Well, golly, Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the SNP and First Minister of Scotland, says this general election has nothing to do with the arguments for or against Scottish independence. In one sense, this is correct in as much as independence is not the question on the ballot. But in another, deeper, more genuine sense, everyone knows Sturgeon is pulling your leg here. The election is a proxy referendum on the question of whether there should, at some point in the next couple of years, be another independence referendum. Everyone in Scotland, including SNP supporters, knows this.
Even so, as the Tories have noted, this is a familiar SNP argument. In 2011, Alex Salmond observed that a vote for the SNP was not necessarily a vote for independence: ‘People will have all sorts of reasons for voting for you or against you but we wouldn’t decide a constitutional issue on the basis of an election victory.’ At the 2012 council elections, Nicola Sturgeon allowed that ‘the SNP believe in independence… but the election here is not about independence.’ During the 2015 general election, she was just as clear: ‘This election is not about independence or another referendum.’ And then – what do you know – last year’s Scottish parliament election wasn’t about independence either. According to Sturgeon, ‘If I, the SNP, those who believe in independence, can’t shift opinion… we won’t earn the right to ask the question again.’
Opinion, as you know, has largely and stubbornly remained unshifted. And yet, despite no votes for the SNP ever being about independence the issue of independence unaccountably remains uppermost in most Scottish voters’ minds and continues to dominate political discourse – and determine the manner in which that discourse is understood – in Scotland.
Fancy that.
Not for the first time, The Smiths got there first. As Morrissey sang:
Stop me, oh, stop me
Stop me if you that you’ve heard this one before
Stop me, oh, stop me
Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before
Nothing’s changed
I still love you, oh, I still love you
Only slightly, only slightly less than I used to, my love
Well, quite. That’s the story of this election too. Initial indications are that the SNP may lose a handful of seats. John Lamont, the Tory whip at Holyrood, has resigned his seat to concentrate on the battle for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Scotland’s finest constituency) where he lost by just 328 votes two years ago. If that seat doesn’t fall to the Tories, none will. Even so, it must be thought probable that most of the SNP’s 56 seats will remain SNP. And that must mean something vis a vis the national question.
At some point the accumulation of votes for the SNP becomes – must become – a means by which support for Scottish independence may be expressed or measured. Independence is the only policy upon which the SNP cannot change its mind. The definition of independence may change to suit prevailing fashions, but the commitment to whatever independence means at a given moment remains – must remain – constant.
Not that there is anything wrong with that. That’s what the SNP is for. It’s their core operating principle, their unique selling point, their reason for being. And, as always, it behoves us to note there is nothing illegitimate or disreputable about their ambition, nor any reason to suppose that, sensibly run, an independent Scotland could not be a moderately successful and decently contented addition to the planet’s list of independent states.
But, please, enough with the kidding. A vote for the SNP is a vote to increase the pressure on the UK government to accede to the Scottish government’s demands for another independence referendum. You may argue, perfectly reasonably, that the mandate for that demand was gained at last year’s Holyrood election and copper-bottomed by a vote in the Scottish parliament last month. Nevertheless, politics is fluid. It is a game – and it is often a kind of game – in which feelings and vague apprehensions matter too; those apprehensions – the sense of what is or is not ‘on’ – inform voters’ sensibilities too. A simple thought experiment is enough to demonstrate this.
Suppose, just for the sake of illustration, the SNP were to lose 30 seats in this election, leaving them holding 26 of Scotland’s constituencies. It would, in those circumstances, be impossible to maintain the line that this election had nothing to do with independence. It would, on the contrary, be understood as a rebuke to the nationalists. Scotland would have returned a Unionist majority and, by doing so, unavoidably weakened the case for a second referendum.
By contrast, and again for the sake of argument, if the SNP were to hold all the constituencies they won in 2015 and then take the three seats they failed to win, completing a clean sweep of Scotland, it would be extraordinarily difficult to maintain the argument that their mandate for, and right to, a second independence referendum did not exist and not, in fact, been strengthened.
That neither of these outcomes are likely (though the second is an order of magnitude more probable than they first, while remaining hugely unlikely) is not the point. The point is that apparently we have to explain these things to people who lack an elementary understanding of how politics works.
If we are to take them at their word, most elected members of the SNP fall into that camp. Which, since some of them do understand these things, means there is even less need to take them at their word. The people who believe this election has nothing to do with independence are either paid to pretend they think like that or are so deep in the SNP tank they don’t even need to be paid to pretend they think like this.
Sturgeon argues that this election is really about protecting Scotland from a hard Tory Brexit and from the further predations – some of them imaginary, it must be said – of a Tory government at Westminster that is notionally actively hostile to Scottish interests and sensibilities. It’s a choice between the Tories and the SNP (aka ‘Scotland’s party’).
Well so, given the enfeebled nature of the Labour party in Scotland, it is (though in a number of constituencies – Edinburgh West, East Dunbartonshire, Caithness and so on – it’s the Lib Dems who offer the greatest challenge to the SNP). But that’s a choice between a party adamantly opposed to a second referendum and one determined that a second plebiscite should take place. That, not anything about the NHS or education or the economy or anything else, is the dividing line that really matters in Scotland today.
And everyone knows this. If you vote SNP you are affirming your support for independence; if you vote for a Unionist party you are not. Reassuring voters that they could risk voting SNP without endorsing independence might have been a reasonable position in 2011 when no one envisaged the question actually being put to the test; it has long since ceased to be so reasonable. And, given the manner in which Brexit put another referendum back on the table, everyone understands this too.
In the grand scheme of things, it matters little whether there are 56 or 50 SNPs at Westminster. There is going to be a huge Tory majority anyway. The SNP will still win a thumping victory in the Scottish portion of the election and support for independence is likely to remain more or less analogous with the SNP share of the vote. Their mandate will survive the election unscathed, at least as far as they are concerned. But for Unionists it makes a significant difference, in terms of morale if nothing else, if the SNP win 56 or just, say, 50 seats and if their share of the vote declines from the almost 50 percent they won in 2015.
So of course it’s a proxy battle over independence and the idea or desirability of a second referendum. Every election in Scotland will be like this until such time as a second referendum happens or the SNP’s support, still solid in the polls, declines significantly. The new normal is going to be normal for some time yet.
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