'People have placed their trust in us and we will repay them in full'

During the general election, whenever a journalist asked me how things were going, I tended to say: “Elections are like Christmas for the Lib Dems; we’re so excited!” I remember feeling the widening eyes and anxious smiles of my press officers, worried I may come to regret the comparison – I think it was something about turkeys.

After an exhilarating six weeks of getting our message out and speaking to people across the country, then came the results. And when they did, my choice of simile didn’t feel quite so dangerous. It has been a truly breathtaking and humbling year for our party. I’m still struggling to take it all in.

The Liberal Democrat revival has landed, and it has landed in style. We have returned a record-breaking 72 MPs to Westminster, ousting four Conservative cabinet ministers along the way. We defeated the Tories in constituencies once held by former prime ministers David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson.

In Scotland, we were instrumental in toppling the SNP. In huge swathes of the country, we showed that it was only the Liberal Democrats that could beat the SNP, deliver change and fight for a fairer future. Now, on the front benches of the House of Commons, there are more liberals than nationalists by a country mile.  

Among the Lib Dem names lining those green benches are Susan Murray and Angus MacDonald, our newly elected MPs for Mid Dunbartonshire and Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire, the former seat of Charles Kennedy. Angus and Susan got into politics to be strong local champions for their communities. Together with our strengthened Liberal Democrat base across Scotland and the rest of the UK, they will do exactly that.

After achieving the best result in our party’s history, the Liberal Democrats are back as a powerful force in British politics. When I reflect on the election result more broadly, it’s clear our successes were born out of a profound frustration with a dysfunctional status quo and a desire for a fresh start. People called time on the Conservatives and the SNP, parties that had jettisoned good governance in favour of doing whatever they could to cling onto power.  

Just look at the decision taken by Humza Yousaf to sack the Greens from government on that crisp, spring day in April. It was a decision motivated by the SNP starting to hyperventilate about how things were looking for them in an election year – it had nothing to do with improving the lives of people in Scotland. It could never have undone the damage that both parties had done together – the years of missed climate targets, an NHS on the brink of collapse, a country in the grips of a housing crisis and islanders deprived of lifeline ferries.

Of course, it proved to be an utterly misguided show of strength by the former first minister, with Yousaf forced to step down and John Swinney taking up the weather-beaten reins. Little could save it from its fate. For too long, the SNP chose to neglect the areas of public life they could improve, instead scapegoating and laying the blame elsewhere. Despite being in power for 17 years, the job of responsible government has appeared to elude them – but no one is buying it anymore.

As liberals, my party exists to give people a politics of public service that will work in their interests, a politics they have long been denied. That’s why we used the election campaign to set out our alternative vision for Scotland, which had at its heart cogent and transformative plans designed to make a difference.

Our proposals for social care were key among them. Throughout the campaign, we argued that only by repairing the crisis in social care can we free up spaces in hospitals, ease the pressures facing staff and get everyone quicker access to the treatment and support they need.

We put forward a £500m rescue package for care and pledged to create a new minimum wage for care workers, £2 higher than the national minimum wage, to tackle chronic staff shortages and make social care a profession of choice.

It was the culmination of much of the work we had already been doing as a party. In April, my Liberal Democrat colleague Wendy Chamberlain MP saw her Carer’s Leave Act come into force, giving an estimated 2.4 million carers across the UK a statutory right to take an extra five days of unpaid leave per year.

As well as investing in social care, we laid out our plans for creating world-class mental health services, funded by trebling the Digital Services tax paid by the social media giants. By establishing these kinds of high-quality services, we can get everyone fast access to GPs and to a wider range of skilled staff closer to home.

Bringing down waits, retaining NHS staff and tackling burnout has massive implications for the health of our economy too. We recognise that a growing, prosperous economy is premised on a population that can access the help they need fast so they can return to work and get on in life.

Our ambitions don’t end there. We want to lift Scottish education back up the international rankings by boosting in-class support in every school, getting teachers off zero-hours and short-term contracts and introducing a new nursery premium to give children from poorer backgrounds the very best starts.

When it comes to the environment and the climate emergency, we would launch a national insulation programme to cut emissions and bring down bills. We want to bring forward a Clean Water Act to clamp down on the sewage discharges that the SNP have allowed to stream into our beautiful waterways.

And as parliament resumes in the autumn, we will continue to make the case for these positive investments in the future of our country.  

Looking to the future can often mean looking to the past as well, a sentiment that holds particularly true as we mark 25 years of devolution. The fundamental reason behind the Scottish Parliament was to bring power closer to the people it serves, but parliament can only do that if its structures and processes support the open, democratic spirit upon which it was built.
Scandal has been all too ripe in our politics of late. It was John Swinney who, alongside Nicola Sturgeon and other members of their top team, deleted their pandemic messages.

In the parliament to come, Scottish Liberal Democrats will campaign for a new Accountability Act, breaking open the scandal of government by WhatsApp, expanding freedom of information and creating the right for people to recall their MSPs.

By renewing our democracy, we can also restore our parliament as a cathedral of public debate, challenge and ideas, allowing it to act as the basis of meaningful reform. For me, it is Liam McArthur’s Assisted Dying Bill, currently before the Scottish Parliament, that represents the next big liberal reform. It will join the advance of progressive change that has defined our party, giving people who are dying in agony and beyond the reach of palliative care the choice to say, ‘this far and no further’.

The values of our liberal movement lie in empowering people with choice as part of a fair, free and open society. Those values sit alongside a constructive political discourse that listens well to others and strives to make life better for the people we represent.

Perhaps we should have Christmas in July more often. For the first time in a long time, people have placed their trust in us, and we will repay it in full. The liberal message is resonating for so many and I have a feeling this is just the beginning.