Will Scotland rule the U.K.?
Election: Just months after a failed referendum, separatists could call the shots
ARBROATH, Scotland
Nearly 700 years ago, residents of this fishing village on the North Sea wrote a letter to the pope declaring that Scots were independent and not beholden to England.
On Thursday, voters here are expected to return a separatist MP to a hung British Parliament in which the Scottish National Party could have a pivotal say in the union’s uncertain future.
While the party, and its pugnacious leader Nicola Sturgeon, have been playing down the separatist angle since losing last fall’s referendum on independence, they are clearly relishing their rising fortunes.
Sturgeon, a charismatic 44-year-old Glaswegian who has never met a Scot she has not wanted to pose with for a selfie, has been stressing that the rest of the United Kingdom, and by far its biggest part, England, will be beholden to the Scots if the next government hopes to achieve anything.
“She has been a tremendous asset in this campaign. They have warmed to her,” said Mike Weir, who has served as the MP for the SNP in the local riding of Angus since 2001. “She is a very human person and that has shown through in the campaign. She has gone out and met people en masse unlike the other party leaders who have just had stage-managed events. That has meant a great deal in this campaign.”
Polling certainly bears that out. Although as Scotland’s First Minister Sturgeon is not herself running for a seat in Westminster, her approval rating (the percentage who think she is doing a good job minus the percentage who think she is doing a bad job) among Scots is an almost unheard of plus-56 compared with an abysmal minus33 for the prime minister, David Cameron.
Against everyone’s expectations, including their own, the Scottish separatists have made an astonishingly quick recovery since Sturgeon became leader after their loss in last fall’s referendum. The SNP, which elected only six MPs to Westminster in the last election, seems certain to win more than 45 seats this time.
And many are predicting they could sweep all 59 seats in the Queen’s northern realm, grabbing most of them from Labour, which has always considered Scotland to be its own fief. That would give the Scottish nationalists something the Bloc Quebecois never achieved in Ottawa, despite all the noise that Quebec’s separatists have sometimes made.
Trying to figure out why Scots are so disaffected can be difficult for outsiders. Seven British prime ministers were born in Scotland and six prime ministers have represented Scottish ridings. Scots have played a prominent role in British politics, sport and the military for many generations, too.
Grievances against England go back as far as the time of Robert the Bruce, whose highland army was massacred on the battlefield in the 14th century. Among the more recent beefs was Labour’s inability to keep Margaret Thatcher from closing the coal mines and shipyards in the 1980s.
“We want to be ruled closer to home,” said Donald Morrison, an SNP councillor in Arbroath, which voted Yes in last year’s referendum on independence. “We are trying to get a fairer voice for Scotland in Westminster. We need people to shout out for us.”
The SNP has said that however many seats it wins this week, it will not hold another referendum on independence any time soon. Weir said he agreed with that stance, but quickly added, “We can do better to achieve the aspirations of Scots if we are an independent nation. There are more social democrats here than in England, which is conservative, especially in the south.”
The SNP will hold the balance of power and will have an outsized say in the next Parliament because the Conservatives under Cameron and Labour under Ed Miliband are each expected to fall between 40 and 60 seats short of the 326 seats needed to form a majority government.
With support collapsing for the Liberal Democrats, whose leader, Nick Clegg, formed an uneasy coalition with the Tories after the 2010 election, and a hodgepodge of minor parties with vastly divergent interests only expected to elect a handful of MPs, the Conservatives and Labour may not have many options after Thursday’s ballot.
What the SNP wants is becoming clearer by the day. First of all, Sturgeon has vowed her party will have absolutely nothing to do with the Conservatives — who will probably win more seats than Labour — and the feeling appears to be mutual.
If Cameron cannot form a government — and without the SNP that looks impossible — it will likely fall to Miliband to try. But he will have serious problems, too. Any agreement that Labour might reach with the SNP will cause him immense grief in England, where negotiations of any kind with Scotland’s separatists are considered totally unacceptable. Labour’s support for deficit-cutting and for the Trident nuclear-submarine program are also obvious flashpoints.
Speculating about what might happen after Thursday is pointless right now. However, it seems likely that only Labour will be able to form a government and only then make it work if it manages to get the approval of Sturgeon and the SNP on a bill-by-bill basis.
“If Labour wants to be in power, they’ll have to talk with us,” Weir said. “We don’t look for a formal coalition, but there are things we want to discuss.”
Sitting on a bench by the Arbroath harbour while fishermen cleaned their fish nets and lobster traps, Alexander Wales, an 86-year-old pensioner who described himself as politically neutral, offered his assessment.
“It’s getting very, very nasty,” he said. “All I know is that every Parliament we elect ends up being a great disappointment.”