And yet, a word like representative would generally be greeted by the politician upon which it was bestowed as a compliment; that he or she had done their job properly and with due regard to their electorate.

What then is the difference? Or perhaps more importantly, when does a politician move from one to the other?

Hitler was of course a populist, and as history shows a remarkably good one. In this context the word can be placed firmly in the negative.

Many a political commentator spoke of Tony Blair’s ‘popular appeal’ in the positive, perhaps as one of the main factors behind New Labour’s success. Of course others, particularly on the left of Labour would use the same thing as an insult, one that defined (to them) the sparse ideology of New Labour.

What about Barrack Obama; populist, or just popularly appealing? Is there even a difference?

The question may well be one of semantics, but there is also an important substantive point here; when is it right to be ‘populist’ or ‘representative’ and when is it not?

On Thursday Margo MacDonald’s End of Life Assistance Bill will almost certainly be defeated at Stage 1. In reality, it was supported be very few MSPs and was always likely to fail

And yet a poll out yesterday reveals that 77% of Scots support the principles of the Bill, with only 12% against it. It will be interesting to tale up those percentages with the way that Holyrood votes.

Now of course an instant answer to a quick yes/no question does not equate to careful consideration – but it does show that there is almost certainly more appetite in the public at large than there is amongst our MSPs. So who is right?

Is parliament in this instance ameliorating the worst type of un-informed knee-jerk (dare I say populist) reaction, or are they failing to represent their electorate and their society properly when they vote against the Bill, by displaying a ‘we know best’ elitism?

It is not a clear-cut issue. For many years, public appetite for the re-introduction of the death penalty regularly ran into the majority, and yet Westminster politicians remained aloof of that particular public groundswell – was that wrong of them?

The BNP have made big electoral strides in recent times, their critics would say by appealing to ill-informed populism, while they would no-doubt retort that they are being representative.

Semantics it may be, but such debates go to the very core of what we expect from our political classes; representation of the people or for the people, populism or elitism? Whichever you prefer, the decisions that result this week will have very real affects on the lives, and deaths, of many Scots.

[The views expressed by Morhamburn people in their blogs are theirs and theirs alone. they do not represent the thoughts of the company as a whole or our clients. If you have a comment to make on any blog, please email info@morhamburn.com and we’ll put the printable ones up on the website]

Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of the actual Bill and of minimum alcohol pricing, the debates have thrown-up some issues that we should all consider.

Firstly, given the impassioned pleas of a group of learned experts such as the BMA, might it not be an idea for recognised groups of experts to be allowed to have a greater input into legislation that looks at their specialist areas of expertise, such as health or around specific technologies?

Would such a move, possibly in the form of some kind of grand committee (which could act as a de-facto second chamber or advisory board) strengthen the scrutiny process that parliament puts Bills though, or would it undermine the democratic process and the people’s representation?

The second question which arises is that of the system of whips at Holyrood. What does the fact that we have yet to see any significant ‘backbench rebellion’ at Holyrood in its entire existence tell us about the system we currently have?

Given that the UK coalition government is facing its first significant backbench unrest after only a few months of its tenure, do we need to address this at Holyrood? Do we need to weaken the strength of the parties, or perhaps encourage greater cross-party working so that sides don’t become so entrenched in the first place?  Or is fierce backbench loyalty just a natural result of having a list system? 

I don’t know who is right or wrong in this particular debate, and with regard the questions I have posed, it doesn’t much matter. The parliamentary system we have has rightly been lauded as innovative, modern and transparent. But we shouldn’t let those virtues get in the way of further improvements if they are needed.

[The views expressed by Morhamburn people in their blogs are theirs and theirs alone. they do not represent the thoughts of the company as a whole or our clients. If you have a comment to make on any blog, please email info@morhamburn.com and we’ll put the printable ones up on the website]

However this strong position does not diminish the fascinating nature of this coming Holyrood election – far from it. In what is shaping-up to be a drawn-out election campaign, the starting pistol for which will be sounded at the respective party conferences over the next few weeks, there is still much water to pass under the bridge before May, and often the party with the big lead is the one that suffers most in long campaigns; it was after all the Tories who went into the last campaign with a big poll lead, only for Labour and the Lib Dems to shrink it quite significantly.

