The SNP’s Brexit strategy is bound to backfire – again

The SNP has announced that if the next general election results in a hung parliament it will, as power brokers, ‘undo Brexit as far as possible’. Alyn Smyth, the SNP’s EU accession spokesperson, said his party would demand the UK has a close relationship with Brussels in any negotiations with a minority Labour government.

There might be a few titters at this and jokes about signing cheques that can’t be cashed from a scandal-beset party whose relevance and even long-term viability is in serious doubt. But the SNP clearly think this is a winning strategy that can arrest their decline and boost their chances. Whether it truly is, and whether their avowed antipathy to Brexit is all that it is purported to be, is questionable.

Although the SNP hate to be reminded of this, there is evidence that a significant chunk of SNP supporters actually voted for Brexit. A National Centre for Social research poll found that 36 per cent of SNP supporters backed leave in 2016. Leave-supporting SNP voters remain largely unacknowledged: no elected SNP official has ever seriously departed from the official ‘Brexit is a disaster for Scotland’ script. But since the divide between the voiceless SNP Brexiteers and the party machine didn’t seem to lead to any loss of support – ‘what are they going to do, vote Tory?’ – the fiction that the SNP to a man, woman and non-binary individual were zealously committed to the EU, and always had been, was easily maintained.

Yet if you dig into the not-so-distant past you will find that a third of SNP supporters backing Brexit is not really that surprising; these were probably simply older voters steeped in the traditions of their party. The SNP was firmly against the UK remaining in the European Community (EC) in 1975, with then leader Billy Wolfe claiming membership of the Common Market would mean a ‘political dark age of remote control and undemocratic government’. Donald Stewart, who led the party’s parliamentary group, said the EC ‘represents everything our party has fought against: centralisation, undemocratic procedures, power politics, and a fetish for abolishing cultural differences’.

These objections made perfect sense then and still do. Why would supporters of Scottish independence wish to be ruled by Brussels? How would being a satrapy of the EU represent independence? EU membership could mean less autonomy even than being the dominant party in a powerful devolved parliament with control of taxes, education, health and transport. So why the SNP’s reinvention as arch Europhiles? 

The ‘independence in Europe’ position was formulated in the late 1980s when the party was still struggling for relevancy; major shifts in policy and the jettisoning of established principles seemed worth it for the greater good. As the Scottish journalist David Torrance put it, this was more of a ‘slogan than a policy’. But it served to reassure those who were attracted by independence yet put off by the immediate consequences of an abrupt departure from the UK. Independence would not be a leap into the dark, but into the capacious and welcoming bosom of the EU.   

Brexit entrenched this position. The hated word, especially when prefaced with the qualifiers ‘hard’ and ‘Tory’, became a rallying cry to the easily outraged faithful who see offence and anti-Scottish plots everywhere. ‘Scotland has been dragged out of Europe against its will’ was an update on the earlier, and reasonably effective, ‘they’re stealing Scotland’s oil’. It proved to be a potent attack line, especially for the new impressionable young voters that flooded into the party following the loss of the 2014 referendum and had only known a UK within the EU.

But if it didn’t work in 2016, it won’t work now. The Brexit bounce that the SNP clearly expected to arrive in the wake of the EU referendum result never quite arrived. Support for independence remained steady but failed to take off. Repeated demands for a second independence referendum were easily rebuffed.

Perhaps the argument then, as now, was just too illogical to be sustained. Questions over Scotland’s eligibility, the likely hefty financial contribution even if Scotland were accepted, the obligation to join the euro, and the inevitable hard border with England went unanswered.

When SNP leaders and supporters attempted to justify their party’s position they tied themselves in knots. In 2016, the SNP’s Angus Robertson said that leaving the EU would meaning turning our backs on our ‘neighbours’, seemingly oblivious to the fact that his party was dedicated to doing just that – and not just the neighbours, but the next-door neighbours.

Independence supporter, and friend of Alex Salmond, actor Brian Cox rather gave the game away on a famous Question Time appearance back in 2018. Cox was challenged on how, just after he had lambasted the UK for pulling out of the EU at a time when countries needed to ‘stay together’, he squared that with wanting to break up the UK. Under some pressure, the great thesp struggled: ‘We didn’t want to leave Europe’ he spluttered. ‘Leaving England is a different thing…’. Yes, that ‘different thing’ has a name, Brian.

The SNP’s promise to unravel Brexit should they be power brokers come the next election should be called out for what it is: a desperate thrust from a party in trouble.