Scotland’s cabinet of all the dunces
The SNP has espoused a mixture of capitalist and socialist principles every since its inception, the pendulum swinging one way or the other depending on which party rules Westminster. It is dangerous to swing too far left while still dominated economically by a British State ready to maipulate Scotland’s economy to its own end, and intent on robbing Scotland of its wealth until little is left. (As it has treated all countries owned by the British Empire, never leaving until the colonial invasion sees mass poverty it is forced to subsidise.)
As the Exchequer, at the behest of the Tory party, decreases Scotland’s annual Barnett Formula percentage by percentage until ‘the pips squeak’. (A quote denied by Denis Healey MP.) ScotGov’s opportunity to spread wealth becomes less and less possible. In addition, the feeling of an administration remote from the people may become the main failings that brings down the SNP. Columnist Kevin McKenna has a dose of cynicism to add to the debate.
WE GAVE THEM POWER
by Kevin McKenna
Depending on which way you choose to view such outcomes, the fact that every member of Humza Yousaf’s first cabinet is university-educated is either a cause for celebration or lamentation. Being a curmudgeonly sort of chiel, I’m in the latter camp. On learning this, I immediately recalled an essay written three years ago by George Kerevan for Conter, the excellent political website. Mr Kerevan was analysing the cultural and social forces even then that were coming to dominate the SNP Government’s economic strategy.
In analysing what he described as the SNP’s shift to the right, Mr Kerevan highlighted their hollowing-out by “a new, conservative bureaucracy which acts in its own interests” and that, since 1999, it had come to be dominated “almost entirely by a parliamentary machine with its campaigning activities tied to elections”.
“Consider the make-up of the SNP’s Holyrood group of MSPs,” he added. “The SNP won 63 seats in 2016 out of 129. Manual workers are conspicuous by their absence. Roughly a quarter of SNP MSPs come from a managerial, consulting or banking background. Classic middle-strata – lawyers, journalists, teachers and medical staff – make up another quarter. As do those from local government, being full-time councillors, officials, or both.”
Three years on from this analysis, the SNP have become even further removed from the people who propelled them to power in 2007 and have since helped maintain their dominion. They owed much of this to working-class disillusion with the Labour Party in Scotland and an intense lobbying campaign within the Scottish trade union movement. Yet, it’s now virtually impossible to gain entry to the SNP’s platinum-card members’ lounge unless you are possessed of a degree or have been forged and shaped by the party machinery.
The fact, also, that only one member of the new cabinet represents a west of Scotland constituency is telling. During the 2014 independence referendum, support for Yes was at its strongest in Glasgow and North Lanarkshire, precisely because it offered a departure from the profoundly capitalist excesses of the UK Government. Less than a decade later, these communities are now locked out of the government of Scotland.
Those celebrating the fact that Mr Yousaf’s cabinet is exclusively comprised of university graduates should perhaps pause their acclaim. Graduates they may be, but the top roles in the Scottish Government are now filled by people who have failed in each of their previous departments. This is exemplified by Mr Yousaf himself: the ultimate machine politician and one who perfectly epitomises the concept of “failing up”.
Shona Robison had previously been deemed so hopeless in government that her closest friend, Nicola Sturgeon, was forced to sack her. Angela Constance and Joe FitzPatrick (Holy Mother of God!) between them were responsible for the wholesale failure of Scotland’s governing elites to address Scotland’s drugs death crisis. On the day that Mr Yousaf was handed the keys to Bute House, it was revealed that, on his watch as health secretary, hospital waiting-times had significantly lengthened in every category. Watching some of the others perform at Holyrood last week has felt like intruding on someone else’s acute distress. Collectively, this lot are a shockingly bad advert for the quality of university education in Scotland.
Yet, according to Kezia Dugdale, former leader of Scottish Labour and now an academic on Scotland’s most pointless and self-indulgent university faculty, it’s all a cause for celebration. Ms Dugdale tweeted: “Another fun fact for you: 50% of Scottish Cabinet are graduates of the University of Glasgow (smiley sunglasses emoji). The place to study if you believe in active citizenship and public service (big thumbs-up emoji).” Well, quite.
Ms Dugdale teaches at the John Smith Centre for Moonbeams and Unicorns at Glasgow University, where students are taught about “the positive case for politics and public service”. They do this “in three key ways: Research, Advocacy and Events and development programmes”. In the real world, this translates to: “All aboard the gravy train.”
Board members have included: Ed Balls (Blairite former UK shadow chancellor); Baroness Ruth Davidson (former TA tank commander); Elizabeth Smith (Baroness of Gilmorehill); Andrew Wilson (lobbyist and banking executive); Alison Thewliss (former Daily Record columnist). (Insert shocked, hands-over-mouth emoji). Perhaps though, belonging to Humza Yousaf’s Cabinet of all the Talentless may be a mixed blessing. I can’t see it providing polish and sparkle to your CV.
“So, Mr Fitzpatrick, tell us a little more about your time between 2023 and 2026.”
