Mandy Rhodes interviews the newly elected leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats.
Tavish Scott has a golf handicap of just 11 which puts him slightly ahead of the First Minister who, despite his many photo opportunities on courses around Scotland, has a handicap of 18. But if the new leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats wants to put a dent in Salmond’s swing, he will have to excel off the green as well as on and that could prove more elusive than that much coveted hole in one.
Chipping his party out of the rough will be the first challenge for the new leader and is one he is keen to address for – golf analogies aside – not even the most loyal Lib Dem could honestly believe that the party’s profile in the Scottish Parliament during the last 18 months has been anything other than invisible. Admittedly, Nicol Stephen has scored a couple of points during the weekly gladiatorial battle at FMQs but it is all relative and has been more to do with factors outside his influence, i.e. the derisory performance of Wendy Alexander. The odd point scored over hospital waiting times has been overshadowed by gaffes such as encouraging Scots to panic over petrol shortages and his ill-judged (in the eyes of his own Aberdeen business constituents) comments over the FM’s role in the Trump golf resort plans. But these limited forays into the public arena melt into significance compared with his relative anonymity elsewhere and the fact that most people outside the Holyrood bubble ask – ‘Nicol who?’ Indeed, one could easily argue that the party simply slipped quietly out of government and into obscurity after finishing fourth in the Scottish elections with only 16 of the Parliament’s 129 MSPs and Stephen’s own majority in Aberdeen South substantially slashed from over 8,000 to just over 2,500 by SNP Maureen Watt, who subsequently got in on the list. So, no love lost there then? This added to Stephen’s naked antipathy towards the SNP which has been blamed on the fact that he not only refused to enter into constructive discussions about going into coalition with Salmond’s party but also his introduction of a very un-Lib Dem ‘grudge and grievance’ form of politics once associated with the SNP. And when contrasted with the more positive ins and direct hits on government being made down south by Vince Cable and others, Stephen just seemed to be dragging his party in Scotland on an ever downwards spiral. Some less gentle commentators might observe that the most memorable thing about the Lib Dems in the last year or so has been watching Tavish Scott grow a beard, dress up as a Viking for Up Helly Aa and then shave off his beard. Like watching paint dry.
For a party that had enjoyed the taste of eight years in power, this drift into oblivion has naturally caused increasing resentment within the party which ultimately, may have contributed to Stephen’s departure despite the ‘family reasons’ given but has also left two stonking big elephants well and truly in the room. Firstly, why didn’t they go into coalition with the SNP when they had the chance and secondly, why not support a referendum on independence?
Scott rejects this first proposition as something that would have been disingenuous for a party as principled as the Liberal Democrats. Afterall, he claims, who would take them seriously if they had got into a bed with a party that believes in something so fundamentally opposed by the Lib Dems? Ok, point taken but how serious do they look now? Party supporters might well be thinking that they should have put their cross on the ballot paper next to the box that said ‘Vote for me, I’m a loser’. Is it too impolite to question the motive for being in politics, if it is not to govern?
“I agree,” he concedes. “We did not do an adequate job at explaining the principled stance that we took over that issue.”
So what was the principle?
“We don’t agree with the SNP on the issue of independence.”
But in hindsight, does he regret not having had the opportunity to be back at the helm of government?
“I have no regrets at all about not going into a coalition with the SNP because we ran an election campaign which said that we would have nothing to do with independence, a referendum or separatism and I genuinely think that if we had flip-flopped, or whatever colourful phrase you or your colleagues in the media would have used on the Friday morning after we had gone into a coalition, then on that basis, we would have been rightfully called everything under the sun.
“Secondly, there was not the parliamentary arithmetic to have a majority and I think stable government is based on having a majority and with all the respect in the world to Patrick (Harvie) and Robin (Harper), I would not have wanted to be worrying every Wednesday and Thursday about what they were going to do. That is not my idea of a stable government and I say that even though I like them both enormously.
“Thirdly, the SNP view which was expressed in a wholly typical and off the cuff remark by Christopher Harvie at some seminar or other shortly afterwards was that the SNP had wanted to go into coalition with the Liberals so that they could blame anything that went wrong on us. I’m afraid that is how some of us in the Lib Dems viewed the proposition. For although I have the greatest respect for Alex Salmond as a politician, and he is a consummate politician to his very fingertips, we had gone through all of that experience before during our eight years in government with Labour and we know how that works. We grew up as a party during those eight years and we may need to grow up again but we would have been out spun from day one by the SNP in a coalition and that is something we also had to consider. So, no. No regrets.”
Does he miss his Labour partners?
