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Slow and steady wins many races ...
but not them all
A sketch
Magnus Linklater
Editor: Scottish Edition of The Times
Filed 20 Aug 07
©Magnus Linklater
This article was originally published
on the 16th August 07 in The Times.
It is reproduced here with the kind permission
of its author and of the newspaper
One moment he was there, the next he’d gone.
The departure of Jack McConnell, after 51⁄2 years as First
Minister, was brisk, low-key and unremarkable – much like
his time in office. He arrived at the Dynamic Earth building in
Edinburgh – a museum that charts the slow evolution of the
Earth, interspersed with sudden eruptions, and is therefore an ideal
political metaphor, albeit a rather obvious one.
It seems only yesterday that Mr McConnell and
the Labour Party he led were here for the duration, as solid and
unmovable as the Jurassic period. Yet now, only three months after
a volcanic election, he was announcing his decision to stand down.
He walked up a long flight of steps, watched,
uncuriously, by a bus-load of tourists, then entered a door labelled
Your Journey Starts Here. Except that, in truth, it was ending.
And there, in the front row, was the woman who would see to that.
Wendy Alexander, his Shadow Finance Secretary, flanked by some of
the ministerial colleagues who may or may not contest her election,
watched as the man she will almost certainly succeed as leader gave
us his reasons for going, and set out the legacy he believes he
is bequeathing.
He reminded us that he had taken over the job
“in challenging circumstances”, a reference to the abrupt
departure of his predecessor, Henry McLeish.
“I knew the task was to steady the ship
. . . so that is what we did.” No one would deny that, or
indeed his success in winning a second term victory in 2003. Nor
probably would they dispute his claim that “Scotland is a
far better place now than it was six years ago”. There is
no doubt that the economy has improved, albeit more slowly than
anywhere else in the UK, the health service is probably better,
education so-so.
And, yes, we are more internationalist and outward-looking.
So when he said that “these are Scottish
values, my values and these . . . were the values that drove my
Government”, it would be churlish to deny him. Yet he knows,
and we know, that when it came to the crunch last May, that was
not enough. The electorate opted for the Nationalist eruption instead,
which means that Mr McConnell will be remembered more as the man
who lost Labour its time-honoured leadership in Scotland rather
than the man who changed the face of the nation.
He announced that he was staying on as an MSP
and will take up his new role as British High Commissioner in Malawi,
also working with the Clinton Hunter Development Initiative. Then
he bade us farewell, signing off with the words: “It is time
for the rest of my life to begin.” And so it is.
©Magnus Linklater
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