A review of the first 25 years of Scottish Government first ministers.
What can we make of the era of Labour First Ministers? All three had significant political experience in leadership roles in Labour prior to becoming FM – Dewar at Westminster, and McLeish and McConnell as local government leaders (the latter also being Labour General Secretary). Yet all three struggled to adapt to the pressures and expectations of devolution and to develop an appropriate style of leadership. None made the role of First Minister into the central, pivotal political leadership role in the country – and instead inhabited it with a degree of caution, wariness and defensiveness, which ultimately contributed to Scottish Labour's downfall.
A major facet affecting all were the internal, constraining fissures within Labour. There were internal divisions in Scottish Labour about the agenda and politics in the parliament, and alongside this there were the antagonistic views of many Westminster Scottish Labour MPs who viewed the Scottish Parliament and their Labour colleagues there with envy and suspicion.
Connected to this from the early days of the parliament was a Labour policy vacuum about devolution. This could be seen in the amount of leverage that their Lib Dem coalition partners had. It also had deeper roots in the surprising absence of a positive Labour vision about devolution and the parliament after all those years of campaigning. This political void haunts Labour to this day.
The end of the Labour era of devolution, and of providing First Ministers, in May 2007, closed one significant chapter of Scottish politics. A new chapter was about to begin which would change Scotland, Scottish politics and the role of First Minister, which will be the subject of Part 2 next week.