The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second-best time is today.
The best time to secure sufficient and reliable transport services for the Scottish isles would have been any time in the last 15 years of SNP rule.
The second-best time would be to start now, invest consistently, and – perhaps – finally give up the addiction to short-term PR and photo ops.
When you read the latest report that a CalMac ferry has broken down, that a route has been restricted, that people are sleeping in their cars at the quayside, it is hard to escape the feeling that Scotland’s lifeline ferry network is slipping year by year into deeper and deeper crisis.
It was not always this way. Which leaves the question: how did we get here?
These problems did not start all at once. It has taken years of neglect and disinterest by the government in Holyrood to reach this point.
Not for nothing has the phrase “eye off the ball” become the standard reference when talking about Scottish ministers.
The slow decline of our ferry service is emblematic of the approach within Bute House.
Long-term success for our communities has been sacrificed on the altar of short-term spin.
The government has always been long on press releases and short on policy results. That is particularly true when it comes to the slow-and-steady aspects of governance, the areas – like transport investment – in which there are no quick and easy fixes.
When you can spend a couple million on a quick project for a quick press clipping, ministers are always ready to act. When the task is to quietly invest for 10 years for sustained and effective services, somehow they are never to be found.
Instead, as ferry investment has fallen by the wayside – save two overpriced and undelivered hulks contracted just in time for an SNP party conference some years ago – ferry assets on the west coast have been sweated for years upon years.
Between 1993 and 2007 a vessel was replaced every 14 months – that is, almost once per year. Since 2007 the rate has been less than one new vessel every three years.
‘Something has to give’
Far too many vessels on active duty are far past their use-by date, and it tells. CalMac’s repair bill has tripled in the last 10 years. Something has got to give – either the SNP-Green government’s complacency, or the viability of our island communities.
We have to hope that it is the former.
Now I must admit to a degree of bias – indeed self-interest – in this matter. I am an islander twice over, by birth and by choice. I was born and raised on Islay, and elected to represent the Northern Isles.
I believe in my bones in the importance of keeping our island communities as the unique and invaluable assets to Scotland that they have been for centuries.
I see the strength of feeling in my own community about their need and their right to good transport connections and I know for a fact that people in the Western Isles feel just as strongly.
The strength and success of our island communities – like the ferries that service them – is no accident. It cannot be taken for granted.
Decades of concerted effort by local leaders, businesses and community groups have been required to retain and renew opportunities in the isles, where otherwise they might have died out.
‘A decade to fix’
As with ferries, so with the wider isles community – there is no great secret to success. What is required is earnest effort over years with islanders and coastal communities leading the discussion, not dictated to by Holyrood.
If we re-empower local people who have the know-how to act and the incentives to deliver, then we can once again secure the future of our vibrant Scottish islands.
The harm done to our ferry service cannot be reversed overnight. It could take a decade or more to undo.
But if the time to invest in our ferries was 10 or 15 years ago, when the SNP first began to neglect them, then the second-best time is right now.
Alistair Carmichael is the Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland
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