A government with no one in charge
Nicola Sturgeon's administration has stopped speaking with one voice.
John Swinney is developing a reputation for a reverse-Midas touch. Everything he touches seems to turn into headlines.
This was regrettable when he was in charge of the nation's schools but in his current role heading up the pandemic response, it is altogether more alarming.
Last Wednesday, the deputy first minister popped up on BBC Radio Scotland to discuss the rules governing bars and clubs from August 9, when we moved out of Level Zero and into what we can only assume is Level Minus Zero.
He said: ‘If you are standing at a bar, for instance — vertical drinking as they call it — you are standing up having a drink at a bar, can you do that without wearing a face covering? No, you can’t.’
That his statement was false and at odds with what owners and licencees had been told by the Scottish Government is of course the primary concern, but I am nonetheless intrigued that the deputy first minister thinks the phrase ‘vertical drinking’ is in common usage. Mind you, quite a lot of what this government does makes you want to indulge in some horizontal drinking.
Swinney’s misstatement was clarified, multiple times, but by then the damage was already done. Days from the easing of restrictions, the man in charge of both the restrictions and the easing didn’t understand either.
Swinney is not a stupid man and so we might put his error down to the sheer complexity of new, refined and later repealed regulations we have been subject to for a year and a half. If we're honest, we've all struggled to understand them at some point. Another explanation is that ministers and bureaucrats are making up the rules as they go along and have spun such an intricate web of restrictions that even they have become entangled.
What this episode highlights is the paucity of talent in the Scottish Government, both at ministerial and civil servant level. It's considered impolite to talk about this, as I have come to learn, and whenever you do you are scolded like a child who has just pointed out the minister's toupee is slanted.
While many specialisms are well covered in the government and its bureaucracy — rights, equalities, public policy, the constitution — there is a noticeable lack of institutional knowledge in the areas that have been to the fore since last March. You couldn't swing a cat in St Andrew's House without hitting a social science graduate but the poor moggy would be spinning a fair time before it came into contact with an entrepreneur or anyone experienced in logistics or infrastructure.
Surveying the performance of a number of ministers, and the output of the Holyrood leviathan over which they preside, it is difficult to conclude that our best and brightest are going into public service. Little wonder, then, that ministers are content to rely as heavily as they have come to on the advice of public health and other experts. Yet that advice, and the people who provide it, come from a narrow, often academic, worldview and do not reflect the practicalities of applying scholarship and clinical consensus to the real world.
This is where ministers are supposed to come in. They ought to seek expert counsel, they ought to listen and the regulations they design ought to reflect the best of this advice, but ministers should not be the public face of the decisions of unelected brains trusts. Ministers are meant to lead with clarity, decisiveness and authority. These qualities seem increasingly elusive for this government.
If all this is true, why aren't these failings reflected in public opinion? Critics of the SNP have long been frustrated with the Nationalists' seeming ability to get away with gaffes, scandals and outrages that would carry much more serious consequences if they were the doing of Boris Johnson's government.
The news media is often blamed, with journalists almost as likely to be accused of pro-SNP as anti-SNP bias these days. Imagine, these critics say, if Sturgeon and her crew were despatched to Westminster to run the show down there. At last, they'd face real scrutiny. Well, for one, it would be the most improbable transfer since the Clampetts moved to Beverly Hills, and with similarly comedic results, but blaming the media is a red herring.
Nicola Sturgeon understands — as, incidentally, does Boris Johnson — that, when it comes to communication, the impression is more important than the detail. Most members of the public don't spent their lives glued to Twitter or rolling news and even then are likely to switch off at the first sight of a politician. They have jobs, families, interests — they have lives — and so there is less time for the minutiae of politics and government. They don't need to know about water infrastructure; they just need to know it'll come out of the tap when they turn it.
The leaders who proposer are the ones who cultivate an air of confidence, which can easily be mistaken for competence, and avoid being drawn publicly into the granular detail of policy and implementation. They can be rigorous behind the scenes, as Sturgeon is reputed to be, and they certainly don't want to appear uninformed in front of the cameras, but their primary task is to look and sound as though they are in charge.
This is where the Scottish Government's Covid response seems to be faltering. It's not merely that ministers are straining on the finer points of their own rules in interviews; it's that they no longer seem as in control as they once did. They are still talking but we are no longer sure whether they're worth listening to.
These things matter, of course, because ministerial decisions and how fluently they are communicated can mean the difference between a business reopening or remaining shuttered. One slip of the tongue from John Swinney can ruin livelihoods, put people out of jobs and discourage much-needed economic activity.
There is something else at stake: public confidence. Ministers must continue to command the trust of the country as they lead us out of the pandemic. Not only because, even in Level Minus One, the state still places burdens on our freedoms, but because the situation remains precarious. Health authorities must remain alert to the emergence of further variants and the knock-on effects of long Covid on patients' personal wellbeing and the NHS itself.
The next challenge in vaccination will be organising a booster jab programme for Covid-19, one administered at whatever regularity is required to maintain necessary antibody levels. It will also be vital to plan and prepare for a similar virus down the line, bearing in mind we are less than a decade on from the SARS-CoV-1 outbreak.
All of these problems require ongoing public vigilance, support for mitigatory and other public health measures, and a willingness to accept the need for increased spending on health (and the tax rises likely to come with it). Government must retain the confidence of the public and the public must continue listening to government. The kind of disarray we saw this week, the kind we have seen too many weeks of late, will eventually begin to take its toll.
The more the public perceives those in charge not to be in full grasp of the facts, the less likely it is to pay them much heed. The channels of communication between decision-makers and those affected by their decisions become clogged and vital information doesn't get through. Cynicism and complacency begin to grow and the job of pandemic management becomes needlessly more difficult.
The Scottish Government needs to speak with one voice and that voice needs to carry authority. We must not have another week like last, when a government spoiled for choice for communications platforms and with an audience eager for information succeeded only in spreading confusion.
Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on August 9, 2021.