The SNP isn’t Scotland, merely a nationalist party
Blaming Westminster for every economic woe doesn’t wash any longer, finds Martin Redfern
Nicola Sturgeon’s recent comments on nationalism at Edinburgh’s Book Festival highlight the challenges faced by the SNP leader in her party’s drive to separate Scotland from the rest of the UK.
Attempting to balance the dreams of her core dyed-inthe-wool nationalist supporters with the everyday needs of the remainder of us has, in recent years, become a priority for the SNP establishment. And it’s a trick the SNP had, until recently, performed extraordinarily skilfully.
We don’t have to travel too far back – to the Eighties, or a little earlier – to when the SNP were regarded by the vast majority of Scots as a bunch of well meaning – if one was kind – yet gullible extremists. Back then, the Nationalists focused on nationalism for nationalism’s sake. Their focus was on a sense of national identity dependent on independence.
But this seemed to change in the run-up to the referendum. The SNP’S now discredited White Paper proffered an independent Scotland but also, on the back of questionable economics and massively inflated oil forecasts, a Scotland with a considerably improved standard of living. What wasn’t there to like?
But here’s the rub: it was a fantasy, as the latest GERS data demonstrates. But those dyed-in-the-wool supporters don’t care or worryingly, don’t believe, that public sector oil revenues have crashed from Alex’s Salmond’s referendum forecast of £7.9 billion for 2016 - 17 – numbers that underpinned the nationalism dream – to £0.2bn.
Yet their Pavlovian mantra of ‘UK always Bad’ persists. It persists despite public spend- ing in Scotland, at £1437 per head higher than the UK average, is only possible because we’re part of the UK – irrespective of oil price fluctuations. It persists because nationalism, at whatever cost to the majority, is the endgame for Sturgeon’s diehard supporters.
While Sturgeon’s core followers appear to disregard economic realities, the rest of us are increasingly circumspect. The nationalist establishment’s box of anti-uk tricks is not only predictable but implausible.
Blaming Westminster for every economic woe doesn’t wash any longer. Newlydevolved powers aren’t taken up; criticising Westminster for SNP failings in areas that have been the nationalists’ responsibility for ten years seems nonsensical.
We now realise the SNP isn’t Scotland; it’s merely a party whose raison d’etre is nationalism. And we’re questioning the point of nationalism, of ending a 300-year-old union if Scottish nationalism doesn’t offer more than dogma based on past grudges and current manufactured grievances.
Sturgeon may wish her party wasn’t the ‘national’ party. She is rightly concerned about nationalism’s negative connotations. Yet for her, nationalism has morphed from being a teenage dream to a middle-aged obsession. It’s Sturgeon who believes ‘independence transcends Brexit, oil and the economy’. Let’s never forget in the SNP constitution, first, foremost and ahead of running Scotland effectively, comes separating Scotland from the rest of the UK. ● Martin Redfern lives in Edinburgh and is a publishing consultant