What now for Nicola Sturgeon? Labour MP Jess Phillips isn’t sitting on the fence. ‘At best Nicola Sturgeon was unprofessional with those women’s lives; at worst, she misled parliament,’ Phillips told Question Time viewers last night. Keir Starmer has also said Scotland’s First Minister must go if she did indeed break the ministerial code in the course of the Alex Salmond saga. But why are so many others in the Labour ranks unwilling to speak out against the SNP?
Sturgeon’s departure is, after all, in the Labour party’s best interests. In two months’ time, Labour will be looking to take seats from the SNP at the Scottish election. And, politics aside, given the gravity of the situation, it’s not hard to make the case that this should be a resigning matter. Yet too many on the left appear to be happy to turn a blind eye in a way they would never do if it was a Tory politician at fault.
Why is this? Perhaps the fear of criticising the SNP stems from worrying about alienating swing voters on the left? Or are Labour activists unwilling to interrupt a politician who seeks to make Boris’s life difficult? Whatever the reason, this Salmond saga – and the lack of fallout which has resulted from it in Labour circles – makes it clear that there is a sort of collective omerta among Labour types when it comes to the SNP.
For Labour, this strange refusal to go to war with the SNP has consistently backfired
The current First Minister has been seen as one of the good guys by the English left since she took up her post. If you doubt this is true, think back to the glowing reviews of Sturgeon from portions of the left-wing press during the 2015 general election campaign, particularly when her performances at the television debates were drooled over.
‘Three women against some public schoolboys,’ a Guardian headline read, referencing Sturgeon, Leanne Wood and Natalie Bennett. The three women were held up as some sort of power trio that was going to save the UK from the evil Tories. It was a similar story in the Brexit debates. Jeremy Corbyn’s ambivalence about Brexit meant plenty of remainers flocked to the likes of Sturgeon to speak up on their behalf.
Yet for Labour, this strange refusal to go to war with the SNP has consistently backfired. The rise of the SNP, cheered on by parts of the English-based press who fell for them, helped crush both Labour and the Lib Dems in the 2015 election. The threat of a Labour-Scottish National Party government also scared a lot of voters into the Tories’ hands. Even now, the dominance of the SNP in Scotland continues to be an ongoing gift to the Conservatives; it makes a Labour government so much less likely in several painful ways.
To be clear, this phenomenon is not limited to just those within Labour party: it applies to others on the left too. Siobhan Benita, the former Lib Dem candidate for mayor, for example, tweeted recently:
‘Every Tory MP calling for Nicola Sturgeon to resign should sit back down. The hypocrisy when Priti Patel is still in Cabinet is off the scale.’
For the likes of Benita, even when there is a clear case of the SNP being in the wrong, they are still beyond criticism. At least they are not as evil as the Tories, so the thinking goes.
What’s so odd about this is that even if you aren’t a fan of the Labour party, if you want the Tories out of government, you surely have to see that the SNP being as large a party as they are in the Commons as a big impediment. How can anyone on the English left like me fail to see that neither Sturgeon nor her party are their friends? She quite literally wants to be separated from all of us, becoming the head of a completely sovereign country while leaving the English left to suffer with the Tories for the rest of time. She is no ally.
Meanwhile, Labour MPs continue to keep shtum about Sturgeon. Some Labour activists, not content with already making their leader’s life difficult, are even critical of Starmer for having gone after Sturgeon at all. Not for the first time, Jess Phillips is getting abuse chucked her way from the ex-Corbynista wing of the party.
There are many things Labour need to do to become electable again. A good place to start would be to stop being so scared of the SNP all the time and take them on instead.
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