We now have a new Labour leader at UK level who was far from an unanimous choice. We have the Comprehensive Spending Review being published at UK level, followed by the Scottish Government’s response. We have a Tory/Lib Dem coalition government, the prospect of a national referendum the same day as the Scottish elections, and no doubt a plethora of as yet unforeseen circumstances, scandals, gaffes, and memorable performances. We need only look back to the ‘bigot-gate’ scandal and the PM debates to see how fast a star can rise and fall in this media-age.

For possibly the first time ever in Holyrood elections, we the electorate are going to be faced with major, possibly life-changing and certainly stark choices about what we expect of our government. Do we want to pay more tax, or have fewer services? Can Scotland afford universal benefits like the bus pass?

Student funding is shaping-up as a major issue. With the UK considering removing tuition-fee caps, Scotland’s higher education sector would be forced to act to stop Scottish universities being left behind by its English competitors.

Issues that have so far failed to flare-up (despite the SNP’s best efforts) such as the fossil fuel levy might gain importance as every penny is counted. And of course we have Calman and the SNP’s aborted referendum – ten years on from ‘settling’ the constitutional issues of Scotland, we find ourselves facing similar questions.

And what of personalities? Much is made of Iain Gray’s understated style and, given the impact that the debates had in the UK elections, the likelihood of FM debates in Scotland has to be factored in, especially given the First Minister’s skill in such circumstances.

And then the last great factor is of course the possible different outcomes of coalition talks post-election. With the Tories supposedly throwing their hat into the ring, we have the intriguing prospect of any number of potential deals – or of no deal at all.

The beauty for the electorate is that, we should have proper political debate – no more managerialism, it simply won’t cut it in times of real decisions, real politics and real ideology.

Labour are definitely the favourites, but they are not so far in front as to make the contest uninteresting. As the maxim goes, ‘events, dear boy’ are what makes politics difficult. And there are likely to be plenty of events emerging over the next seven months.

[The views expressed by Morhamburn people in their blogs are theirs and theirs alone. they do not represent the thoughts of the company as a whole or our clients. If you have a comment to make on any blog, please email info@morhamburn.com and we’ll put the printable ones up on the website]

So said William Beveridge in his epoch-changing (if dully named) Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Social Insurance and Allied Services. Who could have thought his words would have such resonance, in such a different context, nearly 70 years on?

The original Beveridge Report, published in 1942 and enacted by the revolutionary post-war Labour government of Atlee, created much of what the state today is; welfare, the NHS and National Insurance. They were ideas of their time, aimed at ending the five main scourges of mid-20^th century Britain: Want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness.

Want, squalor and disease as they knew them then are gone. Ignorance is subjective; certainly we are en masse better educated, but that is not necessarily the same thing. Idleness, well there’s a tricky one; there are many who would argue that Beveridge’s reforms have increased idleness, but let’s just say that the case remains unproven on that one.

Three (and possibly even four) out of 5 ain’t bad.

The aims of Beveridge were to create a minimum, but that the minimum should leave enough room to encourage people to rise above it. In other words, keep people safe and healthy, with food in their stomachs and a roof over their head, but the rest, the little luxuries and trappings of success, the widescreen TV and the mobile phone, well that has to be worked for. It was to provide enough for people to survive. To quote the report:

“The danger of providing benefits which are both adequate in amount and indefinite in duration, is that men as creatures who adapt themselves to circumstances, may settle down to them.”

A prophetic warning indeed.

Now in Scotland we have a new Beveridge Report, the Independent Budget Review, which has just been published. It outlines just how difficult things are going to be in Scotland, and says everything should up for review; effectively leaving Scotland at a crossroads.

Whether this crossroads means we are in as revolutionary times as Beveridge Mark 1 is open to debate, but given that our economic crisis is the worst we have faced since WWII, there are similarities.

