I’ve written a column for Scotland on Sunday today looking at the SNP’s transformation into a proper national party:
[T]wo SNP approaches have helped the party attain its present supremacy. They can be labelled the Hampden and Murrayfield strategies. They are different but complementary, designed to appeal to different branches of the electorate.
The Hampden strategy appeals to working-class and lower-to-middle-class voters. It is populist, Saltire-wrapped and keenly, proudly Scottish. The Murrayfield tranche of the electorate is older, wealthier and more likely to consider itself Scottish and British. Though outnumbered by the Hampden vote, its influence – especially in business and the media – is disproportionately powerful. The Hampden voter, to put it crudely, reads tabloids and is, comparatively speaking, more likely to work in the public sector; the Murrayfield voter reads broadsheets and works in the private sector.
[…] The manufactured rumpus over last week’s Economist cover illustration was designed to stir up the Hampden vote. How dare these Englishmen insult Scotland! Who do they think they are? By contrast, the SNP’s willingness to reconsider its defence policy and at least countenance the possibility of an independent Scotland joining Nato should be seen as an attempt to appeal to a Murrayfield constituency troubled by the fine detail of life in post-independent Scotland.
Similarly, the First Minister’s arguments change according to his audience. When he suggests the SNP is the guardian of “progressive” values he is talking to a fiercely anti-Tory Hampden audience. When he stresses the importance of low rates of corporation tax and fostering an enterprise-friendly culture he addresses concerns more likely, relatively speaking, to be held at Murrayfield.
Of course, there are times when satisfying these different constituencies requires the party to contradict itself (higher spending and lower taxes, for instance) but so far Mr Salmond has been able to cite Whitman: “Very well then, I contradict myself; I am large – I contain multitudes” and get away with it.
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