It's been a hell of ride
This is my last column for the Herald after around 2.5 million words. But it’s not an end; it’s a beginning. From next week I’ll be posting a free to read column every week here on Substack. I look forward to meeting you.
In late 1999, when I returned from London to help launch the Sunday Herald, everyone told me I was mad. “It’ll no’ last six months” was the accepted wisdom in media watering holes (hacks still drank back then). Now, suddenly, six months has become 22 years. How the hell did that happen?
Well, it happened because these have been two of the most tumultuous, scandalous and historically pregnant decades in Scottish history. It’s been non-stop.
The Sunday Herald’s editor, Andrew Jaspan, had somehow persuaded the late Scottish Media Group, then a billion-pound company, to finance the first Scottish quality Sunday paper in 20 years.
The Scottish Parliament had just been reconvened after 300 years. Journalism needed to reflect that. I had been presenting BBC TV political programmes in Westminster but Scotland suddenly looked the place to be.
Jaspan realised that the new paper had to make waves. And it did. Though sometimes the waves got a little too high. As when the Sunday Herald campaigned unequivocally for the abolition of Clause 28 (Section 2A) banning the teaching of homosexuality in schools. The editor was threatened. I was sued by a Cabinet minister and the paper found itself demonised by the massed ranks of Brian Souter’s Keep the Clause backed by most of the press.
But it was, as the cliche goes, the right thing to do. The homophobic clause wasn’t kept and soon the issue died. It was a key moment in Scotland’s transition from a culturally backward land, with unaddressed prejudices, to the diverse and relatively tolerant country it is today.
But the rows didn’t stop. The infant Scottish Parliament was cradled in controversy, and rocked by scandal. Sexual misadventure, lobbying rows, expenses scandals and epic personality clashes defined those early years of devolution.
Above all, the botched financing of the Scottish Parliament building besmirched Scotland’s new democracy. It was a procurement scandal with some disturbing similarities to the current ferries fiasco. A £40 million Parliament ended up costing 10 times that and arriving five years late.
Some thought devolution might not survive. I never doubted that it would. By 2005, under the Lib-Lab administration led by Jack McConnell, the Parliament finally proved its worth with the ban on smoking in public places – a measure opposed even by Labour’s UK health secretary, John Reid. National pride hdh d SCOTLAND also pioneered free personal care and abolished upfront university tuition fees. These landmark measures were inspired by the Scottish Liberal Democrats, though it was ultimately the SNP who took credit after 2007, when Alex Salmond finessed his way into the First Minister’s office. Then things really took off.
The SNP leader, only recently returned to Holyrood, took the Parliament by the scruff of the neck and turned the bureaucratic “Scottish Executive” into a genuine Scottish Government. Salmond then took the SNP to a landslide victory in the 2011 Holyrood elections and somehow seduced David Cameron into agreeing to an independence referendum.
The Sunday Herald, now under the guidance of ebullient Richard Walker, was the only UK paper to support Yes in the 2014 referendum. I vividly recall the slightly delirious editorial meeting at which we agreed this seemingly reckless step.
I thought we had a democratic duty to provide a corrective to the uniformly unionist approach of the rest of the press. The watering holes, those that remained, thought the Sunday Herald was daft to back the losing side. And, of course, Yes did lose in September 2014. But sometimes the losers win.
Eight months later the SNP, now under Nicola Sturgeon, won all but three Scottish seats in the “tsunami” General Election. Scots, it seemed, supported independence in principle but not in practice. The party of independence now dominated politics at every level in Scotland.
And then something extraordinary happened: nothing happened. As the SNP piled up votes and seats, progress to independence stalled. Nicola Sturgeon was reduced to issuing groundhog promises of referendums that were always just over the horizon.
The civil war
THE Yes movement fragmented. Brexit skewed the independence pitch by raising the prospect of a hard border with Scotland’s main trading partner. Left-wing nationalists loathed the fiscal conservatism of the SNP’s Sustainable Growth Commission report of 2018.
Then Alex Salmond, who had led the SNP from a band of tartan romantics to its first-ever Government, was accused of sexual harassment and assault – by his own people: senior SNP members and some Government servants.
Salmond was acquitted of all charges in 2020 after a lurid High Court trial in which he admitted to being “no saint”. But the Scottish Government found itself in the dock too and was forced by the Court of Session to pay Salmond compensation for the “unlawful” way it had cobbled together the misconduct allegations. The true story has never come out and probably never will. It was the darkest moment in modern Scottish politics.
But across Twitter, now the medium of choice for nationalists, the word went out: “Wheesht for Indy”. In other words keep quiet, don’t give the “yoon media” ammunition. Wheesht, too, about illiberal legislation. The named person scheme that fell foul of human rights laws. The Hate Crime Bill which introduced the disturbingly vague offence “stirring up hatred” – even in the privacy of your own home. Wheesht, most of all, on any doubts about Indyref2.
A fading dream?
NICOLA Sturgeon insists a repeat referendum will happen next year but there is great scepticism about the means to that end. And even if it happened there is no guarantee that Yes would win. There are now glaring holes in the independence prospectus: pensions, currency, debt, borders, relations with Europe – all far more problematic than in 2014 because of Brexit.
Above all, Scotland remains hopelessly divided over independence. No-one wants a Caledonian rerun of Brexit. I agree with the former SNP strategist Stephen Noon that the binary, confrontational referendum route may have run its course. A more intelligent strategy might be to negotiate further autonomy and continue the constitutional evolution towards “independence in the UK”. After all, Scotland is and always has been a nation in its own right.
Herald scrutiny
AT any rate, people can wheesht all they like on social media but not in a national newspaper. Journalism dies the moment it becomes the handmaiden of special interests, whether corporate or political. The Herald continues to subject the Scottish Government to rigorous scrutiny as it should and must over issues like the educational attainment gap, gender reforms, BiFab, and ferry contracts.
What keyboard warriors fail to realise is that drawing a polite veil over the misadventures of the Scottish Government does not assist the cause Scottish independence. It demeans it.
Social media has been the biggest change in journalism in my years in the trade. Newspapers have had to struggle to survive as internet behemoths robbed them of advertising revenue at the same time as plagiarising their content to steal readers. But the world has turned and I must turn with it. I am immensely grateful for my years in The Herald community. It’s been a hell of a ride. Thanks to my readers over the years and apologies for any messages that got lost in translation.