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The Herald Scotland

Holyrood is not the people's parliament - it is run by an elite

First, there are desires shown by the recent findings of the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) Scotland survey. It highlighted a clear decline in the levels of trust in political parties and politicians at Holyrood. Indeed, those political parties and politicians are ranked even lower in the trust table than their counterparts at Westminster. And investigations by The Ferret on 'who runs Scotland' in 2021 and 2025 have shown that corporate lobbyists have too much influence over Scottish governments and Scottish governments have been too willing to be influenced by them. Those polled by ERS Scotland also wanted a certain type of consensus politics to operate, showing that they have not given up on all hope that the situation could be rectified. They also favoured more decentralisation of democracy. Second, there is the means to have a considerable changing of the guard at Holyrood. Of the current 129 MSPs, 25% have already indicated they will no longer stand again for re-election. Critically, of these MSPs, 75% are SNP MSPs. Among these are the likes of Nicola Sturgeon, Humza Yousuf and Shona Robison and a host of other former and current cabinet secretaries. This churn in SNP MSPs is crucial because polling has shown that for some time since mid-2024 that the SNP will again be the largest single party in the parliament and, thus, able to take the lead in forming the next Scottish Government. Put another way round, the Scottish Labour Party is in the doldrums and Anas Sarwar will not become the new First Minister as he predicted in both 2022 and 2025. Concerns about the SNP's incompetence, ineptitude, tardiness and arrogance have slipped somewhat as citizens increasingly complain about the austerity 2.0 of Sir Keir Starmer (aka Sir Kid Starver). Apprehensions about losing experienced figures, as expressed by likes of The Guardian in mid-March this year, are then seen to pale into insignificance compared to the opportunity for younger and fresher blood to enter Parliament notwithstanding that some of these may be from Reform. Indeed, losing experience is seen as a veritably good thing because it has been the main part of the problem. Read more Yet this is all misplaced optimism if not also downright naivety. For example, in The Herald's sister newspaper, The National, one of its columnists, Ellie Gomersall, in mid-March proffered that with so many MSPs standing down, there is a chance for reset. Put as plainly as possible, all the political parties that will have representation in Holyrood on 7 May 2026 will have drawn their candidates from the professional-managerial class (PMC). The PMC is a concept coined by two radical American activists in the late 1970s but it has recently been revised by American academic, Catherine Liu, in her Virtue Hoarders book. She characterised the modern PMC as a group of people afflicted with a superiority complex in relation to the hoi polloi. These virtue hoarders not only engage in virtue signalling to show that they align with progressive popular sentiments but also to show that they are technocratically best placed to prosecute these sentiments through the public positions they hold. The PMC is the same class that more than 90% of MSPs have been drawn from since the return of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. So, 2026 will not be a game-changer but another case of plus ça change. Indeed, in the 2021 Scottish parliamentary elections, 34 MSPs chose not to stand again, the highest number ever and currently two higher than for 2026. Was there any discernible difference from 2021 onwards because of a new batch of new MSPs? The ERS Scotland survey suggests the answer is definite no. (Image: Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf) The new would-be MSPs standing for election in 2026 for the SNP, for example, are a collection of councillors, political campaign operatives, party staffers and current and former MPs. These types are supplemented in the SNP and the other political parties by those with professional backgrounds in accountancy, law, medicine, journalism, public relations, management consultancy and education (schools, colleges and universities). All are highly educated in formal terms at least. But their quintessential qualification for parliament comes from their monopoly of knowledge and expertise from these professions which crucially then brings forth personal self-confidence and self-esteem, networking skills and public speaking abilities. A long time ago, former miners' union leader in Scotland, the gravelly-voiced Mick McGahey, conceived of what would become Holyrood as a 'workers' parliament'. This was part and parcel of the process by which the STUC became an advocate for home rule as it was then called. Over the years, fewer and fewer MSPs came from union backgrounds as Scottish Labour became subject to the sycophancy of 'new Labour'. Recalling McGahey's injunction is not necessarily to make a plea to have bricklayers, plumbers, warehouse workers and care assistants selected for and elected to Holyrood. Of course, that would help. Rather, it is to try to see the wood for the trees so that seen in the round, the party and individual politics of the news MSPs are far less important than this shared worldview. They believe that they are then in a better position than anyone else by reason of their virtues to make legislation and direct government on our behalf. The rub is that as an elite class, they are defenders in one way or another of the status quo. The only revision that needs to be made about the PMC in Scotland is to note that we now have a sub-group of it, namely, the political PMC or PPMC. And, of those MSPs that do not stand again or are not re-elected, many become lieutenants of the lobbyists identified by The Ferret. Professor Gregor Gall is a research associate at Glasgow University and editor of A New Scotland: Building an Equal, Fair and Sustainable Society (Pluto Press, 2022).