Tim Luckhurst: Pantomime on the Mound

The Scottish parliament did not organise a party to mark its 1,000th day. Displaying an unprecedented feel for public opinion as they went off on holiday at the weekend, MSPs sensed that this was not the time for self-congratulation. Granted, voting themselves a 13.5% pay rise while ordering striking train drivers to pledge eternal gratitude for a quarter of that was not a good start. Turning out en masse to insist that democracy will die if a single one of them loses their job to boundary redistribution compounded the offence.

With masterly understatement David Steel, presiding officer of the Scottish parliament, declared that it had been a "bad week". Replace bad with atrocious and insert three years in place of week and you begin to approach the truth. The mood of disillusionment that pervades Scotland has not crossed the border. Devolution was a box the prime minister ticked way back when New Labour was triumphant. For 90% of the British population, the "Scottish question" was solved. A few zealous dupes in the English regions still regard devolution as the holy grail. So a few facts may be in order.

The pantomime on the Mound that masquerades as a national legislature - less convincingly than the Scotland squad pretends to be a world-class football team - is regarded with contempt by Scots. A poll on the pay issue reveals 99% of Scots opposed to any increase for Scotland's home-rule politicians. A second survey reveals that 96% believe the devolved parliament has performed badly throughout its existence.

No street parties to rejoice at the abolition of hunting? No spontaneous joy at plans to make the smacking of small children a criminal offence? Sorry. Mention the institution that John Smith and Donald Dewar both swore would express "the settled will of the Scottish people" and those taken-for-granted folk sneer. Off message they may be, but they remember the massive and rising cost of the unfinished parliament building at Holyrood, the squalid removal of former first minister Henry McLeish, and the ineptitude that brought Scotland's school examination system to the brink of collapse.

Even the great initiatives seized upon with naive glee by London-based commentators arouse little enthusiasm. Tribunites in Clapham may consider abolition of student tuition fees and free personal care for the elderly proof of devolved inspiration. Scots understand that each divergence from the UK norm promises considerably more than it delivers. And the majority go with the views of academic analysts on both sides of the border. James Mitchell, head of the department of government at Strathclyde University, says "taken individually, each commitment might have been accommodated... but taken together... the executive have created some problems for themselves."

"If Scots want more generous public services they will have to find the means of paying for them," explains Robert Hazell of University College London's constitution unit. The power to vary Scottish income tax by up to 3% will, he argues, "not yield enough to make it worth introducing".

An immediate 5% rise in income tax would not cover the commitments that the Scottish executive has already made. The largesse with which devolved ministers pledge reforms that Whitehall has deemed unaffordable is not evidence of radicalism. It is proof that politicians schooled in the warped mediocrity of Scottish Labour councils spend lavishly and pray the bills will never come.

Now even the first minister acknowledges the crisis. Jack McConnell marked devolution's anniversary with refreshing candour. "I think that all MSPs have to work much harder in the second 1,000 days to win the confidence of the people of Scotland." It was the closest any minister has come to an admission of failure.

What next? Repeal of the Scotland Act? Some in Scotland would be overjoyed if the parochialism devolution has brought was ended at a stroke. But that is not the consensus. The government's constitutional reform agenda - the Scotland Act, reform of the House of Lords, the London mayoralty, the betrayal of its commitment to electoral reform - was conceived in haste and implemented without thought. It was a modest taste of red meat for the backbenches at a time when economic and social radicalism was deemed threatening to New Labour consolidation.

That consolidation may be dead; devolution is not quite. If it can be reconsidered as work-in-progress that requires fundamental changes to deliver good government, success is still conceivable. A smaller Scottish parliament with fewer ministers would be popular. Close links to a democratised upper house at Westminster could help too.

But what is needed above all is the end of devolved pretensions. The Scottish electorate already understands that devolution was an experiment - which it wants to see work but which, like all experiments, might not. If the government would admit that too, Scotland's "wee pretendy parliament" might just get the fillip it needs in order to grow up. Scotland needs Whitehall at least to threaten repeal. To demand less in the present climate would be unpatriotic.

Tim Luckhurst is a former editor of the Scotsman and adviser to the late Donald Dewar.