The swagger and bluster of Scottish politics can sometimes make British politics look like a Jane Austen novel. It was therefore nice to see a sensitive and thoughtful debate break out at recent first minister’s questions when Johann Lamont brought up the case of a Scottish cancer patient who, faced with paying £3,000 a month for life-extending drugs, is moving to England to get them for free. Contrasting this with the Scottish National party’s free prescription policy, which lets Scots get medicine such as paracetamol for free, she continued to criticise the discrepancies in the SNP’s universalism policies, an issue that she first raised last October.
At the time Lamont questioned policies which she said meant that those who could afford to pay for prescriptions and tuition fees were getting them for free at the expense of drastic cuts to services which the most vulnerable rely on. This was a tough but realistic line to take which received a backlash for appearing to attack the sections of society it sought to defend. While the natural progression from this would be to propose abolishing free prescriptions for higher earners and introducing a graduate tax or tuition fees to clarify our position, Lamont has yet to expand on her call to end the ‘something for nothing’ culture, identifying the problem but not offering any concrete solution.
This uncertainty over our position creates problems. While it is unknown if come 2016 the electorate would see this as a strong move by Scottish Labour or a repellent shift to the right, to bring up the issue without following through with a policy idea cements the feeling among voters that Scottish Labour has no ideas for government.
The debate in Scotland has been dominated by the independence referendum to the extent that we haven’t had the same pressure to declare policies that Ed Miliband has faced, but obviously this doesn’t mean we don’t need to give some indication of what platform we’re going to campaign on in three years. To win the election in 2016, whether the 2014 referendum results in a yes or no vote, Lamont and her cabinet will have to come up with ideas that can be voted for as positive but realistic alternatives to SNP policies. Despite being in opposition, where we should be picking up support from disgruntled voters, with three years to go we are still behind in the polls. We need to persuade voters that the fallout from universalism is a serious issue and show them how we would balance the system out in practical terms if we were to get into government.
Picking up on discrepancies in SNP policy is barely half the battle. In opposition it is not enough just to oppose – we must offer solutions in order to win against Salmond’s blue-sky but essentially unsustainable vision. Yes, raising putting Salmond on the back foot at FMQs is a step in the right direction. But at best it is only the beginning of what will be a long three years until election day.
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Catherine Vallis is a member of Progress. She tweets @CateVallis
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