“Contraries are reconcilable in a higher synthesis, while contradictories exclude one another” - Bob Doran SJ, Theology and the Dialectics of History.

My primary interlocutor in this project is Bernard Lonergan, whose theories of societal progress and decline will provide a framework for my analysis. One of the key interpreters and developers of Lonergan’s thought is the late Bob Doran SJ, who is quoted above.

I am now about half way through my research interviews, and have been delving into a range of other material (newspaper articles, parliamentary debates etc) from the 90’s in particular. One of my initial observations is that the idea of consensus in politics provokes a very mixed response. For some, it is almost a dirty word. Consensus, from this perspective, is nothing more than a mushy middle, with a desire to be nice getting in the way of the hard reality that politics is about choices. You can’t, on this argument, have it both ways, you can’t please everyone (and by extension, why even try).

This is a challenge given that consensus, or a more consensual approach, is often held up as one of the defining characteristics of devolution’s hoped for new politics (alongside the four Consultative Steering Group principles - participation, power sharing, accountability and equal opportunities).

Doran’s distinction between a dialectic of contraries and a dialectic of contradictions gives us, I think, a useful tool for understanding what is meant by consensus in its best sense.

There are some things, ideas, choices that are simply contradictory. You can’t have both simultaneously. Like the 0 and 1 in the binary system, if you have 1 you don’t have 0, and if you have 0 you don’t have 1. Something is true or false, yes or no. There is no consensus outcome possible, no nice and easy meeting in the middle.

But there are other ideas, choices, things that are different, that are contrary to each other, that exist as two opposite poles, but the existence of one does not exclude the existence of the other. It is possible to have both one and the other, to have a mix of both, or better still, to have something emerge from the interaction of both that is more fitting than either. As Doran would have it, drawing on Lonergan, it is possible to use the tension between contrary poles as a source of creativity and dynamism and this is where, I would argue, a consensual approach becomes not only possible, but in many/most cases also the ideal.

An example from the history of devolution might be the tension between constituency representation (which favours a first past the post electoral system) and proportionality (which favours STV or some form of list system). It is not an either/or choice because, as we saw, it was possible to develop a system that had elements of both, and delivered what was fundamentally important in both. The system that emerged is not perfect, but it was a more fitting choice for the Scottish Parliament on its creation than either pole on its own.

In our politics today, we too often label things as contradictory (either/or) when they are in fact contrary and capable of more consensual, both/and solutions. In particular, I believe we have allowed ourselves to see the independence/union debate in terms of contradiction - yes or no, one or the other. That is not surprising given the political penchant for emphasising dividing lines and the fact we went through a binary process of voting Yes or No.

Independence and Union in a dialectic of contradiction was almost certainly the case in the 18th or 19th centuries when being an independent nation state meant something different from what it does today in this world of greater interdependence and multi-national bodies such as the EU. Today, we accept that it is possible to share sovereignty, to be both independent in some areas and working in partnership, or in a union, in others. That does not mean that there is an easy way of combining the two, because statehood is still a reality, but if we are open to the possibility, we can begin to see the different poles of independence and union, autonomy and partnership, as a source of potentially creative and collective dynamism rather than as a focal point for winner-takes-all division.

But what is a politics of love? And why might it be relevant or, indeed, important?

During the 2014 independence referendum in Scotland, the Yes campaign believed that it was hope that would beat fear, but having spent some time in North America during the time of Trump, I became aware of a political conversation that argued instead that what was needed to beat the politics of fear - and all that goes with it - was in fact a politics of love.

I am still in the very early days of my research, and still have to begin the series of interviews with politicians and other practitioners who have been on the frontline of Scottish politics over these past 25 years. However, over these past months, and as preparation for the interviews, I have been reflecting on what it is we mean by love, and how that might apply to the world of politics.

Here are some initial thoughts . . .

Love, first of all is best understood as an action rather than just a feeling. Or, to put it another way, love is a verb. We can ‘talk love’ but the true test is whether our words are matched by actions: do we also walk the walk, do we ‘do love’? ‘Fight or flight’ is, of course, a valuable, natural response, but I’d say that in our day-to-day living, actions motivated by love are more likely to benefit us than those driven by feelings of threat or fear.