Beveridge Mark 1 provided radical solutions to problems that now no longer exist (certainly not as they existed back then), we now have new problems and so sticking to 70 year-old solutions seems a bit daft.

To work out where Beveridge Mark 2 is going to leave us, we need to work out what are our main challenges in 21^st century Scotland?

And this is the problem at the moment. Nobody wants to be the bad guy, nobody wants to be labelled as ‘McThatcher’, the Scottish political bogeyman for a new generation.

All we hear from politicians at the moment is what they will not cut; and it all sounds a lot like patching.

This is as close to a clean-slate as politicians are going to get with public expenditure; all orthodoxies need to be challenged, everything must be on the table, including the sacred cow that is the NHS.

It is surely an opportunity to refocus our public services where we need them most, to devise the kind of innovative solutions that Scots became renowned for, and to decide what the difference is between services that we need, and services that we want.

Does anyone have the courage to be as radical as Beveridge Mark 1 was? Surely this was what devolution was all about; ‘Scottish solutions to Scottish problems’?

However perhaps the most interesting question to ask is what would Sir William Beveridge do if faced with Crawford Beveridge’s report?

[The views expressed by Morhamburn people in their blogs are theirs and theirs alone. they do not represent the thoughts of the company as a whole or our clients. If you have a comment to make on any blog, please email info@morhamburn.com and we’ll put the printable ones up on the website]

It was all pretty inspiring stuff, but an issue that kept being raised was the problem of politics. Basically for various political reasons, such innovation was difficult if not impossible in most cases.

But that supposes there is even the appetite for it in the first place.

Like them or not (and obviously most people in Scotland do not) the Tory-Lib Dem government is bringing forward some fairly radical plans, for example with healthcare. Yet in Scotland we seem to be quite conservative when it comes to new ideas.

The proposals made by the Scottish Future’s Trust on Scottish Water have met with a lukewarm response, except from the Unions who are vociferously hostile. The Curriculum for Excellence is roundly derided (perhaps with good reason, perhaps not), successive governments will shy way from anything that looks like it might be a ‘market-led’ reform of the NHS, and everyone and their dog is against projects such as the Edinburgh trams.

Now I am not arguing for or against any of these plans and their particular merits per se, just asking the question; when was the last time some new, innovative or dare I say, even radical idea was forwarded in Scotland, and roundly championed by the various powers that be? And by radical I mean world-leading, you know, like we used to be.

As the Policy Exchange think-tank posed in its report on devolution last week, has Scotland actually done very much with its hard-won devolved powers? Yes free personal-care (which it seems is under threat) and yes the smoking-ban, but is this enough for ten years? Does this equate to Scottish solutions to Scottish problems?

The irony around all of this is that in emphatically rejecting the Conservatives in May’s election, Scotland will still cling to the belief that its left-leaning convictions automatically equate to it being ‘progressive’. And an important part of our national identity revolves around our great inventors and innovators, both in science and technology and in philosophy.

But in being so wedded to our history of innovation actually turned us into a horrible parody of ourselves? We may have rejected the Conservative party, but with our apparently inherent distrust of innovation and change and our tendency to indulge in the national pastime of whingeing, are we not proving ourselves to be a deeply conservative nation?

A great lesson that I took away from the NESTA seminar was that if you keep doing what you have always done, you will keep getting what you have always got. But then maybe that’s just the way we like it.

 [The views expressed by Morhamburn people in their blogs are theirs and theirs alone. they do not represent the thoughts of the company as a whole or our clients. If you have a comment to make on any blog, please email info@morhamburn.com and we’ll put the printable ones up on the website]

When a government, politician or any other body takes a position, makes a statement or enacts a policy, one of the key questions that should be asked is why? What is behind it, what are they trying to achieve?

According to The Scotsman, some ‘devolution sceptic’ MPs from the Labour party are behind the move. So the question is, why?

Well of course the motives could be totally innocent, Labour are after all the party that brought about devolution and it could be that given the general consensus for some sort of further devolution to Holyrood, they feel that now is the time to take stock and work out what could be being done better.

