Where will the new shape and direction of Scottish politics come from?

It was not the Conservative government of John Major in London that determined the future of Scottish politics, but the Scottish Constitutional Convention. It was her work that shaped the new decentralized politics to come, and she was all the more powerful for being an arm’s length from government.

Now that Humza Yousaf’s new government has been installed in Edinburgh, an opportunity has opened up in Scottish politics remarkably similar to that which the Scottish Constitutional Convention exploited so successfully thirty years ago – for the future shape and direction of Scottish politics will be changed certainly not fixed by the new government.

But the question is: who will compete? Who will fill the gap that Humza Yousaf so invitingly leaves open?

The divide is apparent to anyone who cares to watch and listen. Poll after poll shows that the Scottish people have two main political priorities. The first is the economy. Voters want the livelihood crisis addressed. They want prosperity and a sense of hope to return. They want wages to rise, the effects of inflation to be mitigated and they long for a return to growth.

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The second priority is public sector reform. Scots know the NHS is collapsing. They know our schools are not what they used to be. You know standards are slipping. And they don’t like it. The anger I’ve been venting about hospitals and schools lately is more passionate, vocal, and widespread than anything I can remember since moving north of the border twenty years ago.

And these aren’t Tory voters I’m talking about – these are middle class, public sector, left-leaning townsfolk. Their votes are up for grabs and they are deeply unfazed by what the Scottish Government is offering them.

The two priorities are related. Scottish voters are not buttoning their backs. They know we cannot have reformed, fit-for-purpose public services without paying for sustained economic growth.

I don’t know why Humza Yousaf chose not to devote his time at Bute House to fulfilling these priorities. However, it is clear that he decided against it.

Nobody in his cabinet has the faintest idea how to get the Scottish economy back on track. Not the new…

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