IT’’S a funny thing, people keep asking me what my policy plans are and what I would like to see in next year’s manifesto.
Having been elected as SNP Policy Development Convener at our recent conference I suppose that isn’t an unreasonable question. If you only focus on the first word of the title that is.
For the truth is that it is not my job to write new policy or to make pronouncements about what current policy is. It certainly isn’t to decide what will be in our upcoming manifesto.
No, that is very firmly the job of party members in the form of Conference Delegates.
Conference is the ultimate, and only legitimate, policy making body in the party. And that is as it should be. Just as in Scotland it is individual citizens in whom sovereignty is vested, in the Scottish National Party, it is the members who are in charge and any and all powers exercised by national office bearers or elected members of our various committees are merely devolved to us by those members. Even those elected to public office are ultimately answerable to the members who funded the campaigns and did all the grunt work of getting them elected.
My job is as a facilitator, helping them prioritise policy making, consider the evidence, and to reach a consensus on sound responses to the challenges we find before us.
We have made great progress in reinvigorating the policy development machinery in our party with the new constitution we passed two years ago.
While it bade a farewell to National Council, something I opposed, it resurrected and turbo-charged National Assembly.
A great many of the policy ideas that gave the SNP the credibility it needed to become a party of government were forged in the crucible of National Assemblies gone by. It had fallen into abeyance in recent years but I think bringing it back is exactly what we need.
I AM a big fan of deliberative processes, our first Citizens’ Assembly was something I worked hard to breathe life into, because they give people not only a forum to debate policy issues but they give them access to reliable evidence and the tools to interrogate that evidence so that they can begin to draw sound conclusions from it.
They also do so in a way that allows everyone to be heard and to feel like they have ownership of the decisions that emerge from the consensus they foster.
I have great plans to look at all sorts of issues using National Assembly as a jumping off point although I suspect many of those things might have to wait a little while.
The First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was right to frame the choices before us in her conference speech the way she did.
We stand at the brink of an unprecedented economic crisis as the free-market fundamentalist vultures circle above us, waiting to capitalise on the damage Covid has done to our world.
We can either attempt to build back better as an independent nation with all the economic levers safely in the hands of grown ups in Holyrood or take our chances with a Westminster that seems determined to put on some sort of “Carry On Corruption and Incompetence” improv to distract the public while their disaster capitalist mates rob everyone blind and they introduce the sort of crushing austerity that would make Margaret Thatcher blush.
That changes my priorities a little in the short term.
PUTTING myself in the shoes of a soft No voter who might be wavering I would like to know that independence was a serious proposition, that workhad been done on how to manage the transition as smoothly as possible.
I might like to know that there was an interim constitution already written, that work was already ongoing on the vast body of enabling legislation that would be needed after a Yes vote.
Having lived through four years of Brexit chaos I certainly would like to know that I wasn’t voting for a repeat of 2016 when a bunch of fly-by-night cowboys made a load of promises they knew were lies and then disappeared like the morning dew the instant it came time to live up to their pretty words.
I want people that yearned to vote Yes last time but were scared it would all go horribly wrong to feel safe this time around when they choose Scotland.
My goal is to make sure that this time Yes means confidence in a better, more secure, future for all.
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