What’s the point of voting in the Holyrood election?

There’s an election going on in Scotland. I know because my recycling bin is full of leaflets, my Twitter timeline peppered with advertisements for online hustings and there are ballot papers on my kitchen table offering me a choice of five constituency candidates and nineteen options on the regional list. 

But I’m not feeling gripped. No one believes the government will change. Leaving aside speculation about possible developments after May in the great constitutional drama, the atmosphere is mainly that of a minor interruption to official business.

It has been obvious for a while that there is an understanding across politics that this election will not interfere much with the current government’s activities. When it set up a working group on misogynistic harassment at the turn of the year, to report within 12 months, no one seemed bothered that this timetable spanned an election. Pushing through legislation on hate crime which controversially left out women, the Justice Secretary committed the government to acting swiftly on whatever the group recommended, without adding ‘if we are re-elected’.