Ian Bell: The triumph of home rule: politics is interesting

Here they come: pensioners, North Sea fisherman, genuine independents and assorted crackpots

Voting in the Lothians is easy. At some point today I will merely have to work my way through three separate ballot papers, the names of 13 political parties, a variety of independent hopefuls and tactical possibilities that would baffle General Tommy Franks. Elsewhere in Scotland, things are more complicated.

It is all the result of our electoral system. When Tommy Sheridan, Robin Harper and Dennis Canavan – Scottish Socialist, Green and independent respectively – won seats in the Scottish Parliament in 1999 they opened the eyes of everyone with a bee-infested bonnet. A legislature elected by a combination of first-past-the-post and a regional list vote meant two things. Firstly, no single party was ever likely to gain an absolute majority. Secondly, minorities were in with a shout.

So here they come: pensioners, North Sea fishermen, saviours of local hospitals, anti-abortionists, sectarian socialists, anti-Europeans, genuine independents and assorted crackpots. And here we go: Scotland's parliament is already a four-party affair that has tested the possibilities of a Lab-Lib coalition. Can we make things more confusing?

The omens are good. Mr Sheridan got in last time with only 7.5 per cent of the Glasgow vote. This time, promising a £7.32 minimum wage and with a fiery anti-war campaign behind him, he has rattled a Labour Party worried by what it calls differential turn-out. No one expects that much more than half of a four million-strong electorate will actually vote. It's the distribution of the vote, and Labour's relative vulnerability, that makes it interesting.

Yet doesn't that miss the point? Is not the possibility that turn-out will fall below 50 per cent in itself a judgement on Scotland's devolution experiment? Voter apathy may be endemic across the Western world, but surely no new parliament could exhaust the patience of half the voters in only four years?

That depends on what you want to believe. Polls suggest that up to 85 per cent of Scots are seriously irritated by the botch that has been made of building a new parliament. Touted by the late Donald Dewar as a £50m project, it is now likely to cost in the region of £400m.

But look more closely at those same polls. One from YouGov, published earlier this week, says that 70 per cent would vote for the establishment of a parliament if a referendum was held today, against 74 per cent who actually voted for it in 1997. Fifty-five per cent want to retain a devolved parliament within the United Kingdom, a choice disputed only by the 29 per cent who want independence.

Why should it be? Devolution was never likely to rejuvenate the body politic. Scottish voters, like voters everywhere, are ambivalent about politics and politicians. They see mistakes, petulance, a want of inspiration – the shade of Pericles has yet to visit Edinburgh – but that doesn't make them want to give up their parliament. If anything, they regard it as having too few powers. And the distractions of war, debated by a Scottish Parliament with no say over its conduct, have hardly helped the campaign.

So what might you say in the legislature's favour? Firstly, that it has been quicker off the mark than its Westminster parent in dealing with a range of modestly important issues. Its collective stance on care for the elderly, university tuition fees and fox-hunting have won approval. And even when faced with a barrage of tabloid bigotry over section 28, it won through. Secondly, the Edinburgh parliament has a well-developed committee system that consumes much of its members' time while providing real and effective scrutiny of the executive. Jack McConnell enjoys far less liberty than the regal Tony Blair. Thirdly, circumscribed though its powers may be, the parliament has grown to occupy the democratic space in Scotland. When the number of Scotland's Westminster MPs is reduced, as the Scotland Act demands, few of the victims are likely to be missed. The executive is the government of Scotland and that fact is taken for granted.

Finally, it is beyond question that the parliament has brought with it a greater political diversity. Mr Sheridan may be a lone socialist, at least for now, but you might not realise it from the presence he establishes in the chamber. Equally, the involvement of four main parties means that the range of opinion is broader than first-past-the-post voting would have allowed. Scotland's Tories know that only too well: they don't care for proportional representation, but without it not one of them would have gained a seat in 1999.

So how does the charge arise, generally among people who never wanted the parliament in the first place, that devolution is a failure? Waste and the usual incompetence do not delight Scots any more than they delight anyone else. The charge sheet against Mr McConnell and his executive is, meanwhile, somewhat familiar: transport, law and order, daft PFI schemes and hospital waiting times remain as contentious in Scotland as elsewhere. They are not, in short, specific to home rule.

The real trouble arises when there is a serious Scottish problem that the Scottish Parliament cannot properly address. The plight of North Sea fishermen is one obvious case in point: as ham-fisted and hopeless negotiations with Europe continued, the relevant Scottish minister seemed like a bystander. The issue mattered rather more in Edinburgh and the north-east than in London, yet London took the lead. Result: very angry fishermen and some vocal fishermen's candidates.

Then there is the Scottish economy. It is, by some reliable accounts, almost a basket-case. Growth is pitifully low; business start-ups are too few, business failures too numerous. Mr McConnell has learned to talk the language of enterprise – all the main parties have – but the simple truth is that he has precious few economic tools at his disposal. In the face of interest rates set in response to house prices in the south of England, as often as not, he has no means of levelling the playing field.

Hence the issue lost in the election shuffle, the mouthful of a slogan that is never likely to be catchy, the underlying flaw in home rule: full fiscal autonomy, or rather its absence. It means simply that Scotland should raise and spend its own revenues. It means the Scottish executive would be obliged to take proper responsibility for its spending decisions. It means a chance to re-shape the Scottish economy and dispel the canard that Scotland is subsidised by England.

So why not? Mr McConnell, with Gordon Brown at his shoulder, is having none of it. The Chancellor, as we know, is protective of his powers. Labour, equally, tends to believe that fiscal autonomy would amount to de facto independence.

The Scottish Nationalists tend to agree, but the Nats are not saying much about any kind of independence at the moment. Their strategy is to win enough seats to form an administration first and hold a referendum later. The problem for them is they can only hope of gaining power with Liberal Democrat help and the Lib Dems, living down to their name, will have no truck with a referendum.

But that's multi-party politics for you. That, too, is the nature of coalition government and hybrid election systems. They reach the parts other systems cannot reach, but they make for interesting times. And that's perhaps the best thing you can say for home rule, even as Mr McConnell prepares for a return to office: no one has ever said it was dull.