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The Herald Scotland
10 hours ago
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
The Tories are becoming two parties in one. Which one will prevail?
But for the two parties of the right, there are more existential issues to keep in mind. The Tory party in Scotland finds itself in the hottest water it has encountered since devolution began. The party bumbled along for the first few terms of Parliament in the mid teens in vote share, translating to the high teens in seat numbers. As the anti-devolution party, they spent a fair bit of the first decade just trying to convince people they actually wanted to be there, with their first leader David McLetchie also making a good fist of putting into place some sort of liberal, free-market policy platform as an alternative to the social democratic consensus which was emerging. Read more by Andy Maciver The theoretical high-point of the party was when, under Annabel Goldie, it struck up an informal agreement to prop up the minority SNP administration of Alex Salmond. In reality, though, the SNP got what it wanted out of that arrangement for pocket change, and the Conservatives were unable to use those four years to derive any kind of sustained shift in sentiment. At its lowest ebb after the 2011 election, the party was saved, not by something to argue for but by something to argue against; independence. In the wake of the independence referendum, with the Labour Party in the grip of Jeremy Corbyn – who had indicated his agnosticism towards Scotland's future in the UK – and with the SNP having won a landslide victory in the 2015 General Election on a ticket of promising another independence referendum, the Tories scored the open goal with which they had been presented. In elections in 2016, 2017, 2019 and 2021, with constitutional temperatures running hot, the core Tory vote in the teens was joined by a large number of unionists who held their noses and voted for the party they thought would stop another referendum. The trouble is, though, that the party's vote was built on sand. The Tories should, by now, have realised that they have been victims of their own success. The UK Government's belligerent "no, never" approach to granting a referendum led to the Scottish Government pursuing the case in the Supreme Court that led to the now-famous judicial decision that the Scottish Parliament cannot legislate for an independence referendum. With independence off the table, and the Tories heading out of office, those "transactional Tories" who backed the party for four elections over five years chewed them up and spat them out. Add to the mix the rise of the Reform party, and you have the story of why, at the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election, Scotland's primary party of the centre-right polled six per cent of the vote. We should understand what that means. Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse sits within the Central Scotland electoral region. In 2021, with over 18 per cent of the vote, the Tories returned three MSPs. In the neighbouring Glasgow region, its 12 per cent gave them two MSPs, and next door in West Scotland (where the party's leader Russell Findlay has his seat) a 22 per cent vote share gave them another three seats. Through east, in the other urban region of Lothian, a 20 per cent vote share gave them another three. That's 11 MSPs across those four urban regions – around one-third of the party's total. An outcome more like the six per cent the party polled in the by-election puts every one of those seats at risk. In all probability, there are enough rural areas in West Scotland and in Lothian to keep them in the game, but only just. There is angst within the Tory MSP group that the party's strategy amounts to no more than hoping Reform will implode. In reality, though, it's about the best strategy available to them in the short term. Cross your fingers, folks. This is not true, though, in rural parts of the country. It is interesting to look back at that 2024 General Election, at where the party kept its seats. The Tories have retained a good amount of land mass, up north and down south, still popular in rural areas. The Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election changed the political ground in Scotland (Image: PA) There is an underlying story here, of two parties under one banner. There is the Tory party of the blue-collar, hacked off, law and order urbanite, driven by concerns over community issues from anti-social behaviour to potholes, with unsubtle views about the impact of immigrants and even more unsubtle views about the distribution of welfare to them, and a sensitive radar to woke issues. That is the party of Mr Findlay, for sure, but the trouble is it is also a mirror-image of Reform. If there is a distinction between Mr Findlay and defectors to Reform such as Glasgow councillor Thomas Kerr, then it is a distinction I am yet to spot upon hearing the two men speak. They are fishing from the same pool and, in the by-election and in national polling, it is Mr Kerr's party which is catching the bulk of the fish. Then there is the Tory party of rural Scotland; the entrepreneurs and small business owners, the free-market liberals concerned about the pernicious economic environment; the hard workers impinged by dismal infrastructure. Ironically, this is very much the party of Mr Findlay's Deputy, Rachael Hamilton. This party does fairly well, and in truth is more in tune with the needs of rural people and rural businesses than any other, including the SNP. We may find, in May next year, that the party's Holyrood map looks more like its Westminster one; strong to the north and to the south, but gutted in the middle. Maybe, as we inevitably move into a fractious parliament and perhaps to a future with more new entrants into Holyrood, and as Scotland's productive economy becomes more focussed on rural Scotland, it is this version of the Tory party which will prove its longevity. Andy Maciver is Founding Director of Message Matters, and co-host of the Holyrood Sources podcast
