The View from the North

Tuesday, 9th June 2009

Away from the BNP and the Woes of Brown (which sounds like an Aberfeldy tea-room or something) the other notable european result came in Scotland where the SNP's handsome victory (29-21 over Labour) confirmed that Labour can no longer automatically consider itself the natural governing party in Scotland. Given that the 2007 Holyrood election was essentially a tie (the SNP winning on away goals), this was the first time the SNP had ever routed Labour in a national election.

Sure, Labour's difficulties at Westminster played a large part in this, but only a part. Their inability to counter Alex Salmond's merry band at Holyrood was also a factor. This, even though the nationalists, having enjoyed their first 12 months in power, endured a more difficult second year in office. Despite Salmond's local difficulties, Labour has struggled to lay a glove on him.

Theoretically, then, the nationalists are ready to make major gains at Westminster next year. I'm not so sure: in the first place, one ought not to under-estimate the power of ancestral voices. That is, faced with the prospect of a conservative government, some Labour voters will return to the fold.

Secondly, my suspicion is that a higher percentage of the nationalists' core vote can be relied upon to turn out at european and Holyrood elections than is the case for any of the other parties. That's one reason for their victory last week. I think.

Thirdly, in 2005 the SNP only won 17% of the vote at the last Westminster elections, leading one to suspect that the electorate had a reasonably sophisticated understanding of the differences between UK and Scottish elections. From that perspective, talk of the Nationalists winning more than 20 seats seems pretty wild to me. Labour's vote in scotland might have to plummet to something like 25% of the Scottish vote for that to happen. Could this happen? Certainly. But is it probable? Not quite.

Still, the SNP are understandably cock-a-hoop and, again unsurprisingly, SNP bloggers are urging the party on to 2010 and their plans for an independence referendum. Here, however, it seems that the nats should be careful what they wish for. SNP Tactical Voting may argue that unecideds are more likely to vote for independence, but it seems much more likely that they will in fact break the other way. If you're not sold on independence when you enter the voting booth what's going to persuade you to take an enormous constitutional gamble? Not much, I hazard and I think that there are many people who might even consider themselves sympathetic to indepndence who would, nevertheless, vote for the Union when push came to shove.

And the most recent System 3 poll suggests this too: support for independence is at 36%, those against the idea at 39% while 25% have yet to make up their mind. Or are incapable of doing so. And this after two years of an SNP government that was supposed to lay the foundations for the Road to Independence?

That's not to say that it can't or won't happen. But if I were a nationalist strategist I'd be very wary of a referendum next year and, in fact, not at all sure that I'd want to have that fight right now.

Nonetheless, there's no denying that the SNP ain't going anywhere soon - even if there's also little reason to suppose that a vote for the SNP is automatically or always a vote for independence. Labour and the SNP will each settle around the 30% mark but with Labour's support more concentrated in the urban west, it's still going to be difficult - though not impossible - for the Nats to defeat Labour at Westminster.

That shouldn't worry them too much and, indeed, the risk is that SNP giddyness and extravagant predictions of future glory sts them up for a fall next year when they fail to meet, let alone surpass, the expectations they have set for themselves.

Filed under: Elections (281 more articles) , Labour (2131 more articles) , Scotland (497 more articles) , SNP (217 more articles)

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Panenka's Chip

June 9th, 2009 3:16pm Report this comment

I don't agree at all but appreciate where you are coming from.

If anything, I'd say that Jeff at SNP Tactical Voting has it right - the majority of those 'undecideds' are waiting to be convinced. I believe that there are hundreds of thousands of Scots are not completely put off by independence but aren't quite ready to commit to it 100%. Many of them have already hedged their bets by voting SNP at council, European and Scottish elections knowing full well that they can always 'retract' that vote when/(if?) it comes to a referendum. If the SNP continues to do well, perhaps they will be convinced. I also wouldn't delude myself into thinking that the SNP haven't benefited from what's happening down south and this is all down to the sterling performance of the SNP Scottish Government, as our First Minister seems to. The SNP govt has flaws in many areas but have demonstrated competence across many areas of policy and presentation, whereas the main opposition (Lab) have looked weak, split and pretty incompetent even by the standards of Opposition politics. The disillusionment of Westminster politics doesn't do any harm too. Holyrood may be derided by some for its 'small-time' expenses/scandal nonsense but they haven't (yet) had anything on the scale of the Telegraph expenses scandal. Would be good to see some polling on the levels of 'trust' between the Edinburgh and London parliaments, although you can most likely guess the outcome

Would like to see more consistent polling on all of these issues though - Scottish polls aren't quite as accurate due to poor sample sizes and inconsistent set-ups.

Interesting times though...

Craig Strachan

June 9th, 2009 6:41pm Report this comment

Yes, Scotland is where Quebec was circa 1978, two years after the election of Levesque and the first PQ goverenment.

Which is to say, a couple of decades (and failed referendums) away from the eclipse of the idea of independence!

Richard T

June 10th, 2009 9:23am Report this comment

I've commented elsewhere on this but if you add up the votes in Scotland for (put crudely) pro and anti Europe parties, the former won heavily. If you then look at at a probable scenario of the Conservatives winning the UK general election with a handful elected in Scotland plus a large number of SNP MPs and start down a path of cool perhaps poisonous relations with the EU, which the majority of Conservatives would not oppose. Followed through you would get a serious division between London and Edinburgh which the SNP government would certainly wish to aggravate for all it's worth. This would start to pull the union apart not least because Alex Salmond could easily use the anti Brussels rhetoric against London government.

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