Labour's Electoral Crisis Deepens as Devolution Strategy Unravels
Labour currently faces so many internal troubles that the looming prospect of electoral oblivion has almost become a secondary concern. Nevertheless, May 7 is fast approaching, bringing with it crucial elections to English councils, the Welsh parliament, and of course Holyrood in Scotland. None of these contests is forecast to go Labour's way, with the Holyrood election poised to deliver an especially bitter pill to swallow.
From Hope to Salvage Operation in Scotland
Not so long ago, the mood within Scottish Labour was genuinely hopeful. There appeared to be a clear path to victory for leader Anas Sarwar. The General Election had demonstrated that defeating the SNP was once again possible. Around this optimistic period, one glowing profile of Sarwar even declared him 'The Next King of Scotland'.
No one is thinking in those terms anymore. May has now become a salvage operation. It will be cold comfort to Sarwar, but his comrades in Wales face a strikingly similar fate. Wales represents the very definition of Labour territory, having won every single devolved election since the process began. You have to look back more than a century to find a Westminster election where Labour didn't come first in Wales. Yet the most recent polling places the incumbent party in a dismal third position.
The Devolution Experiment's Unexpected Consequences
We are now more than twenty-five years into the devolution experiment, and there is as much prospect of Labour winning this Holyrood election as the one before it, and the one before that. The last time Labour emerged victorious in Scotland, Sarwar was still at university. There will be voters in May's election whose entire lives have been lived under an SNP devolved government.
There were originally two rationales for devolution. The official reason was to close the supposed 'democratic deficit' between votes cast in Scotland and electoral outcomes at the UK level. The ulterior motivation was to give institutional expression to Labour's Scottish fiefdom, with some naively believing a Scottish parliament would essentially be Strathclyde Regional Council writ large.
Devolution has failed emphatically on both fronts. Even if we accept the logic of democratic deficits – a Nationalist logic, incidentally – Holyrood could hardly be said to have increased the democratic character of Scottish governance. Instead, devolution has entrenched a narrow, unrepresentative elite at the apex of decision-making in this country, a clique that crosses political parties and constitutional differences while asserting it knows better than the populace how they ought to be governed.
When Political Priorities Diverge From Public Opinion
Polls consistently showed public opposition to legislation such as the Gender Recognition Reform Bill and the Hate Crime Act, yet Holyrood not only passed these Bills on a cross-party basis, it dedicated a significant amount of parliamentary time to them. These were not the priorities of the electorate, but that didn't matter: they were what the political class wanted.
Much more grievous for Labour is that, far from embedding their half-century of electoral dominance, devolution created the precise means by which that dominance could be smashed. Before Holyrood came along, the SNP's chances of holding executive power beyond local government level were essentially zero. With no prospect of executive power, the SNP never had to look like an executive in waiting.
The arrival of Holyrood meant the party had to undergo a bout of professionalisation. The opportunity to wield power forced the SNP to shape up and, under Alex Salmond's leadership, it was able to enter government – after just eight years of the Scottish parliament's existence.
Labour's Infrastructure Erosion and Political Irrelevance
Labour not only lost power in 2007, it lost much of its ideological infrastructure. Even when out of power at Westminster with a Tory calling the shots via the Scottish Office, Labour's unchallenged electoral position meant it enjoyed extensive influence through the unions, the charitable sector, the churches, and the rest of civic Scotland. Back in power, it could reward its friends and allies with appointments to quangos and public sector boards.
Labour has been out of office for the better part of a generation now – so long that, the last time it was running the Scottish Government, it wasn't even called the Scottish Government. As a result, Labour has become a political as well as an electoral irrelevance. All those quango posts it once filled with its friends have been filled by the Nationalists with their friends. The ideological direction of the third sector long ago reoriented in favour of the SNP.
Questioning Devolution's Actual Achievements
This begs the fundamental question: devolution, what is it actually good for? Transformative policy changes have been few and far between. The smoking ban has saved countless lives by helping drive down cigarette use, but even this legislation was passed at Westminster not long after Scotland implemented its version.
In the SNP era, outcomes in health, education, drugs policy and procurement have become progressively more dismal. The government's agenda has become prisoner to one fashionable cause after another, transparency and accountability are treated with scorn, the quality of MSPs and parliamentary scrutiny have never been lower, and Scotland remains stuck in permanent constitutional limbo over independence.
The foremost achievement of devolution has been to preside over the transfer of power from one political establishment to another. Other than that, its only real significance is giving voters a high-profile chance to send a message to the Labour government of the day.
The Protest Vote Problem and Real-World Consequences
If there was no parliament in Edinburgh or Cardiff, Labour would be bracing itself for nothing more than a bad night in council elections – a time-honoured tradition for central governments facing mid-term discontent. But because so many legislative powers have been transferred to Holyrood and the Senedd, parties elected on a protest vote stand a genuine chance of wielding significant power.
The SNP has used that power to hike taxes in Scotland, and Plaid Cymru could be expected to do something similar in Wales. These are real-world consequences not just for political parties, but for ordinary people going about their daily lives.
Conservative Complicity and Reform's Opportunity
I say 'parties' plural because the Tories deserve their share of the blame. After opposing devolution in opposition, their arrival in Downing Street in 2010 heralded a conversion worthy of Saul on the road to Damascus. David Cameron's government set about showering Holyrood with extra powers, and now that parliament provides Reform with its first major opportunity to wipe out and replace the Conservatives as the main political force on the Right.
Devolution as a Self-Laid Trap
Devolution was ultimately a trap, one which Labour laid for itself. It did not improve social or economic outcomes, raise the quality of public services, or settle the constitutional question. What it did was give the SNP a foot in a door the party would otherwise have had to knock on in vain, begging for entry.
Labour is the author of its own demise. It championed devolution to head off the rise of the SNP and create a policy buffer between English Toryism and the (mildly) more social-democratic electorate of Scotland. The Conservatives chipped in by devolving more and more powers and rewriting the law to make Holyrood legally permanent.
With May will come a reckoning for this foolishness and cowardice. At Holyrood and in Cardiff, Nationalist and populist foes of the Labour-Tory duopoly will get their first credible opportunity to sweep it away and replace it with a new political class. This feat would be infinitely more difficult to achieve in the Commons, but would benefit from a powerful gust of wind in its sails if the devolved parliaments could illustrate to the electorate that a new political map is possible.
Finally, someone has found a use for devolution, but it's nothing like what its arrogant, idealistic architects imagined.
