Why SNP should be brave enough to copy Rory Stewart's resignation pledge
As UK prisons minister, Rory Stewart promised to reduce violence in ten prisons or resign. Will SNP ministers should demonstrate similar commitment to their jobs?
“Just one last thought for you. I mean it’s a brave politician who says ‘judge me on the results’. Are you seriously suggesting, in 12 months’ time, I’ll speak to you and we’ll look at those statistics from those ten prisons and, if they are the same or worse, what, you’re going to quit?”
In 2018, the then UK prisons minister Rory Stewart, live on morning television, paused briefly and then said: “Yeah, I will quit if I haven’t succeeded in 12 months in reducing the level of drugs and violence in those prisons. I want to make a measurable difference... I’ll resign if I don’t succeed.”
It was the sort of statement a civil servant hoping to convince a minister to change their mind might describe as “brave”. After all, for five years, violence in those prisons had been increasing steadily. Could he succeed?
‘Slightly more decent’
In his book, Politics on the Edge, Stewart wrote that by April 2019, just over a year after he became prisons minister, violence “had reduced by 17 per cent on average across all the ten prisons... I had fulfilled my promise and I wouldn’t have to resign. More importantly, these prisons had gone from being shamefully unstable, filthy and dangerous to becoming slightly more decent environments.”
This story is a reminder that democratically elected politicians can actually make a difference – if they put their heart and soul into the endeavour, as Stewart clearly did – at a time when some voters have started to doubt this.
It should also act as an inspiration to the SNP as it prepares to lay out its Programme for Government on Tuesday. Scotland has many serious problems: the lacklustre state of the economy, child poverty, unacceptably long waiting lists for NHS treatment, people stuck in hospitals because of a lack of social care, violence in schools... the list goes on.
We have just one request of John Swinney and his ministers: Pick one issue each and, like Stewart, stake your political career on making things better. No more glib targets that everyone knows won’t be achieved, no more empty promises smothered in warm words, soundbites and jibes at Westminster. Insist that you will make “a measurable difference” or resign.
In a cynical age, the effects of such a principled stance could be transformational, not just for Scotland’s public services and levels of support for the SNP, but for the very idea of democracy itself.
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