IT WAS the most surreal image of the day. There, on a giant screen at the west end of Princes Street, watched by several thousand pop fans, was the image of our Great Leader. Instead of Garbage, we had Donald Dewar. The man who is to rock music what Clarissa Dickson-Wright is to lean cuisine, was addressing the masses. "I won't, um-er, take up too much of your time," he boomed over the loudspeakers. "I was told I had 30 seconds. I fear I am already over time." Down among the paying public in the gardens, he was greeted with a roar of approval. Arms swayed, hands clapped. A rather stunned First Minister basked in the applause. For a brief moment, it seemed as if the politician and the pop star were indistinguishable. Donald Dewar? Shirley Manson? Who cares, when you are having a good time? The crowds were still intoxicated by the euphoria of a day when everything had seemed to go right. They had a new parliament, they had a rock concert, and their goodwill lapped like a warm bath around the man whose hour it was. Dewar may never again experience anything quite like this.
Higher up, on the street, the non-paying punters took a rather different view. They seemed indifferent to the Dewar phenomenon. All they saw was a middle-aged man with thinning hair whose presence on the stage was interrupting the concert. When they heard he was a politician they sent up a ragged hoot of derision. They tossed their empty cans of lager onto the street and crushed them underfoot.
A youth with back-to-front baseball cap and studs in his eyebrows spat ostentatiously on the pavement. For him the nation's leader was just a delay.
The Queen takes an interest in Jack McConnell, 2004
Much has been made of the involvement of young people in Thursday's celebrations. The massed ranks of schoolchildren, the banners planted on the Castle Rock, the delightful poem by Amy Lineker, read in the Assembly Hall, have all conjured up the impression of a new generation of Scots keenly involved in this great new exercise in democracy. Was it possible, we asked ourselves, that kids could actually take an interest in politics? Perhaps a dialogue had indeed been struck up in the sunshine between those who were to make the laws and those who would be affected by them. Who knows, they might even become an integral part of the governance of Scotland.
I don't think so. Children have more important things to do with their lives, what with growing up, than taking part in dusty debates.
When, in September, the Scottish parliament meets to discuss such absorbing matters as land reform, national parks or the finer details of the Finance Bill, I doubt if the public galleries will be thronged with eager faces from Elgin Academy or Bellarmine High. Nor should politicians make fools of themselves by trying to pretend that they are suddenly in tune with modern youth. I excuse Dewar because, on July 1, he was perfectly entitled to upstage Shirley Manson, and he was brave to do so in front of several thousand fans a third his age.
I do not imagine that today's generation of young people is any more attuned to public affairs than yesterday's, though I would guess they are far better informed, thanks to the sheer volume of information on television and the internet. They will, however, be aware that things have changed in Scotland and that somehow a new opportunity has been created.
Gradually, over the next year or so, they will get a general sense of whether that opportunity is being properly used or wasted. Education, after all, is the acid test of this new parliament, and the decisions taken in committee and on the floor of the house will affect them directly. Like the rest of us, who will look back on last Thursday's events with a warm glow of pleasure, expectations have been raised, and the disappointment if those expectations fail to be met will be intense.
So how will the parliament be judged? I do not think that MSPs should worry too much about the rather dry nature of their early business. There is not much point in pretending that banner headlines will greet clause-by-clause debate on the abolition of feudalism, or that the Finance Bill is going to electrify the nation. What will come across is the nature of their discussions. If they use every opportunity, in committee and plenary session, to exploit divisions and score political points, they will bore us all. Far from demonstrating their collective virility they will be doing little more than demonstrating that nothing in the new Scotland has greatly changed, and that politics remains the same old fractious business it always was. They should realise that there is a crucial difference between genuine debate and the petty striving for party advantage. This means changing attitudes.
I have heard the leader of one Scottish party announcing privately that the so-called new politics is nonsense and that the duty of an opposition party is to weigh into the government at every opportunity. If that is the case, then we might as well give up this enterprise before it has even started. He should realise that nothing turns off the public more than a constant diet of bad-mouthing.
No one wants this parliament to be a mealy-mouthed talking shop. But at the very least it should be businesslike and effective. With the new committee structure and an open dialogue with the public, it has the opportunity to be just that. If it fails, however, then it will fail not just those who voted it in, but an entire generation of young Scots who, for the time being at any rate, are hoping for better things.
