By Sam Macrory - 6th June 2011
Catapulted to the Scotland Office shortly after the establishment of the coalition, and now facing an emboldened SNP government at Holyrood, Michael Moore’s career has taken a turn he could not have envisaged just over a year ago.
Michael Moore, Secretary of State for Scotland, is working from his office on the ministerial corridor. Despite its grand name, the rooms here are half the size of some of Parliament’s more modern offerings, and a far cry from the Scotland Office’s lavish quarters at nearby Dover House. And with no grand views, portraits, or special advisers in sight, it’s easy to forget that Moore is no longer a mere opposition MP. “As Liberal Democrats you come to politics with a different set of expectations, and they’re not about the automatic career that takes you into government,” he says, musing over the first year of the coalition. “It’s been a revelation for all of us.”
Moore, who ranks as the least recognisable of the five Lib Dems in the cabinet, despite a six-foot-plus frame which leaves him standing above most crowds, joined the government after David Laws was forced to resign over an expenses scandal. “I was at my daughter’s first birthday party, with a houseful of infants and a lot of screaming, when the phone went,” he says, recalling the moment Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg asked him to join the cabinet. “I had been aware of what had been happening, and Nick didn’t make a habit of ringing on a Saturday afternoon. He got to the point very quickly, and of course I accepted.”
The role, which Moore admits has “disrupted my whole life – my wife would be very upset if I said it hadn’t”, is one which his party had not long ago called to be abolished. “We were guilty of arguing whether the Scotland Office still has a role,” he admits. “I now know it certainly does.” He smiles at the suggestion that successful Scotland secretaries need do no more than keep out of trouble. “Well, I would still be judged by that criteria, but it’s more in the public eye than it once was. In the immediate aftermath [of devolution], when you had the same party in power, it was probably a relatively straightforward process. That has evolved.”
Dramatically so. Following May’s elections the SNP now governs Scotland with a majority, posing a potential stumbling block to Moore’s task of ensuring smooth progress for the Scotland Bill. His initial “neat” target for completion is still St Andrew’s Day this year, but the SNP, while welcoming the extra taxation powers for Scotland proposed in the bill, also wants corporation tax devolved. “I’m determined to listen and engage,” Moore states, not appearing overly-fazed by the SNP’s increased clout. “There will be some areas where I am confident that we will be able to show there is progress, but we looked at corporation tax carefully and it wasn’t something we were persuaded about. That hasn’t changed.”
He also sounds relaxed by the awkward issue of a referendum on Scottish independence, as promised in the SNP’s manifesto. “Our priorities, in Scotland and the UK as a whole, have to be about the economy, but if the first minister wants to make a referendum on independence his priority then that’s his judgment. Any politician who takes the voters for granted will find themselves in trouble, but I’m confident that the majority of Scots want toremain part of the UK.”
Moore was still at school when his parents – his father was a Presbyterian minister and his mother a physiotherapist – moved from Northern Ireland to Scotland, and though not passionately political, their views clearly seeped through. “They were two of not very many people in industrial Lanarkshire who voted Liberal,” Moore recalls. “When we moved to the Borders David Steel [then Liberal leader] was our MP, and by that stage I was very interested in politics.”
At school he formed a political club with David Clark, later to become special adviser to the late Robin Cook. “We got Steel and Alec Douglas-Home to come along, but I’m ashamed to say that they spoke to less than a dozen of us,” Moore admits. Unperturbed, by the 1983 general election he was campaigning for Archy Kirkwood, the local MP, and went on to study politics at Edinburgh.
He then took Kirkwood’s advice to do a “real job” before politics, and qualified as a chartered accountant – “people can decide whether accountancy is a real job”. A chance meeting with Kirkwood at Edinburgh airport a decade later saw his career alter course again.“He told me ‘there’s a vacancy in the Borders’, as David Steel had announced he was stepping down, and that phrase is still as fresh today as when he said it. I told him not to be ridiculous, but he told me to think about it.”
After his election in 1997, Moore was handed the Scottish brief on his arrival at Westminster. Thrown into the debate on devolution, he was soon “grounded in the Scottish political scene” and, after 9/11, he moved to inter-national affairs to support the party’s spokesman, Menzies Campbell.
Later appointed to the foreign affairs portfolio by Campbell when he became leader, Moore was then switched to international development by Nick Clegg – a move which looked like demotion. “I understood that, and I understood the realities,” Moore candidly replies. “I had been very close to Ming, but there were various people in the party who had played a pretty critical part in Nick’s election campaign, and who all had to be found senior posts. I didn’t need to have any of that explained to me.”
Moore says he asked to become the party’s international development spokesman. “I did defence, foreign affairs, and then international development, and I got most satisfaction from that one,” he insists. “I didn’t realise how wonderfully challenging it would be.”
After the 2010 election, when the Lib Dems went into coalition government with the Conservatives, the challenge was of a different nature.“I had spent my entire political life campaigning against the Conservatives, and my seat was their number one target in Scotland too,” says Moore, of the early “disorientating” days of the coalition. Before Laws resigned, Moore watched on from a distance, having “the detachment to say that I needed to think this thing through from my own first principles”. “I saw my colleagues [in government] go through some of those pain barriers.” And while he says it was “entirely right that the prime minister and the deputy prime minister got that business relationship right”, he is clear that it is time to change course.
“As we move into different policy challenges, both parties will have a more obvious say in where we come from and where we get to, and for us that’s very important,” Moore argues. “We must be absolutely clear that we are contributing to the coalition. If we have underplayed the state of the economy, then we need to make that clear, and if we have not been good at setting out where we want to get to, then that is the next challenge. We want to get re-established and have a strong voice and vision for the electors in four years’ time.”
And surely, given the dreadful election results, the coalition’s survival is vital for his party’s electoral chances? “It’s not the way we are thinking,” Moore interrupts. “Both parties made a commitment that it would go the full five years, because you need that trust to make sacrifices. If you are thinking tactically, the dynamic will be completely different. We are resilient as a party, and clear about the challenges that brought us into office.”
As for Michael Moore, the man who had not expected to be in office at all, the next four years look set to offer more challenges than most of the recent occupants of Dover House.
MOORE ON… the Scottish election
“There’s no escaping the fact that it was an awful night for us. We need to take stock and reflect on what we have been told by the electorate.”
MOORE on…the political spectrum
“I can say I am absolutely committed to social justice and that’s centre-left, and that I agree with our economic plans and that’s pigeon-holed as centreright. So how helpful is that? From a Scottish context it’s pretty irrelevant.”
MOORE ON… whether better politicians come to Westminster than Holyrood
“This is a lazy narrative, and I don’t think it’s true. Where you seek election surely depends on what your interests are, and if you are a Scottish politician, you have the luxury of thinking what areas of politics most interest you. For me, the economy is fundamentally interesting, and that has always made Westminster the place to have those debates.”
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