“Well, I was in Humza Yousaf’s Scottish cabinet.”
“And what exactly is Minister for Circular Wellbeing and Seashells?”
“Well, it’s about active citizenship; public service and the crucial role of sandcastles in delivering a sustainable, robust and robustly sustainable circular economy.”
“We’ll call you if you’re required for a second interview.”
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Grouse Beater 
SNP: Right or Left?
Neither.
Merely wrong.
McKenna fails to make two points. A general point and a specific one.
Leaving aside the curious assumption that it’s a good thing for 100% of Ministers to be University educated, Kevin fails to address the nature of the degrees they hold. Humza’s fanclub masquerading as a Cabinet are as far as I can discern exclusively humanities graduates. An absence of STEM education. This explains a great many things. A basic grounding in scientific discipline goes a long way. An absence thereof explains why we are mired in this Poststructural hell hole.
Curiously McKenna misses the opportunity to reveal that the John Smith Centre for Public Service doesn’t publish accounts. The sources of their funding remains a closely guarded secret. The JSCfPS hides their accounts behind a legal loophole, that everything is above board because they operate under the umbrella of the University of Glasgow. Hardly satisfactory for an organisation with the strap line “Promoting Trust in Politics and Public Service”.
Is this the aspect of the JSCfPS that McKenna’s editor will not allow in print?
Is there an informal, Government “super injunction” against raising the finances of the JSCfPS?
Dugdale and the spook adjacent Smith clan lead protected lives.
Reblogged this on Ramblings of a now 60+ Female.
You are right, GB, that the SNP has always been a broad church, and that has been its mainstay until recently. The huge influx of former labour and far left members in early 2015 has changed the party beyond all recognition, and, while there has always been some overlap between SNP and Old Labour, the gradual overlap between Tory and Labour nowadays has all but destroyed that partial commonality, as exemplified by Keir Hardie. The really strange thing is, which I am sure Kevin McKenna is aware of, is that the left principles of the Scottish working-class, the traditional SNP support, have never been anything if not traditional, but also flexible and never hard left. The hard left has always been the slightly less evil twin of the right.
The SNP is now a managerial party like the Unionist ones, and looks very similar in structure and outlook to the Labour party: middle-class professionals; and, as Vivian says, Humanities graduates, albeit several are Politics and International Relations graduates. Nothing too wrong with being a lawyer or an accountant bringing expertise to the table, but, yes, some STEM graduates would be a great boost, as Vivian also says, although, if the GRRB is in mind, we have to remember that even STEM graduates have fallen for the bilge, probably though fear of losing their positions in the face of the most vile and totalitarian ‘trans’ onslaught than anything else.
The real problem is that the party was viewed by many on the far left (the Cultural Marxists and Queer Theory proponents) as the most appropriate vehicle (because it had power and momentum) to drive forward their agendas, and they never had anything in common with nationalism; indeed, those ideologies are in direct opposition to it. Which makes it laughable and very worrying that so many letters in The National extolled the piece by that arch hard leftie and Cultural Marxist, not to mention Queer Theorist, anti female, metropolitan, Owen Jones.
This Oxbridge-educated, London-centric journalist could not be further from traditional SNP philosophy, yet long-term SNP supporters were extolling his virtues. Talk about inviting the snake to persuade you to bite into the apple. The more I hear and read of the SNP support that remains, the more I believe that it has been lobotomised.
The Australian Green Party is of a similar ilk these days. Its sad to hear about the decline of the SNP but hey it might be a boost to ALBA as people leave SNP and join ALBA.
“SNP: Right or Left?”
Much as Duncanio implies, Postcolonial theory is quite explicit that independence is neither a matter of Right or Left, of Capitalism or Socialism. The only priority is that of freeing the people.
Where the dominant national party falls down is that it models itself on political parties in the mother country, and also in its haste to reach a compromise with the colonial power. It ends up attempting to run a colonial administration in which, as well-paid Ministers of the Crown, it is bound to protect the interests of the colonizer. It becomes an instrument of coercion (because it must now hold back the ‘movement’), and is ultimately condemned by its own hypocrisy, as well as by its ‘mystification’ laws designed to make it look busy, but tending to oppress the people. Much as we see in the SNPs recent behaviour and now in its (hopefully) death throes.
I would have thought Kevin McKenna should have known all this. But then, few prominent ‘intellectuals’ yet seem to acknowledge what we have been telling them, Gareth; that us Scots are locked in a colonial relationship, and that independence is decolonisation. Postcolonial theory also explains why the native elites’ understanding remains ‘rudimentary’ – it is simply because they have never undertaken ‘a reasoned study of colonial society’:
Click to access THEORETICAL+CASE+FOR+SCOTTISH+INDEPENDENCE.pdf
Right or left? Well I left.
As I and other have said, party political ideology isn’t the driving force – freeing minds and opening up the imagination to solutions not hitherto imposed by the colonial power, is the liberty we seek.