The Flying Flynn

Flynn’s desire for the dual-mandate doesn’t pass the test of public interest.

Stephen Flynn is a smart ambitious operator, as Ian Blackford found out when ousted as SNP leader in the Westminster parliament. The next Flynn step is to get to Holyrood as the means to take leadership of the party when Swinney draws his pension. It is as transparent as a piece of glass.

There is nothing wrong with personal ambition.  It drives people to success in business, sport, music, and other human activities. Without ambitious people society would stagnate. But in politics what marks out the outstanding personalities, in whom people can invest trust, is that ambition is twinned with an overriding sense of public duty. Public need, public interest first, ego and personal advancement second.    

Has Stephen Flynn met that test of trust with his move towards sitting simultaneously in Holyrood and the parliament in London 400 miles away?  But let us leave him aside for a moment, and look at the principle inherent in the dual-mandate claim.  If one person can do it, why cannot many others?  Already another two MPs want to follow Flynn northwards. Do we think the public interest would be better served than now with dozens of MSPs-MPs fliting up and down between Edinburgh and London, with great chunks of their days taken up with travel?  No one, even a smart operator, can be in two places at once.

An important aspect of an MSP-MP job is to hold ministers to account, and how effective you are in doing so depends on two things: you really understand issues, allied to an ability to probe the minister effectively; and whether the minister being confronted and questioned respects and even fears you. Tam Dalyell was the perfect example of an MP whom ministers feared at question time, or in dealing with amendments in committee.  There is another term for dual-mandate:  part time attendee, someone who might be there, or might not. A dream opponent for a minister.  I can just hear it now “If the Hon. Member had been here last week, he would have known the answer, but then he was doing his other part-time job elsewhere.”

Flynn faces an additional problem to the ones outlined above. He wants to get to Holyrood to become not only leader of the SNP, but First Minister. Everyone knows that is true. Some of us suspect he has done a deal on that with Swinney to stop Kate Forbes. I watched him on tv dodge the leader question. The insincerity was obvious.   Whatever may be the arguments about whether an MSP or MP job is full-time, there is no doubt about FM being a 24/7 commitment. Indeed, the same applies to being just a cabinet minister.  Does the dual-mandate fit easily into that scenario? I think not. Has Flynn thought that through? Again, I think not.   

It is crystal clear once the dual-mandate is analysed that, while it might serve the personal interests of an ambitious politician, it will not serve the people. Good quality legislation, commitment to detail and participation in the slog of examining a Bill line by line in committee, being on top of the issues that confronts a parliament, being there when unexpected dangerous/important events occur, probing an administration, testing the competence of ministers, that is job of an MP or MSP,  and it can only be done properly and effectively by a person concentrating on one parliament alone.  To claim otherwise, is to gaslight the people.

Perhaps, inadvertently, Stephen Flynn has done the SNP a favour by his ill-judged lunge for power, as it opens him up to examination for the first time.  I am not alone in wondering, outside of independence, what it is that makes him tick? What in our society makes him angry? He has been five years in Westminster, but where are the big speeches and articles setting out his political philosophy on the economic, social, and international problems and challenges of our times? Where is the guidance, that is the role of a leader, to assist the people in understanding and evaluating the complex national and geopolitical forces now at work in shaping the world? I can find none.

Yes, Stephen Flynn is a smart operator. Yes, he was good at PMQs, but that is actually easy, and I speak from experience. It is only a couple of minutes. Keep the questions short and you can’t go wrong.  But what about the big stuff? That is the arena that counts, in which being smart is not enough.

Flynn’s desire for the dual-mandate doesn’t pass the test of public interest. But it has helped us to know what is there with this man, and what isn’t there. If I were on the SNP vetting committee I would reject his application for Holyrood, and send him homeward to think again.