Cabinet is more of the same but Scots need radical action now

Some “big beasts” have changed portfolio and Angus Robertson is straight into the front line taking on Mike Russell’s old role.

Two ministers who lost jobs in previous reshuffles have returned to the Cabinet, one junior minister has been promoted and two of the longest-serving Cabinet Secretaries, Fiona Hyslop and Fergus Ewing, have “stepped down”.

So basically, existing senior Cabinet members are now in charge of different, bigger policy briefs – Michael Matheson (below) looks like the new Minister for Everything, in charge of the net zero transition along with transport, environmental protection, energy and COP26 delivery.

Other expanded roles are equally meaty – and will depend on some old-fashioned delegation to vigorous junior ministers to succeed. The new faces are actually pretty familiar, prompting the cutting remark from Willie Rennie that the Cabinet looked recycled not refreshed.

Mind you, if a change is as good as a rest, then new portfolios for existing players may be no bad thing. And with the loss of so many experienced government heavyweights, a bit of continuity may be no bad thing.

But the veterans who’ve left Holyrood have taken with them more than policy expertise. They’ve taken the tendency to argue, the scars of battles past and personalities that wouldn’t tolerate being neatly rounded off. Yet the departing crew are themselves a more douce bunch than the last Cabinet appointed by Alex Salmond. Essentially, we have long since departed an era of political diversity, where the personal appointments of Cabinet Secretaries also accommodated different wings of the party, different political traditions (like former Labour Party member Alex Neil) and different political temperaments.

In days past and elsewhere on these islands today, commentators would be trying to figure out which factions had been given clout and which left outside the tent in the announcement of a new Cabinet. With the Scottish Class of 21 – there’s not much point.

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Perhaps there were big ministerial arguments about strategy, policy and budgets behind the scenes in the last government – in which case they were supremely well concealed. But the general impression of the Cabinet announced yesterday is of a cohesive unit, whose members were chosen to chime with the boss.

And why not?

That boss is the most popular and successful party leader in the United Kingdom. And thanks to the recent Holyrood election result – that’s official.

But disagreement is natural – especially in a party that’s won almost half the popular vote. Clearly, big strategic decisions must be taken, or ducked, over the next couple of years – and the choices made will shape the future of Scotland profoundly. Not just on the big issue of independence.

There are now fewer landowners controlling bigger tracts of Scotland than in 1872.

Reafforestation is making millions for lairds and encouraging spruce plantations that limit bio-diversity and human access.

Fishing is the same “big is beautiful” story with five families controlling nearly half of Scotland’s offshore fishing rights.

Housing is controlled by massive volume house builders.

Local democracy is now officially the weakest in Europe.

And for a decade, independence supporters have been forced to choose between raising these inconvenient truths and denting belief in the only party capable of getting independence over the line.

Will that sorry state of affairs change as a result of bold decisions made by the new cabinet?

Evidently not.

If ever there was a case for taking advantage of the disruption created by Brexit, Boris and Covid to have a good crisis and a thorough spring-clean - then this was it.

But that isn’t going to happen.

Instead of trying to sort Scotland’s underlying structural inequality – the motor driving poverty, poor health, the attainment gap and much else besides – the new Cabinet looks set to maintain the same holding pattern as the last.

NOW to be fair, the “business as usual” approach of the Scottish Government may contrast reassuringly for voters with the harum scarum chaos of Downing Street rule. But governments that encourage a taste for the status quo when they preside over the highest levels of wealth inequality in the developed world, encourage an attachment to what’s ae been, and a tolerance for the total disengagement of those at the sharp end. Claims for Scotland as a modern country hold up in some respects, but fall quickly into a morass of feudal inequality in others.

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This deep knowledge gnaws away at confidence and motivation. And the longer these big issues are postponed – there is always good reason for delay – the more intractable and looming they become.

So fair play to the new Scottish Cabinet members.

They will doubtless feel it’s a minor miracle if they hold the Scottish Government’s position steady amidst the swirling currents of Brexit fallout, Covid recovery, Green transition and the unpredictable curved balls launched regularly from Number 10.

On top of that they know this Scottish Government must make a Section 30 request and (whatever the response) produce a viable independence referendum within the next three years.

It’s big stuff and reason enough to back a “steady as she goes” approach.

But life involves risk. And the only risk in the latest Cabinet line-up is the inclusion of once rejected old hands.

Nicola Sturgeon doubtless feels justified in thinking the SNP’s election victory is an endorsement of her personality and ultra-cautious approach. And it’s true. The SNP leader did indeed triumph over all comers – left, right, fundamentalist (in the shape of Alba) green and Unionist.

But what does that actually mean?

Is it a vote for the Scottish status quo – effective Covid control, modern inclusive-looking policies, marking time on big reforms to council tax, wealth and land ownership with an indyref slung in somewhere down the road?

Or could it signal something else – that Scots want a familiar, cautious leader to embark on long overdue change. A steady, risk-averse hand on the tiller while Scotland makes a dramatic transformation into a country able to walk the walk instead of just talking a good social democratic game?

Fa kens.

But currently the Scottish electorate is being prepared in no way for the hefty constitutional changes that lies ahead. We need democratic warm-up exercises. Real, immediate interventions to get folk experiencing change, talking about better times, imagining a better future. We need a land tax, a change in land valuations to make buyout money go further, a moratorium on second home purchases in rural Scotland, and new plots of government-owned land offered at low rates to locals earning less than the living wage.

We need liveliness and vigour.

Every part of society and sector of the economy has its own logjam-busting wish-list. But few – bar the “radicals” – bother to air their ideas when the response from the Scottish Government is always the same.

Now is never the time.

It’s demoralising.

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The SNP’s default – non-intervention in the face of market failure and deep-seated inequality – guarantees a continuing failure to hit ambitious health, education and green goals. Meanwhile the drowsy inertia of this inter-indyref decade is wearing down activist energy.

So, bring on indyref2 and the chance to end this Groundhog Day.

I can’t be the only one longing for the day that energy returns, full-blooded political debate resumes, all the stuck problems that drag Scotland down are finally in Holyrood’s crosshairs and expectations of a new Scottish Cabinet are gloriously, ridiculously high.