The Baltic News: 3
The SNP is now an "either-or" party; the road ahead for Scottish Remainers; Strikes!
From ‘Both-And’ to ‘Either-Or’
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision this week, Nicola Sturgeon has staked a massive bet that she can turn the General Election in Scotland into a single-issue “campaign for democracy”. It is incredibly ambitious but there is some method in the madness.
The Sturgeon-Murrell calculation appears to be that in a first-past-the-post election mobilising existing independence supporters will be enough to ensure victories in most Scottish constituencies. My strong - albeit uninformed - hunch is that the new plan is heavily influenced by the SNP’s experience in the 2017 election. Back then, Scotland’s power couple watched on helplessly as a surge in support for the Scots Tories and the sudden rise of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party during the short campaign effectively wrote the SNP out of the story. The SNP ended up losing 21 seats, but it could have been a lot worse. That experience burnt them. At least now Mrs Sturgeon has a campaign which (I am guessing she hopes) will ensure the SNP doesn’t get ignored as the country turns to the bigger Sunak-Starmer contest. In other words - as some smarter pro-independence people have already realised - this isn’t a plan to win independence, the “defacto referendum” idea is just a ruse to get pro-indy folk to come out.
The big gamble for the SNP is that this single-issue campaign is unlikely to win over middle Scotland. As Our Scottish Future polling has revealed, the question of independence or a referendum was not at the forefront of peoples’ minds at the Scottish election last year. Most people voted for the SNP because they wanted Mrs Sturgeon to carry on as leader in the wake of the pandemic. Looking ahead to the election, even in Scotland it’s hard to see how essentially theoretical questions around the democratic route to a referendum will matter more to swing voters in Scotland than real world issues, such as the biggest cost of living crisis since the war.
That’s not to say the democratic argument in Scotland isn’t of interest (and we set out some ideas on how to deal with it here). It’s just to make the point that it’s not the only thing that matters.
I’d put the dilemma for the SNP now as follows: its success over the last decade and a half has been based on it being a “both-and” party. Yes, you voted for it if you wanted independence, obviously. But there were other reasons too: you voted for it at Holyrood elections if you wanted to get free tuition and free prescriptions, and you voted for it in General Elections if you wanted to “stop Brexit”, or to form nice-sounding progressive coalitions with nice-sounding people in England. It was both a party for independence and a party that, in a handily ambiguous and catch-all sense, would “stand up for Scotland”. This is how it built up all those massive majorities.
Mrs Sturgeon’s new strategy turns the SNP into an “either-or” party. For at the coming election, Mrs Sturgeon has now made it clear that the question of independence is now the only thing that matters. The question of who forms the next UK Government and how Britain tackles the cost of living, the war in Ukraine, and the future of the NHS, is secondary. Voters are effectively being told by the SNP that they have to decide which is more important: either independence or the rest. Many SNP voters would still rather answer “both”.
Mrs Sturgeon has now set her course and appears determined to drain Scotland’s reservoir of grievance in order to pull people to her single-issue banner. That’s entirely up to her. But for Unionist parties, there’s no need for them to follow her down that road. Better to remain “both-and” parties, as the SNP at its peak once was.
The plight of the Scottish Remainer
On the evening of the Supreme Court hearing, we organised a discussion event on Scotland and Brexit with former Labour MEP David Martin and the ex-leader of the Scottish LibDems Willie Rennie. We invited people – both pro and anti- independence – who feel conflicted about the matter. As polling guru Prof John Curtice has explained, the pro-indy vote in Scotland has largely aligned with the pro-Remain vote: 69% of ex-Remain votes back independence compared to just 22% of Leave voters. We wanted to provide a forum for Remain voting Scots to air their feelings on the matter.
Mr Martin spoke about his feeling after the 2016 Brexit vote. “I really did wonder whether, if we were given a binary choice of two unions, which would be the best union to be part of. I have moved back a bit but I do fully understand why people have been on this journey,” he said.
Mr Rennie also spoke about how bereft he felt after the result – not necessarily because Britain was leaving EU institutions, but because, he felt, the nation had decided to look inwards, not outwards.
In a discussion afterwards, many people in the audience expressed their frustration with Westminster and the Conservative government. One independence supporter who attended said he did not see how a divided UK polity could provide hope for people of a pro-EU bent. Counter to that, pro-Union people pointed out that the SNP’s position did not bear much weight.
Mr Rennie expressed optimism that the mood in the UK is changing. “The drivers for all the debate in UK politics is for trying to grasp onto some form of economic growth. It recognises that Brexit has done damage to the economy and the best way to repair that is to have a closer relationship with Europe,” he said.
As for the future, Mr Martin made the point that for those Scots who want to return to the EU, independence could end up being a longer route. And then there is the fact that EU membership would without a doubt lead to a customs border with England. This would be catastrophic for trade: a London School of Economics paper suggests it would reduce Scotland’s income per capita by between 6% and 9%: Brexit with bells on.
So while there is little or no prospect of the UK making a speedy return to the EU, both Mr Martin and Mr Rennie espoused what might be called a “gradualist” approach – finding common cause with Brexit supporters to pursue practical reforms to Britain’s deal to bring us closer to Europe. And Scotland can act too: for example, it was noted that while the Welsh Government has already set up its own version of Erasmus, the supposedly pro-EU Scottish Government has still failed to do so. Get on with it.
In other words, the pro-EU cause in Scotland (and the UK) might want to take some tactical advice from the old SNP: don’t be fundamentalist about this, just work quietly and persistently to change the popular mood.
Perhaps the best message to pro-EU Scots who would prefer to remain in the UK is simply to say - you probably wouldn’t start from here. But here we are. The road ahead is going to be long. But travel in hope.
Strikes!
Most parents, I am guessing, were not that focussed on the Supreme Court hearing this week. They were instead working out what do with their children on Thursday when teachers walked out on strike. After Christmas, a further 16 days of strike action is due. This is unprecedented and will be incredibly damaging at a time when many pupils will be sitting Prelims. Time, you’d hope for an energetic, passionate Education Secretary to bang heads together and get it sorted. The current incumbent Shirley Ann-Sommerville is not exactly lighting up the world of Scottish education: she has till Christmas to get this latest embarrassment to Scottish education sorted.
ENDS