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Political Interview: Jack McConnell and Jim Wallace discuss twenty years of the Scottish Parliament

Image credit: Alister Thorpe

Political Interview: Jack McConnell and Jim Wallace discuss twenty years of the Scottish Parliament

There are some things you can never plan for. And after years of fighting for a Scottish Parliament, a landslide victory for Tony Blair, a referendum campaign and a public vote with a resounding ‘Yes/Yes’, who could have guessed that within the space of just two years, one first minister would have died, another would be forced to resign and even before the MSPs had moved into their new home at the bottom of the Royal Mile, a third first minister would be in charge?

By the time Jack McConnell, now Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale, was elected to the first Scottish parliament in 1999 as the MSP for Motherwell and Wishaw, he was already a seasoned politician and an early architect of the devolution project.

Scotland being Scotland, I, of course, remember McConnell as the fresh-faced president of the students’ association at Stirling University, where I began my studies in 1980 along with, as it happens, Richard Leonard, with whom I shared the same halls and same degree course, and who is now, as testament to the twist and turns of Scottish politics, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party.

McConnell’s political career may have begun in his university days, but it matured alongside his teaching career with his election to Stirling District Council in 1984 as a councillor, and which he ultimately led until 1992, when he left to become general secretary of the Scottish Labour Party.

As general secretary, he was lauded for his contribution to the 1997 Labour landslide, but it was his commitment to devolution and the way he managed the party’s successful ‘Yes/Yes’ referendum campaign that set him apart from Labour colleagues. He simply ‘got’ Scotland.

His desire to see a Scottish parliament had deep roots, and as a member of the cross-party Scottish Constitutional Convention from 1989, McConnell forged seminal relationships, including that with the Liberal Democrat MP Jim Wallace, now Lord Wallace of Tankerness, and that bond would become the glue that kept the Scottish Parliament together during its first tumultuous years when it could truly have become unstuck.

Wallace, the then leader of the Liberal Democrats, had been an MP since 1983, occupying a number of frontbench seats for the party, including as chief whip. He was the constant in those early years of the first Scottish executive and the Labour/Lib Dem coalition as deputy first minister to Donald Dewar, Henry McLeish and then McConnell. He was also acting first minister during spells when Dewar was ill, and then later when he died, and again when McLeish resigned over ‘officegate’. And on the 20th anniversary of the Scottish Parliament, I reunite Wallace and McConnell in the House of Lords, where they both now sit, to talk about those early days.

“No one could have scripted on the 6th of May 1999 what was to happen over the next four years, never mind the next two,” says Wallace. “But in many respects, while obviously Donald’s death completely floored us, and then Henry’s resignation – well, you wouldn’t have foreseen that a year out – but in many respects, these were quite major things and the parliament, that very new parliament, got through it. The institution worked, the act provided what you did in the event of the demise of a first minister – a rule book, if you like – and the system worked.

“I probably felt more of an equal with Henry and Jack than I did with Donald, but that was probably more of a product of the fact that he was quite a bit senior to me and had been a cabinet minister rather than anything he did to make me feel like that.

“I had as close a relationship as you could with Donald. Actually, I remember one time when I was having a particularly rough time from the media over the release of a patient from the State Hospital and Donald discovered it was my birthday. He’d been at the Tunnock’s factory in Uddingston and they’d given him a box of 144 caramel wafers and he came through and gave me one for my birthday.”

McConnell nods his head fondly as his former deputy first minister recollects those difficult times and says that the success of the parliament steering its way through them was down to the planning that preceded it.

“I think the really interesting thing was the fact that this was the biggest and by far the most radical constitutional change in the first term of the Blair government, and it had all these challenges thrown at it in the first two years, but it remains the most successful constitutional change of the Blair government. The reason for that is that we had spent a decade or more, 15 years beforehand, working it all out. The Scottish Parliament wasn’t drawn up on the back of a fag packet, there wasn’t a political compromise at the last minute or changes in response to events, it was all thought through, it was intellectually rigorous, politically rigorous and there was a large degree of consent for the settlement.

