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16 policy ideas for Scotland’s new first minister Humza Yousaf [1]

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Date: 2023-04

Scotland’s new first minister, Humza Yousaf, is the first Muslim leader of a Western democracy. He is the millennial son of immigrants from Pakistan. He is a politician who joined the SNP in the wake of its opposition to the Iraq War.

He is also the first person in the role who wasn’t elected to the then-new Scottish parliament in 1999: now 37, he was only 14 at the time. His arrival marks a generational handover – far more so than when Nicola Sturgeon replaced Alex Salmond in 2014 – with the children of devolution taking over.

That sense is accentuated not just by Sturgeon’s departure to the back benches, but also by her long-term deputy John Swinney easing towards early retirement. The leaders of all three opposition parties are also relatively young.

Yousaf was elected on promises to tax the rich, tackle child poverty, defend trans rights, protect his party’s alliance with the Scottish Greens, and lead Scotland to independence.

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Speaking to the Daily Record before voting closed on Monday, he described himself as a “socialist” (though social democrat is probably more accurate) – if anything, his message was a move to step beyond Sturgeon’s shadow, transforming himself from the continuity candidate to the left candidate. And it worked. Just.

The problem the SNP faces is not that this left-wing approach is unpopular or unsuccessful. It’s the sense of stagnation – after 16 years in power, it feels like the party is running out of ideas.

Here are 16 ways Yousaf could fix that.

Tax wealth to tackle poverty

Let’s start with the idea Yousaf floated on Monday: increasing wealth taxes to fund ways of lifting people out of poverty.

While most taxes tend to pertain to income, huge amounts of wealth are stored in assets, and some countries do tax the net wealth of (in particular, but not necessarily exclusively) hyper-rich individuals.

These methods tend to require people with a net worth of a certain amount – it could be £5m, £50m or £500m – to self-declare the total value of everything they own, property, cars, pension pots, expensive art, jewellery and so on, and pay a small portion of their value. As with self-declared income tax, there is the occasional audit, to keep everyone honest.

Such systems already exist in France, Norway, Spain and Switzerland, and there are proposals to introduce them in the US.

Increase worker control

Those on the right often argue that tax rate increases would lead to capital flight. Tax the rich too hard, they say, and they’ll take their money elsewhere. The solution to this risk is to help workers take ownership of the businesses they help to build, so they aren’t subsidising wealthy bosses who can threaten to bugger off abroad. There are various potential ways to do this.

For nearly 20 years, Scottish communities have had the right to buy the land they live on when it comes up for sale, and can apply for government support to do so. This has often been hugely successful in rural settings – for example, 75% of people in the Outer Hebrides live on land owned and managed by their community. Businesses such as Isle of Harris Gin and numerous local renewable projects have sprung from this well of community collaboration.

The same principle could be extended to capital, too, so that when a business comes up for sale, workers have the right – and support from the Scottish National Investment Bank – to buy it. The Scottish government should prioritise such worker co-ops in procurement, and also consider handing some of its own power to workers.

As transport secretary, Yousaf was right to nationalise Scotland’s train company, ScotRail, in 2022. He should now let railway workers own a share of it. Likewise, Ferguson Marine, home of the ferry fiasco, could do with a dose of worker control.

‘Unclear’ the Highlands

The Scottish Highlands still suffer from the consequences of the Clearances around 200 years ago. While high-speed internet access and the revolution in working from home since the pandemic make living there more attractive, a shortage of housing and public infrastructure – especially public transport – means that for many it remains an impossible dream.

Meanwhile, a new generation of architects has designed a wave of beautiful, low-energy housing across the Highlands and Islands – for those who can afford it. What’s needed now is a real investment in attractive, affordable, zero-carbon rural social housing with publicly owned bus connections. Again, this could be funded through an expansion of the National Investment Bank.

Increase land reform

Nearly a quarter of a century after devolution, Scotland still has the most centralised land-ownership pattern in Europe. It is estimated that fewer than 500 people own more than half of the privately owned land in the country. These vast estates, often in the hands of absentee landlords, are used as play parks for the world’s mega-rich or as speculative purchases in some rapidly traded financial product.

While the SNP has talked a good game on land reform, progress has been slow. In 2015, the party set a target that a million acres of land would be in community ownership by 2020 – it’s just above half a million.

As with many SNP policies, the problem seems to be that the party wants nice things, but doesn’t want to have to take on powerful interests to get them. But that’s not how the world works: owners of vast estates like being owners of vast estates, and if we want land to be redistributed, the government will have to find more proactive ways to make it happen.

Bring wolves back to the Cairngorms

Scotland, like the rest of the UK, is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. Our hills aren’t bare because they are too high for trees, but because they are overgrazed, by the sheep that people were cleared off the land for and the deer herds that the owners of those vast estates keep overpopulated so they can stalk the biggest males.

When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the US in the 1990s, their presence utterly transformed the landscape – as George Monbiot explained in a popular video – allowing trees to flourish, other species to multiply and even changing the rivers, boosting fish numbers.

Wolves have now returned to much of continental Europe, bringing ecological advantages with them. It’s time they came back here, too, to the Cairngorms, which is larger than most national parks in the EU. Wolves will help reduce red deer numbers, but we also need lynx to deal with our overabundance of roe deer.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/humza-yousaf-new-first-minister-policies-for-fairer-greener-scotland/

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