Birds in a gilded cage

It is possible to feel slightly sorry for the new intake of Scotland's MPs. Consider Jo Swinson, newly elected Lib Dem MP for Dunbartonshire East and profiled in the Herald this morning. Young, talented, ambitious, she is said to care about issues such as health care, pensions and the council tax. But, in relation to Scotland, it is only the second of these that she will be able to debate in the Commons; health care and the council tax are reserved to Holyrood. Similarly, Angus MacNeil, newly elected MP for the Western Isles, is likely to be interested in matters such as crofting, fisheries and the future of the Gaelic language; again these are all matters which are off-limits at Westminster. MPs may not even ask Parliamentary Questions on such matters.

And, as young ambitious MPs, they will want to build a public profile. But all of the Scottish TV and radio political programmes are primarily focused on Holyrood. Apart from Charles Kennedy, Menzies Campbell and Alex Salmond (all of whom made their mark before devolution), who knows (or cares about) the identity of LibDem or SNP MPs? Whereas their Holyrood equivalents are forever drawing attention to themselves.

And the same applies to Scottish backbench Labour MPs, unless they can follow the Des Brownes and the Douglas Alexanders up the greasy pole to Ministerial office.

It would be exaggerating to describe the bulk of Scotland's MPs as birds in a gilded cage, forever condemned to act as silent lobby fodder, trooping through the lobbies in support of English bills, but it would not be exaggerating by much.