“To me, there’s real lessons for the UK as a whole and in the current chaos. If you’re going to make a change of this kind of constitutional magnitude, then you plan for every eventuality. It’s exactly what Theresa May should have done with Brexit and the main reason that we withstood all that was thrown at us, the death of Donald, and so on and so on, was because we had a plan.”

Part of that plan was not becoming the first minister within the first three years, though, was it?

“I didn’t think I would even be finance minister, never mind first minister in two and a half years, but yes, I had my third ministerial post in under three years,” says McConnell. “I would have liked to have spent more time as an individual minister. I really enjoyed being both education and finance minister, but circumstances demanded that I step up and I certainly felt that I was ready for it and that I was capable of doing it.

“To be honest, I didn’t hesitate at the time because I certainly believed so much in the institution that I was determined to not let people down.

“I think if you go into the parliament and start off from the premise that you need to spend a bit of time just learning the parliament, then you’re going to potentially have some trouble, because sometimes, you will be asked to do a job that you haven’t prepared for, which to some extent is what happened to me with my position as finance minister.

“There hadn’t really been a discussion in advance of ‘99 of there even being a post of finance minister, and really, it was clear when Donald asked me to take it on that he wasn’t convinced there was even a need for it. There was no department, the officials were split between four or five different departments, there was no perm sec to deal with, it was pretty much starting from scratch.

“I was lucky. I had a lot of experience because I had been a very young council leader and I had run an authority. I had dealt with officials before, I had dealt with politicians before, I had been through all of that and had a few knocks along the way. So, I was lucky in that respect.

About his next role, he says: “Henry asked me to take on education when it was facing the biggest challenge in the cabinet at the time: dealing with the SQA and the exam chaos that had developed in the months before, there was an issue about school discipline, the teachers’ strikes were being threatened and negotiations were going on. I literally had 24-hours notice that I was going to get the job, but then I had a very clear idea of what I wanted the top priorities to be. I met the team within a couple of hours of being appointed the job and I had a list of five things I wanted done by the end of the week and it set a tone for action.

“It took us six days to change the board of the Scottish Qualifications Agency, to appoint a new chair, and we were given emergency permission to take that action, so slightly outwith the rules and so on, but we could see what needed to be done and we had the powers here that meant there were things that happened right away. You had to just step up, that was the job.”

In a recent interview with Holyrood, Tony Blair said that he had been frustrated by the fact that so few of the big beasts of Scottish politics could be persuaded to leave Westminster for the Scottish Parliament. I ask McConnell and Wallace whether that was to the parliament’s detriment in the early days, in that maybe people didn’t have the experience to take on big roles?

McConnell says: “I don’t know what Jim’s take on that would be but as far as I was concerned, the parliament, the new Scottish Parliament, had plenty of former MPs, there were maybe 16 or 17 from across the parties, and the idea that we needed to populate the new parliament with more people from Westminster is a false one.

“There were people who came from Westminster to the new parliament that were a success, there were people who came from Westminster to the new parliament that were not a success, and there were people who came who didn’t like it and left again, and there were people who came into the new parliament from having never been in parliament before who were a success and others who weren’t a success. The idea that you had to have experience here at Westminster to be effective in Holyrood, I think, was wrong, although having some people who did have that experience was really important, having David Steel and Jim and having Donald and so on, there were important figures there, but it wasn’t an essential precondition.”

Wallace agrees: “I think Jack’s right and while it was probably all a product of individual choices, it worked. I think the SNP MPs came en masse but in other parties, it was based on individual choices. I think if there had been too many of us from Westminster, it would have diminished the fact that part of the whole thinking behind the project was that we wanted to do something that was new and we weren’t wanting to recreate ‘Westminster on the Mound’, and I think that would have been a mistake.”