In the existing academic literature, a politics of love tends to be conceived in one of two ways, that is, either in terms of political outcomes (ideas such as the common good, or policy proposals such as caring for the planet) or political processes (ie the way we ‘do politics’). My focus is on the latter. It is the less well explored half and, also, the one that applies more clearly to the more consensual style of politics that was expected as a result of devolution’s so-called ‘new politics’.

How then should we understand love? To start with, I would offer three interconnected elements. Love is:

Relational – it is an ‘I’ to an ‘I’, rather than ‘I’ to ‘it’ or ‘them’. It is about treating the other as a subject like myself, a person in their own right, rather than as an object. In love, then, we do not objectify the other; we do not judge them on the basis of their usefulness but on their inherent value as a fellow human being. It is an ‘I’ that also becomes a ‘we’, so relationality that is also community, but without losing the realities of the individuals involved: there can’t be a we without a me.

We are talking about respect for the other, recognition of their place, or rights, or role. In the Constitutional Convention which contributed so much to the creation of the Scottish Parliament, this respectful relationality was apparent in the multiple voices and perspectives offered and given weight (although, of course, not all voices – there was, then as now, not enough love between Labour and SNP, and the SNP chose not to participate).

Self-transcending – love draws me out of myself. I am less self-centred, less tribal. I recognise that there is something greater than me (whether God, the national interest, and/or the future of the planet) and also something more than me (the needs and interests of these other human beings around the table). I am willing to make sacrifices, concessions. In the Constitutional Convention, we saw this in the Labour Party’s decision to accept proportional representation for Holyrood, an historic decision that all but guaranteed an end to their electoral dominance.

Transformational – love is life-giving, creative, dynamic. It produces outcomes that open up new horizons or which overcome obstacles or blocks. Looking at some of the material produced by the Constitutional Convention, I am struck by the way the processes that were adopted for decision and deliberation – the consensual, respectful, all-of-us-together approach and attitude – became so important to the participants understanding of what it was they wished to achieve with devolution. They wanted the same sort of politics they had experienced in the Convention to be part of the way the new parliament worked and they state this explicitly. They had experienced something significant and life giving, even if sometimes messy or imperfect, and they wanted to share it, to see it grow. That, for me, is exactly the fruitfulness that suggests the presence of love.

This post is an edited version of a talk I gave recently at the University of Edinburgh Business School

In addition, my aim is to also contribute to changing the way we do political discourse in Scotland, drawing on twenty years of experience as a political practitioner and seeking to add new insights from a field, theology, that has much to contribute (even if many in the world of politics would reject or challenge that claim).

Since first discovering the writings of Lonergan five years ago, I have been struck by their power and ability to speak directly to real-world situations. In particular, Lonergan's grounding of objective truth in authentic subjectivity, and his work on the elements that lead to societal progress or decline, will provide the theoretical framework for the research. I am interested in exploring whether we are doing our politics in a way that encourages progress or decline and, if decline, would then seek to offer theoretical and practical answers to a second question, what opportunities are there, then, to do things better?

At the heart of Lonergan's thinking is the idea that new questions lead to new insights which, in turn, can bring us to a higher viewpoint. A political process that sees difference necessarily as division, with a them/us, either/or mindset that has the negation of the other (winner takes all) as the primary goal, is less likely to generate the necessary questions and insights to open up new and broader horizons. The politics of either/or is, on this argument, more likely to be the politics of decline. It is also a politics that runs counter to the supposed founding principles of the Scottish Parliament - a parliament that was meant to break from the binary, confrontational approach of Westminster. Doing difference differently was meant to be part of the Scottish Parliament's DNA.

Part of this research will be an attempt to gather together the experience of former colleagues and opponents who have worked in government, parliament and politics during the different stages of devolution - I hope they will be willing to speak to me and, perhaps also, agree to our conversations being recorded and published. From the data collected from these interviews, and using Lonergan as the theoretical frame, I will seek to draw conclusions about how much devolution has delivered on “the promise of a new political culture”, and what might change if Scotland developed a political discourse where we are striving to always be more attentive, intelligent, reasonable and responsible and, if I can begin to bring in the theology, are also conscious that even those we disagree with are our neighbours, and worthy of compassion, respect and, dare I say it, also love.

It is very much practical theology, with a core aim of the research being to positively influence political practitioners and, in doing so, hopefully also change the way they politically engage - in particular with an eye to the ongoing independence debate. I hope it can be a small contribution towards supporting the sort of political culture that devolution promised.