Costs on palatial new premises for devolved institutions have broken free from all constraints. The "jobs for the boys" mentality which has long alarmed principled members of the Welsh and Scottish Labour Parties has manifested itself with new vigour. A recent poll revealed that 46 per cent in Wales favour the immediate abolition of the Assembly. Scotland has not dared ask the same question since the McLeish fiasco paralysed national politics.Achievements? Well, the Scottish Executive has devised a stand-alone system of student finances which has reduced applications by English students to Scottish universities, so reinforcing the parochialism which critics of devolution predicted.
Scotland's once-legendary school examinations system has been reduced to a shambles. Henry McLeish has committed his party to a profligate system of free care for the wealthiest of pensioners, against the advice of Whitehall and colleagues in the British government. Bitter sectarian passions were unleashed in the debate over repeal of Section 28. Scotland looked aghast at the murder of an asylum seeker in Glasgow's Sighthill estate.
Racism? That was an English failing, wasn't it? After all, we never let them in.It is said in Whitehall that the old connections between Edinburgh and London were sundered by the death of Donald Dewar. A system which, though unproven and battered by early amateurism, managed to function while Scotland was led by a man with Cabinet experience and friends in Cabinet, has fallen into disrepair under the blunt ministerings of a first minister few in London know and still fewer respect. Now, say devolution theorists who love the idea but do not have to live there, Scotland, like Ireland before it, will take decades to learn the conduct of a mature democracy.Progressives should pose themselves an honest question We have a serviceable government in Whitehall. Even under four Conservative administrations with scant support in Scotland or Wales, that tried and tested machine delivered competent, mature government and steady economic growth.
