Anton Muscatelli: It’s time for Scottish politics to get real 

Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli is promoting a new report on how to boost the economy and address social challenges. He says it’s nothing like his last one. 

The former University of Glasgow principal leaned on his economic expertise to produce a paper for Scottish Labour in November focused on boosting regional economies.  

Four months on, he’s leading on a new paper by the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) which calls on the country’s politicians to change the way they do business. 

That means whole-system economic reform, a preventative shift in public health, a cross-government immigration and integration framework, better linkage between education and broader national priorities, and cross-party agreements on both driving up housing supply and tackling climate change. 

Most of all, it calls for an end to the tribalism, short-termism and soundbite culture that has marked so much of our politics. “Scotland now faces a choice between a politics of broad aspiration and limited accountability, and a politics grounded in empathy, evidence, and delivery,” the report states. 

“The latter demands more than consensus-building rhetoric: it requires political leaders and institutions to make difficult choices, to explain trade-offs honestly, and to sustain focus on outcomes rather than announcements. This paper brings together evidence of what effective policy can look like in practice. The challenge now is cultural as much as structural – to move away from polarisation and disagreement, and towards a politics that takes lived experience seriously, values evidence over misleading narratives, and is judged by whether it delivers meaningful change.” 

Muscatelli, a former Scottish Government adviser and now RSE president, backs the call. But he didn’t write it. In fact, he didn’t write any of the report, which instead pools knowledge and insight from RSE’s fellows, and from temperature-taking sessions carried out with members of the public. 

And so anyone who thinks they know what it will say, based on his previous work, would be wrong.

“They are very different things,” he tells Holyrood. While the Labour paper was his and “nobody else’s”, the RSE paper is “the culmination of concerted effort to give people across the country a say in Scotland’s future ahead of the election”. 

“We really do need to focus on policy differently than in the past. There will be different choices [for the next parliament]. There is an issue of trust between the public and politics. This is trying to restore some of that,” he says. 

The paper is published as parliament dissolves and campaigning ramps up. If it is to make an impact on how parties approach the election and the next five-year term, it must do so imminently – after all, there are fewer than 50 days until Scotland goes to the polls.  

The public spending black hole is expected to grow to £5billion by the end of the decade. Muscatelli says voters should prepare for “the most serious fiscal challenge” of the devolution era. 

Only Reform UK has so far produced its manifesto, a prospectus pledging tax cuts which the Institute for Fiscal Studies said is “not credible” and presents “a mirage created by a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the current devolution settlement”. 

What the others will come forth with remains to be seen, but already Labour has promised a new housing investment bank, while the SNP has pledged an increase in government-funded childcare, the Greens would end homework for primary pupils, the Conservatives would cut NHS managers, and the Lib Dems has vowed to deliver affordable rental homes for key workers. 

What Muscatelli really wants to see in the full manifestos, however, is “honesty about the fact that there are trade-offs" ahead.  

“In a fractious and fractured political environment, it’s difficult for political parties to make difficult decisions because there’s a danger that other parties just say, ‘we wouldn’t do this’,” he says, leading to promises the budget can’t keep. “Let’s get more collaboration within the parliament. 

“The Scottish Parliament was established in 1999 with a view to being a bit different to Westminster, to creating more collaboration across forces.” 

It’s not a new refrain. And when there are votes up for grabs, how much collaboration can there really be?  

But this term brought a glimpse of the possible in the Assisted Dying Bill, for which MSPs were freed from the party whips and given a free vote. It saw members campaign on a cross-party basis, with figures like DFM Kate Forbes, Labour finance spokesman Michael Marra and Conservative MSP Edward Mountain share platforms.  

When the final votes were counted, one of the last things viewers watching on the parliament’s livestream was Stephen Kerr of the Conservatives crossing the aisle to shake hands and chat with former first minister Humza Yousaf of the SNP. 

“We saw probably more honest debate because people didn’t have to stick to party lines,” Muscatelli reflects, “but it’s more difficult when you’re dealing with the economy and tax decisions.” 

The next Scottish Government will need to “find a more sustainable way to improve its financial picture,” the report says, which will involve “balancing limited funding from the fiscal framework, borrowing powers, and the block grant with rising demands on health, social care, and other services. Clear, resilient, and transparent fiscal plans are essential, including considering all tax (including Council Tax) options, making strategic investments offering longer term sustainable returns, and avoiding short-term measures that defer hard choices”.  

And yet there is, it is claimed “a generational opportunity” before us in which “Scotland can build a more resilient future through the clean energy transition, technological innovation, public sector reform, nature recovery and a host of other developments”. “Realising this potential will require moving beyond aspiration to coordinated delivery, long-term investment, and skills development across all regions,” the RSE said.  

Part of achieving that, it is claimed, is moving the conversation on immigration away from “provocative narratives” and onto “factual evidence” because “without inward migration and asylum intake the working-age population will decline, placing pressure on economic growth, tax revenue and public services”. 

It’s an argument that runs contrary to much of what we’re hearing from Reform, the Conservatives and Labour in particular. Muscatelli is unequivocal. “There are not many levers to address the demographic challenge and this is a challenge not only for Scotland but also for many countries,” he says. Policies that attempt to raise the birth rate, for instance, are unlikely to work at scale, he says. “Anything like that, even if it was successful would only change things very slightly. A focus on domestic skills is of course very important. We can do more to increase participation in the workforce. All these things will help”, but migration is “absolutely key to easy some of our demographic needs”. 

“This is a debate we must have across the devolved administrations and with the UK [Government] about how we address this, because Scotland needs skills. We need to have an honest debate about how migrants contribute to our economy.”