A Scottish voter looking for clear political differences between the parties at the Holyrood elections may be searching in vain
Pity the Scottish voters who have to decide on May 5 who is to run Scotland for the next five years. The Scottish National Party and the Labour opposition have become so closely aligned on policy that it is becoming extremely difficult to tell them apart. The latest opinion polls reflect voter confusion, with ICM showing that Labour is set to win in Scotland even though most voters think the SNP would be best at running the country.
First Minister Alex Salmond’s big idea for this fourth Holyrood election was supposed to be the rejection of university tuition fees. The nationalist leader told his party that ‘the rocks would melt in the sun’ before he introduced tuition fees in Scotland. But on the eve of that conference speech, the Labour leader, Iain Gray, also promised that he wouldn’t introduce tuition fees if elected in May. This is despite his being on record as saying the present system was unsustainable.
And the Scottish Liberal Democrats have also jumped on the no-fees bandwagon, even though their own UK leader, Nick Clegg, believes that tuition fees of up to £9,000 a year are ‘progressive and fair’. I fear the Scottish LibDems will have an uphill struggle persuading the Scottish voters that they are only distantly related to the party of the same name in Westminster.
The same might be said of Labour’s campaign promise to freeze council taxes in Scotland. This is another policy copied by Gray, who had previously argued that council taxes needed to rise by up to 2% in order to maintain services and save jobs. Labour has also adopted several minor SNP policies such as saving accident and emergency departments and subsidies for first time buyers.
The SNP has also been playing the triangulation game, although on a lesser scale. Salmond has matched Labour’s call to cut cancer waiting times and has pinched the party’s expansion of apprenticeships and training.
All of this means that, independence aside, there is very little of substance to distinguish Labour from the SNP. And even on the constitution there is some convergence. Following the Calman commission report, which Labour initiated, Gray is committed to winning more economic powers for the Scottish Parliament. Meanwhile, the SNP has toned down its separatist rhetoric since failing to achieve a referendum on independence.
So, in terms of manifestos, the voters might as well toss a coin. Labour is promising to be a bit tougher on crime, calling for minimum sentencing for knife-carrying, but apart from that it might as well be in coalition with the nationalists, so minimal is the policy gap. You wonder what the parties are going to find to argue about during this extended Holyrood campaign, the longest since devolution.
The Nationalists believe that competence is the key. There is widespread agreement that the Labour benches have been weak during the years of opposition, and will be weaker still with the departure of heavyweight Labour MSPs like the former first minister, Jack McConnell, and the former party leader, Wendy Alexander, both of whom are stepping down. There is little sign of Labour ministers-in-waiting of the calibre of nationalists like Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney and Mike Russell. Salmond continues to best Gray at question time on a regular basis.
But Labour’s pitch is going to be about the need, not only to challenge the SNP’s long-term policy of independence, but to send a message to the Tory-led coalition in Westminster that Scotland will not accept the destruction of jobs and services in the name of deficit reduction. Right now, this appears to be the winning argument, even though the Conservatives are only a marginal force in the Scottish Parliament.
Iain Macwhirter is political commentator on the Sunday Herald
