Every election is historic in its own way, and of course the top line this 2024 general election is Labour’s humongous parliamentary majority. Though never can a landslide have been delivered with so little voter enthusiasm. But something equally significant happened in the wee small hours of the morning. For, an existential threat that has arguably hung over the United Kingdom for nigh on twenty years simply evaporated. The all-powerful Scottish National Party collapsed in ruins, losing all but nine of its forty-eight Scottish MPs. This is worse than even the most pessimistic poll forecasts.
The Scottish National Party, it seemed, could not lose
Yet, less than a decade ago the Scottish National Party won all but three of Scotland’s then 59 Westminster seats in what was called the tsunami election of 2015. Scots continued to vote for the party of independence in record numbers. In 2019, Labour returned only one Scottish MP, the shadow Scottish secretary, Ian Murray, in Edinburgh South. Under Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP came to dominate Scottish politics at every level, not just in Westminster. It still has more seats in the Holyrood parliament than all the unionist parties combined. In 2022, it even assumed leadership of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.
The Scottish National Party, it seemed, could not lose. Indeed, so confident had the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon become of her party’s vote-winning prowess, she announced, in November 2022, that her target in the next general election, in 2024, would be to win more than fifty per cent of the vote in Scotland. This she declared would be the ‘de facto referendum’ on independence, undoing the No vote in the 2014 independence referendum. She said that ‘changed circumstances’ had invalidated that constitutional ballot.
A number of metropolitan commentators agreed. Politicians in Westminster, like the former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, swung behind the demand for 'Indyref2' as it was called. Civil servants like Philip Rycroft, former head of the Whitehall Brexit Unit, said that it was untenable for the UK to continue to ignore the huge victories of the independence party.
But if this was any kind of de facto referendum, the SNP has clearly lost it by a mile. John Swinney, the leader of the SNP, has taken the party to its worse defeat since, well, since he was last leader of the SNP twenty years ago. Labour has been restored to the dominance it enjoyed in Scottish politics until Alex Salmond’s coup in 2007. As Professor John Curtice pointed out, UK Labour only held its own in terms of share of the vote, but in Scotland its vote doubled.
Of course, the SNP insist that this is a temporary electoral setback on the long march to national liberation. They were 'squeezed,' said the Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, by the Labour landslide and the determination of voters to see the back of the Tories. Swinney, admitting that it was a 'very very difficult and damaging result' blamed 'party disunity and looking inward rather than outward' – whatever that means.
It seems difficult to believe that Swinney, the leader brought back from retirement eight weeks ago, can continue as leader of the SNP after a defeat of this magnitude. He was expected to lead the party into the Scottish parliament elections of 2026, but after this result, he should surely be considering his position. The SNP cannot afford to coast to another massive defeat in two years’ time. It is theoretically possible that the nationalists could bounce back in time for the Holyrood elections, but it seems improbable under his leadership.
This means a contest between his deputy, the socially conservative, Highland MSP, Kate Forbes, and the Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, who managed to survive last night’s cull. Since the First Minister of Scotland must be an MSP in the Scottish Parliament that clearly places Forbes in poll position – at least as a temporary replacement should Swinney return to retirement. The battle for the soul of the party begins today.
This defeat is more than just the SNP’s worst ever result in terms of seats and votes lost. It draws a line under a generation of independence activism. The Yes movement, which galvanised Scottish politics in the 2010s, is now divided and demoralised. The nationalist party is leaderless and discredited. It is even rejected by many of the near 50 per cent of Scots who still say they support the principle of Scottish independence. That has ceased, however, to be an expression of determination to secede and has simply become what patriotic Scots tell opinion pollsters. Of course they support their country and want it to have control of its affairs. But actually leaving the UK? That’s a very different matter.
In 2014, the independence prospectus offered a form of independence-without-tears. The Independence White Paper published in 2013, envisaged a 'new United Kingdom' united under the Crown. Scotland and England, everyone assumed, would remain within the European Union and the single market, which mean there need be no regulatory or customs border between Scotland and England. The countries would remain umbilically linked by retaining a common currency overseen by the Bank of England. Some critics pointed out that this wasn’t really independence at all, but a kind of federalism. And they were right.
However, that prospectus is no longer applicable. Scotland, in order to rejoin the EU, would have to create a hard border with her biggest trading partner, England. Scotland would have to go through the hugely difficult task of establishing its own independent currency, with all the risks of capital flight that entails. Pensions would likely be devalued. In the longer term, Scotland could clearly become a successful small country in Europe. But it would take five to ten years, as even Alex Salmond admits, and there would be economic dislocation along the way.
It just isn’t going to happen. You cannot step in the same river twice. The unique set of circumstances that led to the rise of Scottish nationalism in the 21st century are played out. It is curiously fitting that John Swinney was SNP leader at the dawn of Scotland’s independence dream, and also now at its dismal sunset.
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