The Herald Scotland
06-06-2025
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
Commuting by bus from Edinburgh's suburbs is awful. Here's my solution
This week's Herald investigation into The Future of Edinburgh serves as a timely reminder of the capital's national importance. Edinburgh is the beating economic heart of the country. With one of the strongest records on Gross Value Added in the UK, Edinburgh is making the money required to fix the other struggling cities and towns around it. And a massive part of Edinburgh's economic success lies in its ability to efficiently move workers into and around the city. Read more by Andy Maciver I have lived in Edinburgh for about 40 of my 45 years, with my only absences being short stints in Glasgow and Dundee. I grew up in Currie; not much over 5 miles from the city centre, it is pretty much the dictionary definition of a suburb. Growing up, the borders of my world were close; my primary concern was getting to school, which I did on foot or by bike. However my father worked in town, and normally relied on the bus. Looking back now, that journey on the Red 44 or the Green 66 was relatively easy because we lived close to the Lanark Road, but was more of an ordeal for the majority of people in the village who lived down the hill. Currie experienced a very substantial housebuilding boom in the 1960s and 1970s but, with the Water of Leith immediately to the south of the A70 Lanark Road, all the houses were built down in the fields to the north, and expansion inevitably took place further and further away from the main road. With a 20-minute walk up a hill to the Lanark Road, and a 45 minute bus journey, we begin to see this as a very, very long five miles. It can feel shorter for those who happen to be near Curriehill Railway Station (which sits on the Shotts Line), but with only one train an hour heading into town, this is not a service designed with commuter convenience in mind. I now live inside the City Bypass, in Morningside. As was the case when I lived in Currie, I am very near the main road, so I can walk out of the door and find an array of buses awaiting me. As it happens, I tend not to use them, and instead I cycle to work in town, trying to avoid swerving into one of the new Lothian electric buses as I dodge the potholes on our truly deplorable roads. Again, though, you do not have to stray far from the main road to find yourself marooned in a location with no bus route particularly nearby. Morningside is only two miles from the West End, but for people who have, perhaps, a 15 minute walk to the bus, and then sit for 30 minutes as the bus crawls through traffic on narrow streets, it can be an awfully long two miles. Lothian Buses are up to date (Image: free) For suburbanites living away from bus stops, especially those who are elderly or immobile, the car is and will remain a necessary feature in their lives, and we need to provide them with quieter roads. To do that, we need to give commuters who choose to use the car, or to stay at home, with better options. As a mechanism for getting suburban workers to work, Edinburgh's mass transit system needs to extend beyond the bus. Time is money, and with one of Scotland's key economic problems being a lack of productivity in the workforce, efficient mass transit starts to look significantly more important than it might at first glance appear. It is time not only for Edinburgh's local authority to generate new ideas, but for the Scottish Government to help. Scotland - all of Scotland - needs Edinburgh performing to its full potential. Edinburgh, conversely, is so economically successful that it relies on workers not only from its own suburbs but from Fife, the Borders, and Mid, West and East Lothian. Driving out of Edinburgh on a weekday morning tells you what you need to know. As you breeze along the M8, up the M9 or M90 or down the A1, A7, A68, A701 or A702, you count your lucky stars that you're heading out and not sitting at 5 mph trying to come in. Travelling on four wheels cannot be Edinburgh's answer, either for those coming in or for those already living in an EH postcode. There are game-changing options which, happily, would require relatively little capital investment, and in the spirit of the Herald's efforts this week to lift the lid on some of the key discussions the capital needs to have, I will offer two. Neither involve roads; the first involves the river, and the second involves the railway. The southern side of Fife - from Dunfermline and Rosyth round the coast through Aberdour, Burntisland, Kinghorn and up to Kirkcaldy - is constantly expanding and increasingly becoming an Edinburgh commuter belt. Rail can play a role here, but only for those who live relatively close to a station, so the roads take the strain. If only we had another method of connecting Fife and Edinburgh such as, say, a body of water like a river or estuary. Ah, but we do! I am by no means the first person to moot the idea of a ferry across the Forth, but past discussion seems too often to have revolved around a beach-to-beach tourist service rather than something to integrate with the mass transit network. Read more of our Future of Edinburgh series Instead, a rapid, regular, commuter-focussed service from a new park-and-sail at Dalgety Bay (probably), directly into the tram stop at Newhaven would be an efficient, productive option for the army of workers who come from the Kingdom every day. And, not to forget those of us who inhabit the city, we live on top of a railway line called the South Suburban, currently used only for freight. If we wanted a light rail line to complement the routes driven by Lothian Buses, cutting across the south suburbs and linking Haymarket at one end and Waverley at the other, with an easy spur to the Royal Infirmary, we could not possibly design one better than what we already have. It is easy for our local and national civil servants to spend a few decades poring over hundred-page strategies which lead to consultations which lead to more strategies which lead to more consultations. But when opportunities to fix Edinburgh's commuter transport problems are already sitting before our eyes, it mightn't be a bad idea to take them. Andy Maciver is Founding Director of Message Matters, and co-host of the Holyrood Sources podcast
