WHEN you think of government civil service press officer, you may think of Malcolm Tucker in the Thick of It, Doug Stamper in the House of Cards or possibly even Sir Humphrey in Yes Minister.
They tend not to come across too well in the world of fiction, too often seen as scheming, manipulative, Machiavellian or sweary and angry.
The truth, rather boringly, is that they are often none of those things. Rather, they are hard-working people who take pride in their job, working long hours for demanding bosses.
And they will work to the best of their abilities to fulfill the demands of those bosses. No matter how bizarre, or how utterly stupid those demands may be. They can point out the folly of the request, but ultimately their job is to work for the people of Scotland and if an elected representative tells them to jump, then they must.
This is as true of the people who work for the Scottish Government as it is for the people who work for the Scotland Office.
Although those who share an office with Nicola Sturgeon in Edinburgh’s St Andrew’s House are part of the Scottish Civil Service and those who keep in with David Mundell in Melville Crescent are part of the Whitehall system, they share a professionalism.
The problem with the Scotland Office, is not the staff hired, it is rather that its purpose is slightly hard to fathom.
What does the Scotland Office do? What in 2015 is its purpose? Clearly, The National asking this question will be dismissed by some as a pro-independence rag having a pop at Westminster for the sake of having a pop at Westminster.
But the question is a decent one, and one that needs to be answered, because increasingly the purpose and the role of the department is hard to understand.
On their website they list their objectives as strengthening and sustaining the Union, acting as Scotland’s voice in Whitehall and championing the UK Government in Scotland.
By any measure it’s quite clear that in all three of those objectives, they’re not doing terribly well.
The success of the No vote likely had more to do with the Treasury than it did with the Scotland Office.
As John Swinney negotiates on the Fiscal Framework directly with the Treasury, who frankly couldn’t give a monkey’s over what the Scotland Office say, it’s clearly the Scottish Government who act as Scotland’s voice.
And considering that the two parties who represented the UK government were quite comprehensively routed at the last election, the whole championing thing is also not going great.
This is not because of the efforts of the people who work there. Hiring more people will not make a difference.
It is because the Scotland Office is a government department out of time. It is an irrelevance ready to be put out of its misery.
Mundell slammed as 'marketing campaign for the Union' up by 437 per cent
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