IT’S a strange election, isn’t it? Not for all the obvious Covid-related reasons, with almost no on-the-ground campaigning, although that does give the campaign a rather unreal feeling. No, for me, the strangest characteristic of this election is that only one party is trying to win it.

It has become accepted, almost automatic, that the SNP is the party which wins elections, while the other parties merely try to prevent them from securing a majority in an electoral system which, let us remember, is openly and specifically rigged against such an outcome.

In elections past, before the first independence referendum, leaders of the primary opposition party used to campaign to be First Minister. John Swinney, unsuccessfully, in 2003; Alex Salmond, successfully, in 2007; and before the SNP majority in 2011, the polls indicated there was credibility in Iain Gray’s bid for the top job.

This no longer happens. Ruth Davidson in 2016, and Douglas Ross today, campaign not to win themselves, but merely to limit the SNP’s triumph. This is peak constitutional politics, with the pro-independence supertanker gathering more and more support based on that single issue. It is, to those who are not political partisans, profoundly unsatisfactory.

There may be light at the end of the tunnel. There is a reasonable likelihood of a second independence referendum during the five years of the next Parliament. It has long been my view that the second independence referendum will be the last one, irrespective of the result. A Yes vote brings an obvious end to the issue, but a No vote will do likewise, because those voters who we might call the ‘reasonable middle’ will naturally be repelled by the SNP asking for a third bite at the cherry, having tolerated them asking for a second.

What would this mean? Most importantly, it gives us hope that the 2026 election may return Scotland to electoral normality. It may be an election which comes after the constitutional question has had its answer. And, as a result, it may be an election which focuses on the issues that most elections around the democratic world focus on: performance.

In this way, if the SNP is to earn a fifth term of office based on its performance, taking it into its third decade of government, it will have to exhibit an exceptionally rare political quality: self-awareness.

The SNP campaign has reeled off its list of achievements in government, as governments are inclined to do during elections, and indeed many of them will inevitably have benefited pockets of people throughout the country.

However, I would imagine that those at the higher echelons of the SNP who possess this rare self-awareness, and there are plenty of them, would assess their performance as solid rather than spectacular. This is most certainly not an incompetent government, but it does have rather a managerial quality.

In long-term governments, managerialism often equals drift. And that word – drift – is apt in describing Scotland’s public service performance. School education is perhaps the most obvious area of concern. We love a bit of Scottish exceptionalism, and you don’t have to listen to too many political interviews before you hear that our schooling system is the “envy of the world”.

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If that were ever true, it is patently now utter balderdash. We have a school system run by councils in the interests of teaching unions, where pupils and parents often feel like an afterthought, at best, an inconvenience at worst.

There is no longer equity in our system. It’s ugly; in urban Scotland, a smart kid in a good catchment area can reach for the sky, but a smart kid in a poor catchment area crashes into an impenetrable ceiling. International comparisons show us to be average, and worsening.

In healthcare, the outlook is no better. We hide behind our public displays of affection for the NHS, and damn anyone who supports reform as a nurse-hating leper, in order that we can defer an honest conversation about its performance. However, sunlight would be the NHS’s best disinfectant. We have 20 per cent fewer doctors than the OECD average. We have half the number of beds. Less than half the number of MRI scanners and CT scanners. We scrape into the OCED top-20 survival rates for the major cancers – colorectal, breast and cervical – but we don’t make the top-20 for mortality rates after heart attack, haemorrhagic stroke or ischemic stroke.

These are not isolated. Our infrastructure – digital and physical – whilst clearly not crumbling, is hardly a beacon. Our astonishing natural resources are not untapped, but nor are they fully exploited.

In short, opposition claims of an SNP-run Third World Scotland are, of course, hyperbolic nonsense, but they tap into a credible concern.

There are people aplenty at the head of the party who understand this vulnerability. They will, of course, be conscious of rocking a boat filled with Yes voters, but at the same time they will know that the time will come where their performance will be subject to significantly more scrutiny than it is during this election campaign.

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There is much they could do. If I were in their shoes, I would start at the top. During the latter part of this government, often because of resignations, the Cabinet has become rather unwieldy and confusing. There are twelve Cabinet Secretaries and, with fully one-third of them retiring next month, this seems to be an ideal opportunity to reduce their number, perhaps to eight.

This is not a call for a bonfire of the politicians, however. On the contrary, I would balance the reduction in Cabinet Secretaries by increasing the number of supporting Ministers from the current 14 to around 20.

Confusion accelerates drift. A reduction at the top, and an increase underneath would, in my view, help Ministers rediscover a laser focus on key areas, whilst simultaneously allowing their Cabinet Secretaries to engage in the blue sky thinking that they will need to earn another throw of the dice in 2026.

Government is hard, even for a short time. It’s a damn sight harder to keep it going for this long. As far as government performance goes, this election is a free pass for the SNP. But it may very well be the last.

Andy Maciver is Director of Message Matters