The Herald Scotland
30-05-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Scotland's educational establishment is betraying children and economy
Scotland has, in theory, a strong economic future, but it is a future that demands a workforce with a considerably high level of education and skilling. Our growth industries - renewables, primarily, but also life sciences, tourism, food and drink and a range of rural-based activities including farming, fisheries and forestry - need good people, from welders to lawyers to engineers to scientists. Read more by Andy Maciver Our current educational performance is jeopardising our future economic prospects, yet it is far from clear that they will have them and, bluntly, the educational establishment seems disinterested in doing anything about it. For those who want to cut through SNP and Labour politicians shouting at each other, there is more obviously factual evidence available. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the only international school performance study to which Scotland has submitted itself in recent years, offers us data for our children's performance in maths, science and reading which should simultaneously chill us and focus our collective minds. In all three disciplines - maths, reading and science - Scottish children's scores are continually declining. We are now hovering around average. If our trend continues into the next set of PISA data at the end of next year (and there seems little reason to believe that it will not), we will officially see Scottish education, once held up as the envy of the world, delivering a standard below the OECD average. That decline, almost precisely, corresponds with the onset of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), and it is in this area where the most obvious, rapid and impactful change could be made. CfE was a perfectly reasonable, evidenced concept, but it has suffered from a misinterpreted and bureaucratised implementation which has had a direct impact in children's learning. However there is a way out, and individual pockets of success provide us with a route. Perhaps the most obvious example comes from Berwickshire High School under the leadership of its Headteacher Bruce Robertson. Amidst a raft of other changes to the school's ethos and to the level of expectation placed on children, Mr Robertson injected content based on knowledge into a curriculum which has been largely stripped of it. The outcome was astonishing. In only six years, the proportion of kids achieving at least five Level 5 qualifications in S4 went from around two-fifths to almost two-thirds. The proportion attaining at least five Level 6 qualifications in S5 doubled to over 40 per cent. Scottish children's scores in maths, reading and science are declining in the PISA rankings (Image: free) Berwickshire High's boldness in taking on the blob has reshaped the future of its pupils. Nothing other than old-fashioned Scottish grit prevents this being tried at every school in the country. A knowledge-based, skills-oriented curriculum would take a chunk out of our educational deficit, but it is not the only game in town. The Covid school shutdown continues to have a corrosive impact. Unlike in many European peers, Scotland doubled-down on school closures against the wind of scientific evidence, buckling to the education trade unions and destroying, in effect, a year of education. To make matters worse, we declined to engage in any meaningful catch-up programme, and pupils continue to suffer. We now need to do the right thing by the children we have wronged. We could start by reinstating structure and hierarchy between pupils, parents and teachers. In a post-Covid osmosis which we will inevitably regret, we have allowed an almost complete erosion of this basic tenet of a child's life. We have placed children at the centre of educational decision-making, giving them far too much control over what they learn and how they learn it. This is not the job of a pupil; it is the job of a teacher. Similarly, we have allowed teachers to be placed in a situation where they are responsible for the social growth of a child as much as their academic growth. This is not the job of a teacher; it is the job of a parent. As we learned through data collected from Scottish teachers earlier this year, there has been an exponential increase in absence, abuse and violence directed by children at teachers. No wonder. This is a near-inevitable consequence of any kind of hierarchical structure, and giving children far too much agency over decisions which should be taken for them. Read more The brain's prefrontal cortex - the part which determines judgement and decision-making - is not fully developed until the early 20s. Delegating agency over life-altering decisions to children half this age is absurd. In short, we expect far too much of children's developing brains in a social context, and far too little of their developing brains in an academic context. So, let us go back to a more traditional hierarchy of the sort that was in place when Scottish education indeed was looked upon with envy rather than pity. We can return more respectful behaviour and academic excellence to schools through a series of decisions which adults make on behalf of children. Adults can decide, for instance, that children will not be permitted to access their mobile phones during the school day. Adults can decide what a child will learn, and how they will learn it. Adults can decide that children will wear a school uniform. The list goes on. This is now Scotland's number one long term problem. It is a flashing red light in our economic and political risk register. Every day we fail to tackle it is another day where we risk our country's future prospects. Andy Maciver is Founding Director of Message Matters, and co-host of the Holyrood Sources podcast
