Kevin Mckenna: Why sad Baron McConnell got it wrong on what ails Scotland

As the Scottish news cycle turns through the year we’ve become familiar with its big set pieces: Winter might bring the latest homeless figures and not long afterwards, spring will provide the latest child poverty numbers (give or take the odd 10,000). Now it’s summer when news is thinner on the ground. Perhaps we could look at prisons. Has anyone checked the foodbank situation recently? If all else fails we can lob in a cheeky wee FOI.

Right now, we’ve got the public inquiry into the Sheku Bayou case and once more we’ll wring our hands at claims of institutionalised racism in the police. The police have a news cycle all to themselves. Last month we paused to consider the culture of sexism and misogyny in Police Scotland following revelations about the number of officers facing complaints of misconduct.

READ MORE: A tale of two Scotlands

The force still isn’t trusted by Scotland’s Irish community owing to inconsistencies in its favoured methods of crowd control. But we’ll let it pass as we always do because, if we didn’t, then someone might start asking for an independent inquiry into policing.

We are tricoteuses sitting impassively as we watch another community twisting in the wind, sending pictures across Twitter of our dinners and golden sunsets over Broughton. Isn’t life braw?

And when the poor do attempt to be agents of their own destiny we recoil. Look at those bin workers. Why can’t they just accept what everyone else is accepting? Don’t they know they’re embarrassing us while we try to put on a good show for Joe Biden and Jeff Bezos at COP26?

And why can’t those drugs recovery activists just accept that we’ve spent all the money on more research by academically-experienced stakeholders? Yes, we know there are only 16 rehab beds in Glasgow but these things take time. Here have a wee injection in a safe space instead. Wash your hands afterwards and put your needles in the bin. There’s a good addict.

Let’s not dwell too much on the reasons why such iniquities exist widely in a land of plenty. Don’t you know we have five universities in the world’s top 200? Let’s accentuate the positive and stop with them negative rays.

READ MORE: Do they mean it?

For then we may have to acknowledge that outcomes which we would once have considered extreme have become the norm. Extreme complacency and indifference by the political classes allows them to go unchecked through each electoral cycle.

Yet, when anyone proposes anything radical to address them or expresses anger about them we dismiss them as extremist and harbingers of division and tell them to be kinder. Being nice to each other and discussing these matters quietly and respectfully in our salons and dinner parties is the way forward.

The mindset of our senior civic leaders can occasionally be glimpsed in the pages of Holyrood magazine, Scotland’s foremost political periodical. Its editor, Mandy Rhodes, has conducted a compelling series of set-piece interviews with many of Scotland’s political gentry. They reveal anecdotes and apercus from their anointed existences and espouse their visions for a better Scotland. Occasionally, there is the trembling of lips.

Jack McConnell, the Baron McConnell of Glenscorrodale – former Labour First Minister of Scotland – was the latest to tell the rest of us where we’ve been going wrong. At one point he wept, but not because of the addiction apocalypse in our poorest communities or the multi-deprivation in those places his party once spoke for.

He became emotional because (wait for it) there’s a lack of accountability.

He said: “If somebody makes a comment, positive or negative, about either the Scottish Government or the UK Government or about any public service or legislation or issue, then what they say is immediately categorised by where they are perceived to stand on the constitutional issue. And nobody engages with the actual issue itself. So, we have basically no public debate and no public accountability.”

Ah, I see, it’s that nasty and divisive constitutional issue again (copyright: R Davidson; J Murphy; W Rennie; N Oliver).

The Baron felt strongly that devolution would raise the quality of public debate and that this would improve the lives in our poorest communities. He added: “I think we’re in a situation now where probably Scotland is worse than it has ever been. And I find that just incredibly sad. I’m really, really, sad. Really, I mean, really. I’ve just found this year sad.”

His sadness was contagious because a familiar troupe of media and academic fluffers soon came out in sympathy, turning Twitter into a giant counselling session for the day.

The Baron’s declaration that there is no public debate will be news to the activists and advocates for drugs reform and the rights of low-paid workers; to the child poverty campaigners and the foodbank operators who’ve been agitating on these issues since the birth of devolution.

The problem here though is that they’re not deemed worthy of being admitted into the debating chamber. Most of them are working-class and lack a degree. They haven’t been fast-tracked into Holyrood or Westminster via the party apparatchik route. They are not political lobbyists or bored academics and lawyers who fancy a sabbatical at Holyrood and a public profile.

Thus, they’ve found themselves locked out of Holyrood and the salons that encircle it. They’re considered too rough; too uncompromising; not sufficiently well-versed in the stultifying language of “public discourse”.

In 21 years of devolution they’ve been rendered mute by a self-serving class of indolent chancers who weep because the quality of debate in their exclusive, members-only club isn’t quite up to scratch. So, whose fault is that?

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