‘ALL politics is local,” observed the great Tip O’Neill, the only man to have been Speaker of the House of Representatives for five successive legislative terms.

However, despite the wisdom in those words, current Holyrood electoral politics tends to be covered by the media as an almost exclusively national activity.

In one sense that is understandable because how Scotland will be governed over the next five years is at stake, particularly this time if the recovery from the pandemic is to be made according to our needs and priorities, not cobbled together by the discredited Tories in London, hemmed in by Brexit and fuelled by a fantasy view of past, present and future.

But such a focus ignores not only the reality of much of the work that individual constituency parliamentarians do day in and day out, but also fails to examine in detail how those national priorities have been, and will be, converted into every day experiences for our fellow citizens.

The National:

In other words, how lives will change for the better or worse.

Some politicians understand this dichotomy and are keen to lay out for local voters the necessary detail. Others simply parrot the national line.

Much of the local explanation is of course done face to face and this Covid compliant election makes that much more difficult. None the less, a perusal of the electoral literature coming through the door does allow the discerning voter to sort the wheat from the chaff.

In my own area that contrast seems particularly stark. I am obviously not neutral but the local SNP leaflets I have had so far from my putative successor Jenni Minto contain some real detail about what has been done, and what is still to be accomplished.

Independence is front and centre, but transport and connectivity are also key issues in the huge area of Argyll & Bute, as are fishing, farming, tourism, land reform, public services and recovery. All are positively covered with no mention of the faults of others, only the constructive plans that she and her party have.

To be fair some actual problems are also addressed by the Liberal Democrat candidate Alan Reid, who was the area’s MP until he was defeated by Brendan O’Hara in 2015. He is now fighting his fifth comeback election in six years, one of which saw him became a councillor.

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However for Alan these issues are not things to be tackled, but things for which he must attribute blame and that always lies with his electoral nemesis, the SNP. This litany of grievance is illustrated by distorted bar charts and pictures, including many of Scottish leader Willie Rennie, that have had several previous outings.

The Tory candidate, Donald Cameron, is having his second shot at the seat but he does suffer from the joint disadvantages of not living in the constituency, and being an old style landed grandee.

His literature also lets him down. Donald is a genuinely nice guy, one of the few opponents I have been happy to have a drink with after constituency hustings, and I am sure he doesn’t believe, far less like, the obsessive , angry, sneeringly in your face Douglas Ross rhetoric that was on display at the first leaders debate. Yet it forms almost all of his message to Argyll voters to the virtual exclusion of anything positive or personal.

From Labour I have had nothing, but the local press report that their new young candidate, Lewis Whyte, is from Inverness.

All this does suggest that the actual citizens of what I will very shortly have to cease to call my own constituency, have precious little to go on when considering what the main opposition contenders would actually do if in Holyrood representing, every day, the people of Argyll & Bute.

And even extrapolating national coverage tells us virtually nothing about the Tories except that they want to abolish the not proven verdict, hate democratic choice and won’t ever work with the SNP even to save the planet.

With just over four weeks of campaigning to go the restrictions of the pandemic will stop the type of personal interaction which could start to resolve that problem, if opposition candidates so wished.

That is a pity because, if all politics really is local, then those who are actually seeking election need to be better known by those who can grant it, even if covering them is less exciting for journalists than just reporting the activities of those seeking to climb to the very top of what Disraeli called “the greasy pole”.