Dear Scottish Government, if you don't want to lose...

Robin McAlpine

The SNP, and therefore the Scottish Government, is in trouble. Almost everyone concludes that it needs a total rethink on its policy agenda, both to stop making mistakes and to give people some fresh reason to look at the party. If you're in the Scottish Government and you're reading this, let me offer seven suggestions that I think might save your election.

This isn't a random selection. Everything in this list is chosen to challenge a particular perception people hold about you or to address a particular weakness you have demonstrated. Each is designed both to create real change but also to signal clearly that there is a change in direction. You don't have much time and you can't fluff this.

Before and after (because your policymaking has been poor)

Your biggest problem is not what policy you make but how you make it and how you implement it. Consistently you have pursued a policy-by-headline approach, which has involved deciding what message you want the public to hear and then retrofitting policy development to that and moving on without paying attention to the implementation stage.

But policy is not about headlines, it's about changing facts on the ground. Your policy development capacity is weak (most of your special advisers are really PR-focussed), so you are overly reliant on the civil service. The civil service by its nature will usually take a 'don't go beyond the brief' approach so when you give them a vague brief, they will do the very least possible and take no chances.

That will always leave delivery way behind what the headlines said would be delivered. And because you don't have a consistent policy approach (only a consistent narrative approach) it allows the civil service to run far too much of public policy without proper scrutiny. That is where your privatisation rush is coming from.

You need to bring in a new team of special advisers with deep, real policy knowledge and a proper understanding of how government works. They must develop policy properly by talking to stakeholders and experts before creating policy, not after. And then it should be their only job in life to follow that policy closely at every stage until it is properly implemented.

Until you can get your policy made properly and implemented effectively, your problems will not go away.

Care U-turn (because you're creating another disaster)

This is easy – your care bill is a centralising nightmare and everyone hates it. I guarantee it will go disastrously wrong. It is create a Wes Streeting-style centralised commissioning model where you will be left to buy care centrally, mostly from private providers. You will then (rightly) be blamed for every single care failure because you put yourself in total charge.

You don't even need to start again because Common Weal has produced a comprehensive set of amendments which transform the current bill into something good in one go. Just accept these amendments. Oh, and stop treating the key stakeholders in care with contempt and start listening to what they're telling you.

A decentralisation bill (because of the perception of control-freakery)

Centralised, controlling, arrogant – these are the kinds of things people are saying about you. If you want a fresh start, you should signal a change of heart. The most striking way to do that would be a serious, meaningful decentralisation bill.

That definitely needs to include proper local democracy but there is an awful lot more from Common Weal's work (and the work of others) which could be drawn from. Anything that shares power more evenly across Scotland and gives individuals and communities more control and ability to do things fits comfortably here. This can be done quickly, though implementation will take time.

Make NHS staff happy (because you can't dodge the NHS problem)

Like it or not, the NHS is the canary in the mine for public services. It is the one that, when people sense it not working well, feel that public service generally is not going well. The NHS is giant and difficult to turn around, but hoping Wes Streeting does unpopular things at Westminster isn't enough.

So if you can't turn it around really fast but you can't ignore it and you certainly can't keep saying the stuff you've already been saying, what can you do? You can change the mood. There is one thing where progress can be made quite quickly, and that is making NHS staff feel valued. Common Weal has been working on a complete package to do just that.

But here is where to start; simply begin a real process of a frontline-led reform. Everything that has happened in the NHS has been done to staff, not with staff and never by or for staff. The NHS has been bashed and beaten around by management consultants. Simply creating a commission of and by staff with a promise to implement reforms would be startlingly new.

If you can't change something but it needs change, you can change how you change it. Since few people experience the NHS except through its staff, if the staff are positive, you have a chance that will get across. Given the timescales you have to hand, this is your best bet pre-election.

Build houses (because housing is your weakest issue)

On no policy issue over which you preside is your performance less popular than in housing. You have been complacent, and you have mostly implemented lobbyists' wishes. It is them who rebranded expensive mid-market houses as 'affordable' and persuaded you that more of those would solve the problem. Of course by subsidising mid-market houses you actually make the problem worse (pushing up house prices again).

Stop. Build public rental housing, now, and quickly. Lots of it. We've shown again and again you don't need subsidy if you build wisely and use land value capture to keep the price of land down. Begin this immediately and get people on waiting lists for these new houses really, really soon.

Bin your investment strategy and start again (because what you're doing is awful and you need investment)

You brand yourself as a left of centre government but your plan for public investment is way off to the right of the political spectrum. You want global private equity capital to pay for the transformation of Scotland by... monetising and privatising everything. Literally, land, sea, water, plants, animals, everything. Really, just don't do this. You'll regret it. We all will.

But you need to find routes to secure proper investment, so instead create a powerful commission to build a framework for a 'public first' investment strategy. There is lots and lots that can be done, starting with a focus on revenue-generating issues which can pay for themselves (like housing and energy), then look at mutual and collectivist options for replacing private finance (such as bond issue or mutualisation of investment) then find levers with which to drive more public good financing (for example incentivising pension funds or changing tax).

The Scottish Government can't do all of this because of its borrowing cap. There are two responses to that. First, could you finally get your act together and go back and try to renegotiate the fiscal framework, the negotiation of which you have botched twice now. Second, if you weren't allergic to local government you could work with them to create public-public approaches. They don't have borrowing limits.

Restart your just transition (because lots of people care and you're weak on the issue)

You set ambitious climate change targets, did nothing much about it, and then dropped them. It was a shameful business all round. I have explained how to take a 'stop the line' approach to this; stop everything, start again, set out the challenges, ask for serious submissions for what to do, give those to a Citizens' Assembly to chose between and commit to implementing their proposals in full.

You are nowhere and you have nothing. You can't fudge this any further. Do something.

Get something big planned (because you have an election coming)

You have always left your manifesto preparation to the last minute. It is therefore always full of rhetoric but seldom much by way of startling policy innovation. Doing that again will hurt you badly.

You need something eye-catching for an election and it can't be another false promise. Get something transformative and real worked on really quietly over the next 18 months, ready to be unveiled shortly before an election is called. It could be a full programme or it could be a single big idea or it could be some combination. But it must be totally different and it must send out a message 'real change this time'.

There is a concerning anti-politics atmosphere about and it's not entirely unmerited. You could do a lot worse than lean into that. I suggest that you should be brave and set up a permanent Citizens Assembly as a second chamber of the Scottish Parliament. It takes a big chunk of power out of the hands of professional politicians. I think the public will notice this. I think they will pay attention.

You are going to be facing a backlash against 'politics as usual', so find a way to suggest politics will no longer be 'as usual'. But make this real and get it really ready by starting now.

Then...

Dear goodness that's not even half of what I'd do. There is no space for land reform in this list (because it probably doesn't have quite enough public resonance in the face of a crisis). I have barely touched on energy (because the lead times mean you can't do much fast enough). There is nothing on business support and economic development (because what you can do in 18 months isn't going to win you an election). There are loads of other omissions too.

I leave these out here not because they're not important or because the public doesn't care but because you're in a full-on crisis and you need to focus on what is most likely to dig you out of that crisis in the pitifully short time available to you.

The good news is that if you don't pull this off, you'll have five years on the back benches ahead of you to sort yourself out. But if you would rather have the power to change Scotland over those five years, you've got 18 months to change yourself. Drastically.