Johann Lamont on 20 years of devolution: 'Labour went from 56 MSPs to 23'

A teacher with young children of her own, the former Scottish Labour leader hadn't expected to become a politician, but felt a strong sense of being part of something "really important".

She still recalls the shock, then, when that atmosphere of heady opportunity gave way "almost immediately" to negative headlines and relentless scrutiny.

“It felt both very exciting, very challenging, that sense of uncertainty in any new job, but then combined with almost a backlash," she says. "We were naive and didn’t really see it coming.”

Sitting in her office in Holyrood – the £414 million complex that inspired so many of those early press stories – Ms Lamont reflects on the last two decades of devolution.

The Glasgow MSP led Scottish Labour from 2011 to 2014, steering it through one of the most dramatic periods in recent political history.

Standing down shortly after the independence referendum, she famously hit out at its London leadership for treating the Scottish party like a "branch office".

Now she says she won't run for Holyrood again when the next elections arrive in 2021, though she is a Glasgow South candidate for Westminster.

She is brutally honest when it comes to Scottish Labour's current fortunes in Holyrood.

“There were 56 of us [in the beginning] – there’s now 23," she says. "That tells its own story.

"I’ve personally moved from the centre of the chamber to one side, and I’m now up the back on the backbenches of the third party.

"So if you wanted a graphic description of what’s happened to the Labour Party, and the challenges we face, there’s a sense of that."

She's also forthright when it comes to the shortcomings of the parliament itself. It lacks "big thinking", she says, and has lost the untidy energy that characterised its early days.

But it's not just Holyrood that has lost its ambition – its the institutions and bodies around it.

A third sector that was previously bursting with ideas and determination now fears to speak out in case its funding is stripped away by vengeful ministers.

“I personally think the third sector, in particular, has been very conditioned in a way that they weren’t then," Ms Lamont says.

“I think there’s a lot of people, who are all really good people – their ambition is less.

“Because they don’t want to fall out, so actually they ask for what they think they’ll get.

“I think what's happening now [is] worthy of an investigation by somebody, somewhere, if people are willing to speak about it.

“Third sector organisations are reminded where their funding comes from, and so they don’t really push as hard as they might have done in the past.

“And actually also, people have accepted that Government backbenchers are not going to rebel. So they don’t even put them under pressure.”

She adds: “Obviously the SNP are in power. It may have happened anyway.”

The MSP says there is an attitude among charities and other organisations of "if I go out on a limb here, and say something really difficult, there will be consequences in terms of my funding. So I will not be able to do that again."

In the early years of Holyrood, there was always a chance the biggest party would lose out at the next election. But with the dominance of the SNP, "you have to accommodate yourself with that reality if you rely on the funding and things like that".

The quality of political debate has also been hit. Most debates now, Ms Lamont says, are simply a proxy for something else - namely, the ongoing constitutional battle over independence.

Meanwhile, there is an "unhealthy" dynamic that sees ministers rarely fielding questions from their own side, while the co-operative spirit Holyrood was meant to foster hasn't quite survived contact with reality.

“I always thought there was a slight naivety about this idea that if you put people in a circle and say it’s a more [representative] parliament, they're somehow more likely to agree with each other," Ms Lamont says.

"I don’t think so. I think it’s actually in some ways more tribal. But it’s not tribal around policy — it’s tribal around what it’s a proxy for.”

She says the balance between the executive and parliament has changed over the years, with almost half of the current SNP group holding ministerial posts.

The former Scottish Labour leader advocates a more "mature", cross-party approach. This could see Green MSPs, who helped vote through the minority SNP Government's Budget earlier this year, drafted in as ministers.

“If they stuck somebody like Andy Wightman in to do land reform, into their Cabinet, that would be quite a good trade-off against other things that the Greens might not be able to do," she says.

But amid the disappointments, there have been plenty of good times.

Ms Lamont looks back fondly on those early days, when anything seemed possible and friendships were forged "in that sense of being under siege".

“I mean, it was really good fun," she says. "It was hilarious. I look back with a lot of sadness.

“If you’re anywhere for 20 years, there’s things that have happened in your own life.

“I lost my mother in 2001. Very, very good friends in here who died, across parties.”

Sparring with Alex Salmond was also a highlight: "I wouldn’t put it as my best memory, but I did enjoy locking horns with Alex Salmond, I must say. An argument with an arrogant man, what’s not to like?”

Elsewhere, she speaks movingly of the death of Donald Dewar, the man credited with delivering devolution and Scotland's inaugural first minister.

She recalls the "distraught" look on Labour MSP Tom McCabe's face when the news broke in October 2000, and the "big Donald Dewar-sized space, empty, in the room".

"In a way his greatest legacy was that he established the parliament in such a form that it survived," she says.

"But he never really got to shape it at all, and you wonder what that would have looked like."

She thinks Holyrood often needs to "lighten up", adding: “I think we all could be doing with being mocked a wee bit more.”

It also needs to grow up as an institution, and leave the endless constitutional paralysis behind.

"We’re only 20 years old, so the analogy I would draw is with my own kids," she says.

“My kids were very wee, they’re now in early adulthood. They’ve kind of formed their character, they’ve got good values, they’re pushing out there and beginning to understand what they want out of life.

“I would think the Scottish Parliament needs to get to that point, and the sooner the better.

"Because there’s so many really good things that it has done, and so many good things it can do, and so much resource that can be applied in a different way.”