Kevin Pringle, Alex Salmond’s old spin doctor, is back. Pringle was a key strategic adviser on the build up to the 2014 independence referendum and is ultimately one of the handful of people responsible for successfully – from a nationalist standpoint – moving Scottish politics off the left-right spectrum and onto one rooted in identity and sovereignty. His appointment as Humza Yousaf’s ‘official spokesperson and strategic political adviser’, which brings Pringle back into the fold after a period away from politics, has been hailed as a smart move that could turn things around for the flailing new first minister.
Will Pringle’s strategic canniness halt the SNP’s decline in the polls? I wouldn’t bet on it. Although he has been working in the private sector for last several years, Pringle has been a regular commentator on Scottish politics. His columns, tweets and podcast appearances give some insight into the type of strategic advice he might give. It is clear, for instance, that Pringle takes a sceptical view of the SNP’s cooperation agreement with the Greens. In a column published shortly after Yousaf was confirmed as the new first minister, Pringle said that even though he is ‘on balance’ supportive of the tie-up, he does not think it should be ‘regarded as an absolute’.
He argued the SNP is overvaluing having an inbuilt majority at Holyrood because of a misplaced feeling of insecurity about minority administration, and insisted the Bute House Agreement, the formal compact that brought the Greens into government, ‘wasn’t carved on tablets of stone’.
On gender reform and the constitutional arguments around the UK government blocking Holyrood’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, Pringle is definitely at odds with the current SNP-Green position. Pringle wants to see ‘constructive engagement’ with the UK government on reforming the legislation rather than a court battle. He sees political upside for a nationalist government being ‘upfront about the limitations of devolution, instead of hoping that judges will strike these constraints down’.
And in words that will surely enrage the Scottish Greens, Pringle has stated he does not ‘hold with the blanket assertion that transwomen are women, which reflects ideology rather than biology’.
Might we now see the Bute House Agreement torn up and the Greens relegated to the backbenches? Probably not immediately. But at some point, almost certainly.
Pringle’s challenge goes far beyond simply dealing with the Greens. The fundamentals for the SNP today, and the broader nationalist movement, are completely different to when Pringle was advising Salmond. Then the nationalist movement was in the ascendant. Ground was there to be taken rather than defended. Pringle’s priority going into the next Westminster election will be minimising losses.
And then there’s the problem of the material Pringle has to work with. Yousaf’s term in office so far has been gaffe-prone and amateurish. Pringle might be able to neutralise some of that, but he can’t give Yousaf the star quality or the heavyweight standing that Sturgeon and Salmond had.
The other fundamental issue is the case for independence, and the strategy for achieving it. Speaking on a podcast in May last year, Pringle, who at that point said he believes there will be a referendum during this Holyrood parliamentary term, accepted that the substantive case for separation has not been remade since 2014, with people’s attention instead being focused on the process of a vote. He said a new white paper on independence would change that dynamic.
The Scottish Government subsequently published the first of a series of new white papers on ‘Scexit’ in October. The paper was underwhelming to say the least. It completely ignored the budget constraints that a breakaway Scotland would face, while glossing over the potentially catastrophic consequences of the SNP’s currency policy. More importantly, it failed to grab the public’s attention. Pitching fantasy to people might have worked in the days when Pringle was advising Salmond, but it doesn’t work today.
This points to the main reason why Pringle will likely fail to halt the SNP’s declining fortunes and the nationalist movement’s declining resonance. There is a feeling in Scotland that populism has run its course, at least for now. Scottish politics is starting to drift back onto the left-right spectrum. That is not good news for the SNP.
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