“No. I think Labour is going through a period of going backwards and frankly, paying the price now for their extraordinary selection process back in 1998 and when you speak to some of them privately about that, they will admit that to be true.
“I have personal friends in all the parties but I do not miss the centralisation and Big Brother tendencies of the Labour Party and their utterly illiberal attitudes on social justice so being free of all of that is liberating.”
Does he not share some sympathy with the proposition put forward by Labour leadership contender, Iain Gray, that as an opposition party, his would put forward its own alternative legislative programme and try to push that through?
“Who is going to play games with the Labour Party during the next three years? Labour are a toxic brand at the moment. If that is Iain’s strategy then he has a tough job ahead of him.”
What about the Lib-Dem stance on a multi-question referendum on independence? How can he belong to a party so enmeshed in issues of liberty, democracy and freedom and not allow democracy to prevail?
“I agree that message is confused but simply, I don’t see how a multiple referendum could work; I genuinely do not think you could apply STV to something as important as this but we will see what happens over the coming months and years. We don’t have a referendum Bill in front of Parliament and there appears to be no sign of it and I don’t think we will be debating it in the near future.
“Anyway, I really don’t think that my party should be defined by what Alex wants us to do. We will develop our argument and work through the Calman and the Steel Commissions, which is about where we want politics to go and change and we will see what happens as the months and years go by.”
So not quite a no to a referendum for the future but with such a serious image problem and confusion about what the Lib Dems actually stand for in Scotland today, why did Scott want the job of leader in the first place and where does he think he can take the party?
“Politics is changing in Scotland enormously and I was quite serious about what I said the other week about the tectonic plates and potentially, this is the most exciting time in Scottish public life in a generation. I have talked to friends and colleagues, people like D Steel (he does that posh thing of calling people by their first or second initial quite a lot) about what it was like in the 70s with the referendum approaching and the Lib Lab pact, etc and when politics in London was very exciting and then of course, came to a juddering halt when Mrs T was elected but I get a strong sense that this is the time to be leading a party because it is changing so much.”
When Jim Wallace stood down as leader in 2005, the media believed that Stephen and Scott had had their own ‘Granita moment’ and decided that Scott would stand aside and allow Stephen the opportunity. However, Scott laughs at this and says they may have shared a bag of chips but there was no momentous pact because at the time, he was going through the breakdown of his first marriage and being leader of the party was not something he even considered.
He adds that this time around, the chance to stand as leader of the party coincided with a very happy and settled time in his personal life which made the decision to stand an easy one. He
sees the role now as coming at the right time. “I see it as just a great challenge; making sure my party is part of that shake up that is politics today. It’s an
historic time, an exciting time and an interesting time and I am ready to lead my party in it.”
So how does he intend to lead?
“Two things; firstly, I don’t think you play the SNP games and where they have been successful, for which I give them full credit, is to use the minority card to their own advantage and therefore, have very little legislation, which means they don’t have to worry about losing votes on and as a result, you don’t see many of them around the Parliament because they are all out campaigning and to be fair, we all get obsessed – because those of us that did government for eight years did get obsessed – about votes and how our parliamentary system works and we just have to rewrite the playbook on that and I will and that’s why when I announced my team, I broke up the portfolios and had none of that shadow cabinet guff that frankly, no one else understands and it’s now all about campaigning and focussing on issues like the cost of living, etc and the second aspect is to get out of the Holyrood bubble. I have slogged miles this week and this will be a normal week for me because I am determined to move from what I think too many politicians do and that is, to move from transmit mode to receive mode and actually, genuinely listen to people and then work on the solutions, ideas and thoughts on how we improve things but you don’t do that, with the greatest respect, by sitting in interminable meetings in Holyrood, you have to get out on the ground and that is what I intend to do.”
Given that Stephens gave up the job because of pressures on family life brought with the political post, has Scott thought through the pros and cons? He has only recently married BBC producer Kirsten Campbell and with his existing family still in Shetland, couldn’t we see another Lib Dem burnt by the lack of work/home balance?
“Well, Kirsten’s not pregnant if you are hinting at that,” he laughs. “No, look, my children are older now anyway, my daughter is about to go to university, and the thing about Shetland is that the children were used to me going away during the week and being at home in the weekend. When I first heard about Nicol’s decision, I sat the kids down and told them my plans and asked them what they thought and they basically said that it wouldn’t make any difference and I should go for it. Now is the right time for me and the party. I am happily married and have a very clear sense of what needs to be done.”