“Actually,” says McConnell, “that comment by Tony highlights a little of what we were just talking about, you know, the idea that because he knew certain MPs, whether they were competent or right for the new parliament or not, but because he knew them, he thought that they would have been better than some of the MSPs that were elected when actually, there were some really, really talented people in all parties who were elected and some people who weren’t so talented, but that’s the same in every parliament in the world.

“Actually, more importantly in some ways has been the lack of relationship building across the two parliaments. I am constantly frustrated by that. I think there’s a lack of engagement between politicians who serve in either parliament and I think it is affecting relationships, but it’s also affecting the quality of policy-making, whether it’s with Scotland having a wider perspective in the UK or Westminster taking into account Scottish interests or not.

He adds: “When I became a minister, never mind first minister, I knew every single member of the UK Labour cabinet and not just on first-name terms, people I’d spent time with, people I could meet and have relaxed conversations with, you know, knew their back stories, but I was struck, like Jim, that even as my time went on as first minister, there were Labour people in my cabinet and certainly younger Liberal Democrats coming through who didn’t have those relationships across the two parliaments.

“That relationship works two ways and there were some people who made an effort. David Miliband was one. I have to give him credit of being of the younger generation of new cabinet ministers who actually made an effort to come to Scotland and try and meet people and build relationships. But on both sides, I think it was starting to become obvious that there was a potential problem.

“It’s not just a feature that is in political parties, it is a feature that is in the generational change and it needs effort. My generation of Labour people in Scotland had spent time down south and so we had relationships. I remember going to a weekend seminar for young politicians from the UK and Ireland to talk about the overall relationship there in the mid-1990s and there were people there who are now sitting in very senior positions in the UK Parliament. Ian Paisley junior was there, for example, Mark Durkan was there, people who are now senior Conservatives were there, so you met people and you had a conversation with them and it all went into the thinking and the mix. I think, partly as a result of devolution, there’s a kind of nervousness about dealing with Scotland down here now and vice versa. On both sides, that relationship needs effort.”

Wallace agrees. “It’s not just a question of political maturity, it’s about having the confidence to ask questions and making the effort, as Jack did. And I don’t think you will find a lack of confidence in some of the people we are thinking about…it’s just that can sometimes be a little misdirected. To make this work, you’ve got to actually make the effort and probably make the space for it to happen. It’s very silly really, but there are simple things that get in the way. For instance, like a member of the Scottish Parliament does not have a pass to get into this place at Westminster, or they do, but it will only take you so far into the building.”

McConnell and Wallace already had a strong personal relationship forged in their days in the constitutional convention, which both agree was an important element in keeping the stability of the coalition during the various changes at the top.

“We spoke regularly about a lot of things,” says McConnell. “We knew each other well. The first two and a half years were very turbulent and Jim and I had maintained a close relationship as individual ministers as well as friends.

“He’s probably going to blush at this, but while Jim is remembered for his role as the leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats and for being in and maintaining a stable coalition and for stepping in in times of crises, I think it’s perhaps not as valued as it should be that he was also a fantastic team player and an individual minister. To have somebody like Jim as the justice minister for the first Scottish parliament, but to also have [him] round the cabinet table making sure that the discussions were focused on policy and that all the day-to-day stuff that was going on didn’t affect the clarity of the decision-making, and the way that we worked together as a team, that is what was most invaluable. I mean, it was great that he stepped in at times of crisis, but actually, in terms of the quality of discussion around the cabinet table, I will be forever grateful for that.”

“We had some laughs at times too,” says Wallace.

“We did indeed,” agrees McConnell. “People kick around all the stuff about the various controversies over the years about whether the Scottish Parliament should have let Westminster legislate on one thing or another, or whether the convention was the right thing to do, but one of my favourite moments was when Hugh Henry, who was Jim’s deputy in justice, had to explain to the cabinet and to the Labour group that if we didn’t pass this particular motion, the legal definition of transsexual would be different on the different sides of the border. So, someone could be a man in England and a woman in Scotland. It was a challenging discussion, but what was really challenging for Hugh was the fact that he was going to have to go home and explain it to his dad.

