[Robin McAlpine Blog] This is not how to make policy – and is harming independence

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This is not how to make policy – and is harming independence

First published by The National

In a couple of years from now a policy the Scottish Government is about to introduce will be assessed and it will not only have failed but very possibly have backfired. We know that already but it is going ahead nonetheless.

The lesson I want to draw from this is partly about government policy but it is equally about independence strategy. We keep hitting the same problem and it keeps happening for the same reason.

The policy concerned is the latest iteration of a ‘help to buy’ scheme. This is where you ‘tackle the housing crisis’ by giving first time buyers large sums of money towards a deposit on a new house. It’s not only that it is knowable that this won’t work, we now know that the Scottish Government’s own officials know it won’t work.

These schemes have been tried loads of times and they are generally assessed afterwards. They all fail. None of them achieve their aims. Everyone else has stopped using them.

So why does this policy fail? Because it fails to face up to the problem. No-one in politics seems willing to say this (because it is against the interest of big property developers) but the housing crisis is really simple – houses are now too expensive in comparison to salaries.

This policy does everything wrong. It is a ‘supply side measure’ which does not build a single house, meaning there is more cash sloshing about to buy the same number of houses, meaning inflation, meaning prices go up.

But it does nothing to change the economics of housing. Housing developers work on a rationing model. They limit supply because that makes more profit for less investment.

And that is what policy researchers found. Not a single one of the previous schemes we’ve been able to find which has been evaluated has reduced house prices or increased housing supply. Quite a few of them directly raised house prices.

The last straw ought to be the fact that this money goes to precisely the wrong people. We’re not in deposit crisis, we’re in a housing crisis. Worrying about people who can’t afford large deposits while ignoring people who can’t afford rent or mortgage payments at all is all back to front.

There is nothing wrong with retail politics – but they have to work, or at least not collapse in a high-profile way

Then again, the Scottish Government’s own evaluation of its last scheme discovered that 72 per cent of the money spent went to people who would have bought a house anyway. That is wasted money.

We now know that the Scottish Government was given this advice because we have finally got back unredacted Freedom of Information responses. No impact assessment was done, the above concerns were raised, one official even turned to AI to ask it to come up with a justification for the policy.

Why is it going ahead anyway? Because it was already announced before any of this policy advice was sought. It is exactly like the Council Tax freeze from a couple of years ago, also announced before any impact assessment or costing was done.

Why? Because freezing the Council Tax and help to buy schemes are cash gifts to middle class voters and politicians believe that offering cash gifts to middle class voters is the route to electoral success. See Donald Trump for more info.

These are what is known in the trade as ‘retail policies’. You invent them not because they work but because they sell. They are electoral bribes for the social class most likely to vote.

And that is fair enough – retail policy is part of politics because everyone wants to incentivise voters. Just know the consequences of what you’re doing.

Previous examples of ‘retail policies’ that were announced before they were thought through include the 2017 education reforms, the National Energy Company, the National Care Service, Deposit Return Scheme, a Universal Basic Income trial, world-leading climate targets, a four day working week…

They all failed. That is the consequence. There is nothing wrong with retail politics – but they have to work, or at least not collapse in a high-profile way.

Honestly, right now I’d not be unhappy if quite a few government policies failed. I’m not loving the centralisation, the pro-data centres stuff, the ever more desperate and needy attempts to flog-off of Scotland’s national assets to foreign equity firms…

But there is one set of ‘retail policies’ which have been failing which matter to me very much – and that is our positions on independence. If your position on currency is Sterlingisation, the informal use of someone else’s currency without the support of a central bank, it isn’t because you’ve thought through the economics of it.

We keep being told to hold positions we can’t defend, then we look unconvincing when we try

Sorry to be a broken record but who would bail us out if there was a pandemic, or a financial crisis, or a massive oil shock, or a rising global conflict? If you don’t have a coherent answer to these questions you shouldn’t be saying Sterlingisation.

There is a lot of this. Great, let’s rejoin the European Union, but if we do it too fast there would be a lot of austerity needed. Has that been assessed and planned?

Join Nato and also get rid of nukes? Join the European Single Market and still have completely frictionless borders with England? Cut people’s electricity bills but maintain a privatised energy network? Can we really defend these positions under cross-examination?

No, because they are retail policy, chosen because they ‘sound like’ safe answers. Just say Sterling, don’t scare the children and hope they won’t ask for more information. The problem is they keep asking for more information. If you start by just giving the answer you think everyone wants to hear irrespective of whether it is credible, you will get caught out.

That’s the problem with retail politics – easy to say, hard to defend. The Scottish Government tried to redact all the information on how they formed their housing policy and that made the front page of the Herald,. So we appealed, they had to hand it over and it embarrassed them and so ended up on the front page again. Consequences…

That’s our indy problem. We keep being told to hold positions we can’t defend, then we look unconvincing when we try. And then our target voters look at us havering away, blinking wildly, repeating ourselves, humming and hawing, and conclude we don’t know what we’re doing.

Good and bad policy is about whether the analysis and the aim is right, but well-made or badly-made policy is about the detail and paying attention to the evidence. These are not the same thing – you can implement a bad policy well and visa versa.

We need to be proposing good, well-made policy. That is the only thing you can successfully defend. And if we can’t defend our position we lose the confidence of the public.

This is never going to go away for us until we accept it is true and act according. I have advised a number of politicians in my life and my number one rule is always the same – you can say anything you like, but if it doesn’t reflect reality, reality will catch up with you at some point and you’ll regret it.

It is time the independence movement was ahead of reality, not behind it. Retail politics will not get us there. Hard work and not being afraid to look properly at the difficult questions will.

Source: This is not how to make policy – and is harming independence