[Robin McAlpine Blog] We must cast aside ‘political cycle’ to win indy

[ALBA-Bot]

We must cast aside 'political cycle' to win indy

First published by The National

Politics moves in cycles. There are two cycles in particular that drive politics – the electoral cycle and the news cycle. To the rest of us these cycles are meaningless. We don’t organise our lives round newspaper deadlines or five-year parliamentary terms. Politicians have to.

This is one of the key problems blocking progress to independence. The timescales over which members of the public change their minds on big social issues and the timescales over which politicians stop to communicate with the public simply don’t match. You don’t achieve change with part-time campaigns.

This is why I am so adamant that the next steps on the road to independence will not take place in the Scottish Parliament, and nor will it be the result of soundbites on TV. It’s not just that we’ve all heard the soundbites or that no-one can think up anything to actually do in parliament, it’s that broadcasting at people when it suits the political agenda is not enough.

The electoral cycle in Scotland is relentless and yet the news cycle is even worse, a cycle which forces politicians to live either in the immediate now or the far, far away. It’s the world of soundbites to get through the day and targets and vision statements which are so distant the they’re cheap and often meaningless

The daft thing is that politicians think this dynamic (say whatever they think we want to hear to get through the day, dodge tough questions with vague promises far in the future) is preventing their unpopularity. In reality it is fuelling discontent. We live our real lives in between what a politician says today and whenever their latest working group reports in two years’ time.

If you want a case study in how this fails, have a look at the floundering Rachel Reeves. Starmer’s Labour believed all it had to do was win an election at any cost by saying anything to win over soft Tories. They acted like there would be no consequences.

It was stupidly short-sighted and trapped her with Tory-inspired fiscal rules. The rest of her tenure goes something like this: ‘Do your gloom speech, say vision, set targets’. One week later; ‘oh god, everyone hates you. Do the same speech but smile loads’. ‘Oh, that was creepy and everyone hates you. Change of plan. Do your happy speech, say vision, set targets. Tell them how much you hate newts and bats.’

In the timescales of politics this is all perfectly logical. For a human watching it it looks exactly like what it is – panic, chaos and cluelessness. Politics is full of these kinds of ‘logical fallacy’ that seem to make sense until you think about it. If you want fast growth, how is a 20-years-away airport project a logical solution?

The world turns, whether it is aligned to political cycles or not

This is the loop in which the pro-independence parties (and particular the SNP) have been in for a long time now. Say something plausible-sounding to get through the day, make a medium-distance promise and then go back to doing what you were doing before. Thus we have a rebuttal unit announced, what, ten times, and Yes.scot relaunched five or so. And still neither are operational.

The main contributions SNP politicians are making on independence just now is bashing activists round the head with logical fallacies. The current soundbites of choice are ‘unless we have an SNP government we can’t get independence’, and ‘how can you doubt Politician X, they have spent their whole career supporting independence’.

Well a firefighter sitting watching a building burn down can say ‘without firefighters, buildings will burn down’ or ‘leave me alone I’ve spent my whole life stopping buildings burning down’ and it’s perfectly true, but they’re still sitting on their arse watching a building burn down.

The world turns, whether it is aligned to political cycles or not. People are trying to make an appointment at the doctor, or to get parked while picking their kids up from school, or they’re browsing the window of an estate agent feeling despair, or they’re desperately trying to source some mental health support for their teenage daughter.

If a politician tries to talk to them, it better be about the NHS, or local government and transport, or housing, or care – because if they identify the politician as being the person responsible for the service and that politician tries to talk to them about something else instead, it is unlikely to get a positive reception.

This is the reason why no major social change in history is really the result of the political process. Votes for Women, the end of Apartheid, achieving civil rights in the US, Indian independence – hell, even the move from caged to free range eggs all have one crucial aspect in common; none of them would have happened via politics alone. In all cases the heavy lifting was done by civil society or citizens themselves.

This was always also true of independence. I never believed independence would be achieved by clapping on speeches from senior politicians or via parliamentary interventions. Like all other big social changes it was always going to take a wide, broad, civic-based campaign making a strong case directly to the people who need to hear it.

So when I read the letters page of The National or, occasionally, the below-the-line comments, my heart often sinks. I would struggle to get across to you how little I care about feuds and spats between political parties. I’m not in this for political parties but for outcomes. I am very well aware that whomever goes down in the history books as delivering independence, it won’t be me.

So with a passion I don’t care what colour of rosette is worn by whomever ends up signing the Treaty of Scottish Independence. I will know then because I know now that they didn’t really do it at all, because I will know then as I know now that it will be the result of the effort of countless people who do not need their photo taken to play their part.

All three pro-indy would do well to take a break from knocking lumps out each other or demanding that we give them our undivided affection and instead look to themselves

With great caution, I can tell you that I’m currently more optimistic about the prospects of independence than I have been certainly in the last five years. It’s not just the boost we’re getting from Starmer, it’s the fact that there are a lot of serious initiatives happening which aim at creating a coherent, always-on independence campaign with the resources and infrastructure to really take the argument to Scotland. And, whisper it, they may be joining up to create a united whole.

There are stars that must align, the gods must smile on us and heaven knows few have the capacity of the independence movement to get in its own way. But there really is a path that could lead to serious progress and it really doesn’t lie through the middle of a political party.

Besides, they really ought to have more to worry about. The SNP is running the least popular government in the history of devolution and is presiding over a collapse in confidence in Scottish public service. The Greens have been ‘riding the wave’ of a decade-long global resurgence of energy around the climate crisis and they’ve used that energy to…. end up exactly where they were to begin with. And Alba hasn’t won a raffle never mind an election.

All three would do well to take a break from knocking lumps out each other or demanding that we give them our undivided affection and instead look to themselves. They’re all what you’d call a ‘fixer upper’.

Once progress is made on support for independence and only after progress is made in support for independence, there will be an important parliamentary phase where we make the final push for statehood. What I write here isn’t about being anti-politics or anti-politician, it’s about the right tool for the right job.

We could very much do with our pro-indy parties getting their own acts together so they are credible when their moment comes. I fear the electoral cycle is again preventing that from happening. There are two possible outcomes likely; either the polls turn again at some point and the SNP loses power, or polls stay the same and they come back as a minority administration with no overall pro-indy majority.

That latter would probably result in a lame duck SNP administration that can’t form a stable majority limping through the next five years as an easy target for potshots from opposition politicians. That could lead to a 2031 wipeout. The SNP losing power would be bad, but it is possible to have power and the outcome be even worse.

This makes it all the more important that we don’t put all our eggs in a single political basket which is increasingly fragile. It means that this time, just for once, the biggest contribution the parties might be likely to make is to do nothing, stay out of the way, curb the instincts of a lifetime and don’t try and snuff out a civic initiative before it even begins.

Source: We must cast aside 'political cycle' to win indy