I put it to him that despite his own feelings or those held by individual party members about the SNP and Alex Salmond in particular, it is the nationalists that have created this new and exciting time and forced that dramatic change in debate and pace in Scotland. For instance, the constitutional debate would not be happening among the unionist parties if it were not for the success of the SNP.
“Firstly,” he says very firmly, “we are not a unionist party, we never have been and we never will be. We are federalists and we don’t have the hang up that Labour has over the Union or that, I would argue, the Tories do, which often gets overlooked. We are absolutely a federalist party and comfortable with that. We are home rulers, we have always been part of the home rule movement and I am also comfortable with that and I think you will find I use a lot more of that language in the coming years because it will be the language of the future.
“The argument over constitutional powers, which has dominated much of the last session, and I think has no real interest to the day to day, run of the mill issues affecting people outside there and what they are confronting at this time, is enormously important and it is crucial that we get it right and one of my worries at the moment and one of the reasons I was so committed to standing to be leader, is that Alex has had a fair run at things in the last year or so and I am determined that people know there is another argument and I think it can be a positive one that it’s not just about walloping the SNP and saying they don’t know what they are talking about, I don’t think that’s the right way to approach it. I think we have to say that the SNP believe in independence, we don’t believe in it and this is why.
“We undoubtedly have a great opportunity as the tectonic plates change. Labour have had it, the Tories have sold their souls to the nationalists, come what may and theirs is a coalition in all but name but my party is, therefore, in a strong position to garner votes, particularly from people fed up with Labour but unwilling to support the nationalists. We are involved in running 12 councils across Scotland in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Perthshire, Highlands, etc so the troops are ready; what they now need is leadership and that’s my job.
“My values are underpinned by fairness, liberty and community
My values are underpinned by fairness, liberty and community 
. I believe that these will be the compelling values of 21st century Scotland but the challenge for me is to translate them into our analysis of what Scotland needs and to produce positive reasons to vote Liberal Democrat.”
And as the devil is always, as they say, in the detail, it is those reasons that need to be spelt out because many would argue that if it were possible to strip away the independence issue from the SNP, there would be little to distinguish many of their key policies from the Lib Dems.
Scott agrees and says that he will co-operate when there are grounds for co-operation. He strikes a new tone by constantly referring to the FM as Alex during the interview rather than as Salmond that in a previous life – before May 2007 – always felt as if it was being spat out rather than spoken. And in a new spirit of conciliation, Scott concedes that the First Minister has many admirable qualities and that none of this is personal.
Despite his relaxed demeanour, he is well aware that his job is a considerable one. He has inherited a party that is damaged by the last 18 months and trying to find its place in an opposition which has been dominated by the internal wrangling of the Labour Party rather than any strong argument against the SNP.
“The SNP has been a triumph – they are avoiding Parliament with little legislation and that is the success of minority government and I have never had any doubt about Alex Salmond’s effectiveness as a clever political operator. The level of debate had undoubdetly improved and the Lib Dems need to be part of that developing debate.”
He says the signing of the Concordat with local councils was “a coup for the SNP” and describes it as “good liberal stuff”. He says that his party would have done more of that kind of innovative work during their time in government had it not been for “the dead hand of the Labour Party on local government” and says that he would be stupid to ignore the sentiments expressed by Lib Dem councillors during his leadership contest, who applauded the Concordat, but wanted to see more devolved power to them and he says that the SNP need also to give them more financial power, which brings him to the one issue which could set his party back on the road to recovery and government – local income tax.
Both the Lib Dems and the SNP are in favour of a local income tax but differ on how it should be implemented. Scott says the SNP needs the support on getting rid of the council tax and his party could be the one to offer it.
“I quite agree that this is something we could work on but there are some problems for the SNP because despite what John Swinney says, they have demonstrably pulled power into the centre and we are saying that to get our support with local income tax, they are going to have to trust local councils financially and John and Alex have to be up for that but then absolutely, there is a deal to be done.”
With Stephen at the helm, it would have been a lot easier to write off the Liberal Democrats as an irrelevance as with Scott’s energy, coupled with the fact that the SNP needs to forge alliances to achieve parliamentary approval for some of its key but controversial issues, the Lib Dems could exert considerable influence.
Scott and Nicol Stephen were once described by someone (as is the way with these bar-room tales, no one can ever remember the source) as being like Nick Faldo and Seve Ballesteros. Stephen as Faldo: steady, reliable, dull, unflashy, plays a percentage game and grinds out the results. Scott, like Ballesteros: charming, suave, showing flashes of genius, but then getting himself stuck in a bunker and flailing around wildly. It will be a mark of Scott the leader to ensure that while playing slightly off field with the nationalists, he manages to keep a steady grip and an eye on the ball.
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