Just another quiet week has passed in Scottish politics; merely the proposed suspension of the Labour leader leading to her resignation, a pivotal by-election called in Glasgow, a hectic end to the parliamentary session, and a major report on criminal justice. Some reflections...


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Starting with the most recent, theMcLeish/Scottish Prison Commission Report was a serious piece of work. It raised some tough questions.

Crucially, it was based on evidence – more so than some of its instant critics. Its solutions are expensive, but it made clear that the alternatives could be even more expensive, if nothing is done to halt the spiralling number of prisoners. Though it didn't get as much coverage as the call to cut prisoner numbers or the end to sub-six month sentences, it is worth noting the observation that crime rates have actually been falling. The reason for rising incarceration is that serious and violent crimes are getting more serious and the tariff for serious crimes seems to be on the rise.

Henry McLeish and his committee was given a wide remit to go away and address some really tricky issues . This bought time for the SNP, but it also moved the issue into less party political space, to help make the case for some radical new thinking about why Scotland is so much keener on jailing its people than similar European countries. A vital test of the report – and Henry McLeish was clear about this – was how it was going to play in the media. And judging by this morning's press, it was not a good start, fuelled by both Labour and Tories piling in with attacks, blurring the line between this being an independent report and the policy of the SNP administration, and seeing it as "the first SNP gaffe of the Glasgow East by-election".

Daily Mail: "Anger as 'soft-touch' SNP now plans to empty jails...
Thousands of thugs, housebreakers and drug dealers are to be spared jail under plans to slash Scotland's prison population." The Mail editorial says Labour has been offered a golden opportunity to appeal to "the terrified citizens who have been abandoned by Alex Salmond's administration".

Daily Record splash: SNP TO FREE 4000 JAILBIRDS, and inside:
"Outrageous, daft and soft on cons... Anger over Nats plans". Its editorial states: "The truly alarming thing about this report is the government are taking it seriously... Emptying the jails to see if community service works better for hardened crooks would be a staggeringly reckless gamble".

The Sun's splash: EMPTY THE PRISONS. There's a prominent place given to the "fury" the report sparked, but read into the report, and it's surprisingly free of "bang 'em up and throw away the keys" sentiment.
The paper argues it would be good if community sentences work and are tough, though it would prefer to put offenders in orange boiler suits, and it concludes "the jury is out".

Express: "HALF OF SCOTS PRISONERS TO GO FREE... in a damaging shake-up of the country's justice system." The paper turns over its editorial line to Tory justice spokesman Bill Aitken.

Mirror: "You Won't Cell Us This... Proposals to halve Scotland's soaring prison population were branded a nightmare last night."

From The Scotsman comes "The Great Scottish Prisons Gamble", with a hostile response from a former sheriff, but the most positive editorial conclusion: "It is up to those who disagree with Henry McLeish to come up with something better".

From The Herald's editorial comes some sceptical questioning about community sentences, similar to that of the Press and Journal, and there is even stronger scepticism in The Courier.

Does any of this media scribbling matter? You bet it does. Ministers will watch very closely to see how these ideas fly before being willing to fight for them, and it is unlikely to want that much hostility from the tabloid press.

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Glasgow East is going to be a short but fascinating by-election campaign. There is real needle between Labour and SNP front-runners.

Both could win, but the uncertain bit is how much of an appetite voters have for giving Labour a kicking. Do they have the same passion that the voters of Crewe and Nantwich had, or those in Henley? Are die-hard Labour supporters yet ready to switch to the SNP? How will Nationalists adjust to fighting with a record to defend for the first time? What impact could Tommy Sheridan have, and from where could he take votes? And just how low can the turnout go during the Glasgow Fair?

But before then, let's look again at the reason this by-election is taking place. After 29 years, David Marshall has suddenly resigned because of ill-health. I don't doubt he is ill, and I'm not demanding to see his doctor's certificate. But I'm struggling to think of any ailment that requires a by-election right now. I can't imagine Labour's whips at Westminster being given a choice between Mr Marshall on long-term/permanent sickness leave or Mr Marshall resigning, and preferring the latter when it means a losable by-election.

Something tells me we're not hearing the whole story... yet.

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The SNP tonight selects its short list for the by-election. They're looking for someone local, and there are at least two Glasgow councillors already in the frame. But if they want someone with a track record of building the vote in Baillieston, and for dogged campaigning, surely the SNP should look no further than former SNP MSP Dorothy-Grace Elder. I put this suggestion to the party's high heid yins, and they seemed oddly unenthusiastic.

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We carried a brief report in The Herald of the Holyrood enterprise committee's report into Scotland's bid to become home of the
home of the new Energy Technologies Institute . Some more space here helps tell the story. With a budget of £1 billion, this matters quite a bit, and Scotland's research strength put it in front-runner position. But Loughborough won, as part of a Midlands consortium. The report explicitly pulls its punches, explaining Scottish universities still hope to win some of that research funding. But read between the lines, and there are some interesting hints of what went wrong:

The bidding process changed from a focus on research strength (good for Scotland) to the office accommodation available. But the committee was "surprised" that deciding UK committee found there were "management risks" with the Scottish bid's accommodation plan, yet the same issues affecting Loughborough were not seen as a risk. The committee doesn't spell it out, but could it be that Loughborough got the nod because it was handier and more attractive for the Institute bosses than Aberdeen or Glasgow, and that the rules were framed accordingly, midway through the process?

Within the Scottish consortium bid, how did the Scottish universities choose where the hub of the institute should be? When he was enterprise minister Nicol Stephen, the LibDem leader, made no secret of his desire to bring it to Aberdeen, where he is an MSP, and where it has some claim to strong energy credentials. He told civil servants this, but they said that if a preferred hub was named, it would mean the other parts of the Scottish bid consortium would lose interest and support. By the time the decision, Mr Stephen had left government to fight and lose last year's election. The committee received reassurances from the academics involved in the bid that all was harmony between them. Both of those propositions cannot be true.
Is this evidence that Scotland's prospects were harmed by university rivalry? Let's hope not, as they are important to similar bidding processes in the future.

When the decision was finally taken for Loughborough to win the bid, it was taken by a show of hands at a committee meeting, without an adequate paper trail of how that decision had been taken. The enterprise committee was strongly critical at both Scottish and UK levels for the lack of clear paperwork, and (by the LibDem convener's casting vote) of the incoming Scottish ministers, notably Jim Mather, who were none too helpful in explaining what had happened after they took office.


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If you've stuck with this lengthy blog long enough to reach this far down, your reward is confirmation of what has made it into the blogosphere – that I'm leaving The Herald to join BBC Scotland as its Business and Economics Editor. But I'm still here until September, giving ample time for my small band of devoted and demented critics to prepare for their withdrawal symptoms and to transfer their allegiance elsewhere.