Or there could be some more partisan motives behind it – we are after all now entering the run-up to Holyrood elections where Labour look favourites to regain power.

Whatever the motives are, it is clear that devolution has put real pressure on Scottish MPs to justify their existence, their salaries and their expenses.

A crude estimation of the Holyrood/Westminster power balance is that Holyrood is responsible for around 75% of issues that affect the average Scot on a day to day basis. Given that these types of issues are likely to have accounted for most MP casework, it is fair to say that their workload must have diminished significantly.

And so, in our austerity age and with a Tory-led government at Westminster, there must be the potential for them to have salaries cut (after all they now have much less responsibility than their English counterparts), or be reduced in number – neither of which will be palatable for the embattled Scots MPs.

Such issues and problems are in many ways devolution’s rough edges, loose ends that will be tidied-up as time passes and English resentment grows. But there is another issue at stake here and one which in my opinion has the potential to be far more controversial.

Who is Holyrood accountable to? The Scottish people would be the popular answer, but as Holyrood was created by an Act of Westminster, it could be revoked or amended by the MPs who sit there. In crude terms, Holyrood exists as a gift of Westminster, and they could take it away if they so wished.

Now of course the idea that Holyrood would be dissolved or even have its powers diminished is outlandish in the extreme (which could in itself be an indication of how successful devolution has been), and any party who tried to do it would be taking an enormous gamble.

But at a time when constitutional reform has become an accepted reality for all the parties at Holyrood, the question of who Holyrood is answerable to has the potential to open a can of worms for all involved.

And as for judging how well devolution has worked, it is highly subjective and problematic – can you really judge a process by how well (or badly) it is used by individual governments? Would any perceived failures of devolution be failures of a system or of the individuals working within that system particular time? And how will the MSPs take to being ‘judged’ by a group of people that they have largely replaced but who still seem to view them as inferior?

And surely the Scottish MPs behind this move have their chance to judge how well Holyrood is working – the same as the rest of us do when they cast their vote for their MSP every four years.

[The views expressed by Morhamburn people in their blogs are theirs and theirs alone. they do not represent the thoughts of the company as a whole or our clients. If you have a comment to make on any blog, please email info@morhamburn.com and we’ll put the printable ones up on the website]

Timescales are flexible, but we will look to begin the internship at the end of June for it to run until the end of August.

The ideal candidate should have:

• Strong academic background
• An interest in and knowledge of current affairs and policy at Scottish, UK and EU levels including political institutions and parliamentary procedure
• An interest in and knowledge of the media
• First rate research and communication skills
• The ability to work independently
• Proven IT skills (Microsoft Office, e-mail, etc) 

This position would suit an individual eager to develop experience within public affairs. 

Contact: Please send your CV and a covering letter demonstrating why you would be a suitable candidate to Keith Small at keith@morhamburn.com

Website: www.morhamburn.com

Closing date for applications: Wednesday 9^th June 2010

As the musket-smoke of the general election cleared, we here in Scotland were left shocked by just how pointless it had all been – a replica of the last result in 2005.

But while this stasis could be interpreted as some sort of political malaise in Scotland, it could also be looked upon as quite a remarkable result when taken in the context of the UK results, and emphasising just how different Scotland is from the rest of the UK.

Indeed, former FM Henry McLeish called the results ‘remarkable’ in his Holyrood column this month, specifically for the way in which they highlight the growing political divergence between Scotland and England.

While David Cameron’s Conservatives swept to power across England & Wales, here in Scotland, as former Holyrood Tory leader David McLetchie MSP ruefully observed, they have to convince the electorate that they don’t eat babies.

The Conservatives remain ‘toxic’ and Labour in Scotland remain the chief beneficiaries. While some have accused them of running a pretty negative campaign, it is difficult to know if they merely reflect the prejudices of the Scottish people or are actively promoting them – probably a bit of both.

What is in no doubt however is that the Tories in Scotland have a big problem, and it is difficult to know just how to get out of it – irrational prejudice is hard to combat.

Is prejudice too strong a word?

