IN THE BRIGHT afternoon sun, local residents trickle out of Dumbarton’s Concord Centre. The ramshackle exterior belies a smooth operation inside. Each has received a second covid-19 jab (or “jag” as it is known locally). Who deserves the credit?
In truth, the government in London, but that is not how many locals see it. As Billy, a just-vaccinated pensioner, puts it, referring to Scotland’s first minister: “Nicola Sturgeon has done a fantastic job.” Ipsos MORI, a pollster, finds that while 27% of Scots think Westminster has managed the pandemic well, 64% think the Scottish government has. Rare dissent comes from a man angry that his pub remains closed. Still, he says from behind a saltire face mask, he will vote for the Scottish National Party (SNP) in elections on May 6th.
The SNP has long married the fight for independence with the promise of effective, social-democratic government. Dumbarton, the country’s most marginal constituency, could tip the balance between success (the most seats in the Scottish Parliament) and triumph (a majority). Either way, the party will head an administration responsible for public services, and with sway over taxation, as it has for the past 14 years. It is a perch from which to sketch a vision of an independent Scotland—or as Ms Sturgeon has put it, invoking Alasdair Gray, a local writer, “to work as if we are indeed living in the early days of a better nation.”
Part of this is about exhibiting the sort of good governance not always found in Westminster, as when the SNP tweaked universal credit to ease its introduction in Scotland. Yet the party hopes to offer more than mere competence. The idea, Ms Sturgeon has said, is of a Scotland “where we look out for one another in a spirit of solidarity” (the unspoken contrast is with a more red-in-tooth-and-claw England). One way the SNP has done this is by making tax and benefits a bit more progressive. Its trademark, though, is the provision of universal services. The Barnett formula distributes funding to Scotland’s advantage, allowing Ms Sturgeon’s government to spend £7,612 ($10,579) per person each year. That is 27% more than in England—enough for free university, adult personal care, prescriptions and, soon, primary-school meals and dentistry.
Such universalism is popular on the doorstep, says Toni Giugliano, the SNP’s candidate in Dumbarton. “People who have made Scotland their home from south of the border…are more likely to say to me, ‘Gosh, we don’t have to pay £9,000 for tuition fees. We don’t have to pay £10 for prescriptions,’” he reports. The downside of putting the universalist principle into practice is that the state ends up spending a lot of money on rich Scots.
The SNP hints at radicalism after independence. Its manifesto supports a universal basic income and commits to study a four-day week. But when it comes to things in the party’s gift, it is less willing to sweep away the old order. Over the past decade, spending on most public services has risen relative to England. This generosity has, though, been funded by slower growth in spending on the health service, rather than taxation. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank, finds tweaks to income tax will raise just £117m more in 2020-21, equivalent to 1% of the additional covid-19 funding Holyrood received.
Higher funding means there are more teachers and doctors north of the border, but self-government has not led to great improvements in standards. Before the last election, Ms Sturgeon asked to be judged on whether she had improved schools. She promised legislation to transfer power from local councils to head teachers—only to shelve it in the face of opposition. She has pulled Scotland out of two big international tests, citing “teacher workload”. Having dropped considerably, performance in PISA tests, in which it remains, shows little sign of improvement.
On waiting times, NHS Scotland performs a bit better than England’s version. But patient satisfaction is similar, health outcomes are worse and the government has been slow to respond to a drug-death rate higher than anywhere in Europe, and even than America’s. Throughout the pandemic, Ms Sturgeon has sought to draw attention to differences between London and Edinburgh when, for instance, keeping restaurants closed for longer in the summer. Polling shows this has worked for her. On the big calls, though, such as when to lock down, the two administrations took similar decisions. Scotland’s death rates are lower than England’s, but higher than Northern Ireland’s. SNP politicians criticised Westminster’s decision to skip the EU’s vaccine-procurement scheme.
In another age, the SNP might suffer from what Jane Green and Will Jennings, two political scientists, call “the costs of government”—the gap between campaign promises and perceptions of achievements—but there is little sign of that now. In Dumbarton Jackie Baillie, Labour’s MSP, says that it is hard to draw voters’ attention to the state of public services. One reason is covid-19. “Anything that happened before March…is being scrubbed out of the reckoning,” suspects Sir John Curtice of the University of Strathclyde. The other is independence. When elections become referendums on the future of a country, voters do not pay attention to much else. ■