At the heart of my research project is the idea that the more consensual politics that was promised with the creation of our new devolved parliament (now almost a quarter of a century ago) can be understood as a politics of love.
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