegg, told MPs that “the Government as a whole” had in fact not yet taken a view on whether to hold its own referendum, adding: “It’s not fixed in stone one way or the other.”

The muddle is just as bad over the Scotland Bill.

After pouring cold water on two of Salmond’s three demands on the Bill -- devolving the Crown Estate and letting Holyrood set a Scottish rate of corporation tax -- Moore emerged from talks with the First Minister on Thursday saying he was suddenly in listening mode, and wanted to hear the Scottish Government’s case on both issues.

“The UK position has not changed,” Moore repeated afterwards, when it was patently drifting.

With other parties at sixes and sevens, it seems all Salmond has to do is sit back and enjoy the chaos, biding his time before he strikes.

So is it bedtime for democracy at Holyrood? Not quite. The opposition is not wholly impotent.

For a start, there is more to holding ministers to account than committees and debates.

Despite his initial bewilderment at being elected in 2007, one of the most effective inquisitors of the last parliament was Labour’s Lord George Foulkes, who used parliamentary questions (PQs) and freedom of information (FoI) requests to expose Government shortcomings.

Kezia Dugdale, who was Foulkes’s assistant and is now a Labour MSP for Lothians, says such scrutiny will be even more important in this parliament.

“There is a democratic deficit,” she says.“We now have a situation where the SNP has the majority of convenerships on committees, which report to a parliament with an SNP majority, presiding over by an SNP Presiding Officer.

“The checks and balances are just not there. So it will rely more heavily on FoI and PQs.”

Patrick Harvie, the co-convener of the Greens, agrees FoI will come to the fore, and a quick test of the new Government’s professed openness will be its willingness to share information.

“If the opposition is going to work it has to be about access to information and ministers being willing to be open and transparent. They should have the confidence to do that.

“The role of the PO will also be important. The PO needs to be willing to resolve disputes about who is telling the truth in the chamber, not just leave them hanging in the air, as has happened.”

He says Holyrood should also revise its standing orders to allow for greater scrutiny.

“Ministers need to say how parliament is going to be run -- as a rubber stamp or an opportunity for scrutiny. That remains to be seen.”

However, in the end, the best safeguard against SNP excess is probably the SNP itself.

In the run-up to the referendum, the party needs to be on its best behaviour if it is to win voters round to its raison d’etre.

If Salmond, his ministers or his backbenchers are perceived as autocratic, sloppy or sleazy, it will doom the entire enterprise, and the SNP will miss the best shot in its 77 year history.

It’s a strong incentive to do the right thing. But so much power may be impossible to resist.