Kenny Malcolm

😳 @JohnSwinney telling the Easdale brothers to “watch their language” rather neatly illustrates the very attitude they're complaining about. He's the @ScotGovFM of Scotland, not the nation's headmaster. His job is to answer criticism, not to expel people who express it in terms he finds disagreeable. I've experienced this culture myself. Challenge a policy, question a funding decision or expose an uncomfortable truth, and suddenly the conversation becomes about your tone, your language or your attitude. Anything, it seems, except the substance of what you've actually said. It's a remarkably convenient way of avoiding difficult questions while making the person asking them the problem. Democracy is not simply the right to vote every few years. It also requires the freedom to challenge those in power without fearing that your livelihood, funding, reputation or opportunities will suffer as a consequence. And that is where my criticism of the SNP goes considerably further than its apparent dislike of dissent. My concern, informed by my own experience, is that criticism can carry identifiable institutional consequences, while compliance and political conformity can bring equally identifiable advantages. That is a far more serious allegation than a government being thin-skinned, and it deserves proper scrutiny. The Easdales have the resources and public profile to challenge the government openly. Many smaller organisations, particularly those dependent on public funding, do not enjoy that luxury. For them, the perceived price of speaking out can be enough to ensure silence. A government doesn't have to ban criticism to discourage it. It merely has to create an environment in which people believe there is a price to pay for speaking their minds. So perhaps, rather than lecturing his critics about their manners, the First Minister might reflect on why people feel compelled to use such strong language in the first place. Democracy isn't a classroom, Mr Swinney. The electorate aren't your pupils, and disagreement isn't a disciplinary offence.