“When we were dealing with serious issues, we were at the same time able to have a bit of perspective on it, a bit of humour, which again, is very much part of the Scottish character. We were rooted in Scotland.”

“Ha,” laughs Wallace. “My last night in office, I was doing First Minister’s Questions the next day because you were at one of your kid’s graduations and we were putting to bed the white paper on planning, and the effort we used to make to get coalition agreements to work, and I remember the two of us standing with an open thesaurus simply to find the individual words that would keep both our parties happy. I can’t even remember what we came up with or where it is in that white paper, but we put a lot of effort into it, anyway.”

Twenty years on, does either of them ponder what Scotland would have been like without the Scottish Parliament?

“I think it’s very hard to predict,” says McConnell. “There’s been so many things happened in the last 20 years, it’s impossible to speculate what would have happened without it. Although, I am more concerned about the fact that without devolution, we would still have a system of land tenure that was hundreds of years out of date and that was repressive. We might not have had the smoking ban or if it had been experimented in Scotland by Westminster, there would have been riots in the pubs. We wouldn’t have the recycling targets that we do. We wouldn’t have moved from the bottom of the league table to half-way up the league table on recycling. We wouldn’t have the development of renewable energy in Scotland … the modernisation of the criminal justice [system], more independent law officers, independent judges…”

“It’s given us an opportunity to implement a raft of reforms that we would have waited for forever and a day to get from Westminster,” interjects Wallace.

“What I think is interesting is that in about 2013, I went to address first-year students at Aberdeen University and before I went into their lecture hall, the head of the law school said, ‘Just remember, most of these students here don’t remember Scotland without a Scottish parliament’, and that made me stop in my tracks because we had created this different future where the whole political debate is different and things are possible now that wouldn’t have been previously because we would have thought, ‘Westminster will never do that’. And I think that’s been empowering. It has empowered people.”

McConnell says that he believes the devolution journey has meant that there is a more relaxed and accepted approach to Scottish identity than there was in 1999.

“I think our generation, coming through the 70s and 80s, had more of a Scottish identity than perhaps the generations of the 50s and 60s post-war generation, who maybe felt a bit more British. I think there was a rise of Scottish identity and pride and interest in Scottish culture through the 70s, 80s and 90s. To some extent, that was a contested identity, but I think it has been much more accepted and people are more relaxed and cringing less about that.

“I actually think in terms of the culture in Scotland, there are two things that are really different. There was definitely a feeling in Scotland in 1999 that you had to leave the country to get on, and I think, certainly in the first decade of the parliament, we reversed that. We moved from a declining population to an increasing population. That was not an accident; it was a deliberate act of policy and leadership and it has made a difference. That promotion of Scotland as a place where you can come and succeed is really important and it’s really important that we don’t lose that in the current debates.

“The other thing, and this is maybe the less noticed but maybe the deeper change, is that Scotland in 1999 was a pretty traditional, white, fairly conservative, with a small c, country, as was shown by the debate on Section 28 in 1999/2000, but following a stabbing in Sighthill in Glasgow in 2000/2001, the response of Scottish politics and Scottish political leadership to that was to be more proactive on celebrating diversity ... We took a stand that was very different from most leaderships in Western Europe in welcoming immigration ... And I think the result of that, partly, can be seen in the vote on Brexit in Scotland in 2016. I don’t think the vote on Brexit in Scotland in 2016 had anything to do with European Structural Funds. I think it was about the national culture and the national culture had changed between about 2001 and about 2008 and it’s been maintained since then. And I think we are a more liberal, more welcoming, more diverse place than we were back then ... Political leadership took a stand and that would never have happened if people had been constrained in Westminster parties, in the Westminster system, but because we were in Scotland and we could do it our own way, we found a Scottish solution to a Scottish problem, and to me, that’s been the deepest cultural change.”

“And actually,” says Wallace. “You can’t imagine Scotland today without a Scottish parliament, and while that actually might be a slightly negative way of putting it, it’s actually quite important because it truly has changed Scotland. It’s part of Scotland.”

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