TOO often, in our era of 24-hour news and non-stop social media, a politician’s horizon is limited to the next day’s story or perhaps, at best, the next week’s parliamentary debate. Major issues and crises do of course cut through, but often the sheer pressure of the daily grind and resultant firefighting can make it difficult for politicians to focus on the bigger picture.
There are two primary exceptions that command longer-term thinking from our elected representatives – a change of leadership and a General Election. In Scotland we are hurtling towards both a new holder of our country’s highest office, and a General Election, with the likelihood of the same result for the UK.
In both cases, the eyes of our politicians are raised above the day-to-day and a genuine space is created for meaningful policy choice and debate.
What does that mean for the business community? With an eye to the SNP leadership contest, these coming weeks present a genuine opportunity to engage in the policy discussion. With the right approach, the business community can be active participants in the conversation, able to use the sometimes-harsh spotlight of the campaign, as we are seeing, to achieve policy shifts and policy pauses.
In such a short campaign, where every vote counts, there are good conversations to be had with some of the MSPs who are most active in supporting the different candidates. The campaign teams will be looking for opportunities for visits, and ideas on economic and business policy across the board, as well as having a keen eye for some of the more "hot button" issues such as deposit return or alcohol advertising.
Beyond specific policy suggestions, this is also an opportunity to shift the national narrative, which of course, in terms of encouraging investment and building business confidence, can be as important as some of the policy nuts and bolts. Kate Forbes is already positioning herself as the pro-growth and more business-friendly candidate, but that means her main rival, Humza Yousaf, will also want a business and economy story to tell.
For the General Election, many of the same considerations on policy detail and bigger picture narrative will come into play, although with a bit more time to prepare. A Westminster poll is almost certainly at least a year away, so now is the ideal time for businesses to be thinking seriously about how best to engage.
As a starting point, it is worth trying to understand the stories the political parties will be trying to tell and how your own story overlaps with them. From that, party-specific policy asks naturally emerge, as does the best way of framing them.
Elections are the beating heart of politics and, tough as they can be for the politicians, they present precious opportunities for all of us who care about public policy, including those who want to make a wealth creation case.
Stephen Noon was responsible for the development of the SNP manifestos in 2007 and 2011 and is now a Senior Advisor in Weber Shandwick’s Scottish public affairs team
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