From Dictionary.com: prej-u-dice (noun) – an unfavourable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.

Without knowledge, thought, or reason; an interesting idea to ponder. Exactly what was it about Cameron’s policies that caused such revulsion among the electorate? No, I’m not sure, and I suspect that many of those whose reflex position is anti-Tory don’t know either.

Instead, the prejudice is fed on a diet of scaremongering, anti-middle-Englishness, inverse snobbery and history. Because that’s what Thatcher is to Scotland now, history.

Two decades have passed since she stopped being PM. Twenty years, the last thirteen of which have been spent with a Labour government with so strong a majority it could have reversed much of the damage of Thatcher if it had been so inclined.

That it chose not to could well turn out to be Thatcher’s biggest vindication.

In George Bernard-Shaw’s play ‘The Devil’s Disciple’, a central theme is the wafer-thin divide between hatred and love. While aware of the perils of using pop-psychology to psychoanalyse an entire nation, I do wonder about Scots and their obsession with Thatcher.

It is surely now bordering on the dangerously obsessive? People would have been casting their votes for Labour and against the Tories (Thatcher) who were not even alive when she was in office.

As Bernard-Shaw alluded to in his play, do we hate those whom we secretly need or admire?

Perhaps Scots need to have a pantomime villain so that we can retreat to our favoured position of downtrodden underdog, slighted victim, romantic losers?

Perhaps we retreat to anti-Thatcherism two decades after she ceased to be relevant because we miss her and the ready-made excuse which she represented?

As long as tales of bogey-women dominate the political discourse of Scotland, how can we have a proper debate? Is it healthy for a country to be so overwhelmingly convinced of the merits of a single political point of view? Does such consensus not equal stagnancy, not breed complacency and retard political debate?

It is often said that democracy needs strong opposition. Contrary as ever, us Scots seem to disagree; it seems we would rather just live in the past and have a good whinge.

That senior Labour politicians are now actively encouraging voters in certain areas to tactically vote possibly says a lot about how the campaign has gone for Labour.

The ‘bigot’ comment, the car crash at the poster launch, and the general consensus that Gordon Brown, while not being bad in the debates certainly hasn’t been good, have all left the Labour campaign feeling like it just never really got going.

And while politicians will look at a disastrous set of polls and tell you with a straight face that ‘polls are sometimes wrong’ and that they firmly believe they will win, a direct appeal to voters to tactically vote against your main opponent rather than for your own party is surely an admission that things don’t look good.

While Gordon Brown may be relatively new to the PM post, he has been effectively No.2 in the UK for the last 13 years – and this great albatross of incumbency has weighted heavily upon Labour in this campaign.

It is not easy to sell disgruntled voters a message of change and/or renewal when you have been in charge for so long – because you will always be vulnerable to that simple but effective question ‘so, why haven’t you already done it?’

How does a party refute this? Yes, if it has a new leader it can get some distance, but Brown is so intimately linked to the entire New Labour government and to Tony Blair’s premiership that this has really not worked; this problem of association is of course only magnified when you accept that the biggest issue in this campaign – the economy – was his portfolio for ten years.

Once the electorate decide that change is what’s needed, the incumbent is fighting a losing battle.

However, another football cliché that could serve Labour well is that every team loses, its how a team reacts to defeat that determines their quality. In other words, this coming defeat, which looks like it will be reasonably narrow, need not be disastrous if they can react in the right manner; some necessary introspection, a clear focus on direction and probably a new leader, and then they may just have to wait.

Because when the Governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King reportedly said that winning this election may be a curse, Labour should take solace. A new government, with a wafer-thin majority (if at all) imposing stringent economic measures should not be so tough a nut to crack in 5 years time, than selling a message of change after 13 years in the job is proving to be now.

[The views expressed by Morhamburn people in their blogs are theirs and theirs alone. they do not represent the thoughts of the company as a whole or our clients. If you have a comment to make on any blog, please email info@morhamburn.com and we’ll put the printable ones up on the website]

To read a PDF copy of the SNP 2010 Manifesto, please click here.