DOES the public anger about MPs' expenses give you a sense of deja vu? Maybe it should. Politicians exposed as profligate with taxpayers' cash? Outrage at the lavish cost of their furnishings and fittings? A woeful lack of oversight by the relevant authorities? Cack-handed disregard for the most basic financial safeguards? Any of this ring a bell? Yes, it's the Holyrood Parliament building saga all over again.
Cast your mind back to the first few years of this decade and recall the mood among Scottish voters. It was poisonous. Scots had voted overwhelmingly for devolution in the 1997 referendum, but if you'd repeated the vote in 2003 – when arguments rage
d over the £88,000 cost of a reception desk for Holyrood; when the total cost of the building was nearing ten times the original estimate; when the scheme was fraught with delays and setbacks; when MSPs were ridiculed about their expensive 'think pods' – then I'm not sure home rule would still have won the day.
Then, as now, there was a "plague on all your houses" feeling abroad in the land, and people who wouldn't normally pay too much attention to politics felt personally slighted. Then as now, the perception was of parliamentarians playing fast and loose with the money hard-working people paid in taxes. Then as now, there was a simmering sense of impotent rage.
The effect was corrosive. It diminished faith not only in politics and politicians, but also in Scots' ability to govern themselves. Former SNP leader John Swinney attributes his poor election results in the 2001 Westminster and 2003 Holyrood elections in part to voters being scunnered about the cost of Enric Miralles' creation at the foot of the Royal Mile.
And yet now, in 2009, that scowling sense of grievance has largely faded. When was the last time you heard somebody moan about the cost of Holyrood? It is now one of Scotland's biggest tourist attractions, and postcards of the iconic think pods are sent daily from Edinburgh to every corner of the globe. The Holyrood building has settled into its landscape and although it still has its detractors it is now taken for granted as part of the fabric of our national life. For many it has become an symbol of a modern and forward-looking Scotland.
More significantly, the Holyrood saga no longer has the power to leave Scots cowed and fearful about the prospect of running their own country – under whatever constitutional framework. An overwhelming number of Scots want more powers for their Parliament - either 'devo max' or full independence. A Nationalist First Minister is in residence in Bute House. This is a remarkable turnaround that can be read in a couple of ways. It's either proof the public has the memory of a goldfish; or it's proof the public is blessed with more sense than it's usually afforded.
The Holyrood saga is, therefore, a salutary lesson for our troubled times. It's one reason why our understandable anxiety about the democratic process at this extraordinary moment in political history need not become despair. Politicians can redeem themselves in the public eye. They are never going to be top of anyone's list of favourite people. But at least they can prove their basic usefulness and be accepted by the public on those terms.
That is exactly what has happened here in Scotland. After the early devolution kerfuffles about medals and foxhunting and the like, the Scottish Government got down to the business of improving lives. It built new schools. It made a dent in our appalling record on heart disease. It had the guts to take the lead in the smoking ban. It tackled sectarianism. It began to prove its worth and to repay the trust invested in it. In Alex Salmond it now has a leader who – although he is not everyone's cup of tea – has the necessary political avoirdupois to lead a national government. Scottish democracy is now in a rude state of health that would have seemed implausible in 2002.
Of course, that doesn't mean we should be complacent about the current political crisis in Westminster. We underestimate public anger at moats, swimming pools and luxury bed linen at our peril. Comparisons were being made last week to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 (is Esther Rantzen the new Wat Tyler?), although the outcome then - the decapitation of the Lord Chancellor, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Treasurer – is surely a bit harsh, even for Sir Peter Viggers, owner of the most famous duck island in the world.
As Westminster tries to reform itself the Scottish experience of the past decade will again prove useful – this time in establishing a more honest and transparent system of politicians' expenses. There is one lesson from Scotland that Brown won't want to see emulated at Westminster, however. Scots' new-found contentedness with their politics has only really come into flower since the 2007 election that brought the SNP into power. What Scots voters needed was a fresh start and some new ideas. They wanted a break with the past. They wanted a new sense of momentum and a new vigour in the way the country was led. The SNP was the convenient beneficiary.
It's not hard to imagine the same scenario at UK level, with the Tories as the lucky recipients. Calls for an early general election are gaining in volume, with polls showing two-thirds of voters want to vote as soon as practically possible. They are looking for someone to punish, and who can blame them? It is hard to escape the conclusion that renewal in British politics requires not only a reformed Parliament but a new Government. If Brown's position looked precarious before expenses fiasco, he is now surely an irredeemably lost cause.
The full article contains 971 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
