Old pork-barrel politics turned to SNP pig swill

THE old formula that has delivered three election victories in a row for the SNP seems somehow to have gone awry. You can imagine the focus groups. Hands up who wants to pay more council tax? Not one hand raised. That’s policy then. Or prescription charges? Not a digit stirs so that is core. Or tuition fees?

Then someone asks who wants another referendum? Apart from the man in the corner who regards a Tunnock’s teacake as a symbol of the forces of occupation, not a hand raised.

So Nicola Sturgeon demands one. But this time she has swapped the pork-barrel politics of old for pig swill. The First Minister has got herself into the position where, if there is not another referendum by 2019, which most us don’t want, people will ask what is the point of her, or of the SNP.

For months people have asked how, having marched her supporters to the top of the hill, she can march them down again. Thrawn, she has led them to the precipice instead.

To understand how she got herself into such a position, you have to understand how the SNP has become that which it sought to destroy. Yes, breaking up Britain was the starting point but, for the Nationalists to get themselves into the position of having a chance of doing so, they first had to destroy Scottish Labour.

That they have largely achieved. But in the process the SNP has fast-tracked itself into becoming the worst of the Scottish Labour Party – without creating a national health service or a welfare state along the way.

The SNP has a large group of MPs at Westminster – with a couple suspended on suspicion of financial wrongdoing. It took Labour a century to get to that point. And the Nationalists at Westminster have a dysfunctional and corrosive relationship with their Holyrood colleagues.

The position of a Scottish MP in our current constitutional arrangements is a curious one. Unless they are in government, they have little to do. Most constituency issues are dealt with by their MSP colleagues. You might think that might lead to a sense of humility but, far from home, they troop daily into the Palace of Westminster feeling special, a cut above. They are honourables after all.

Their Holyrood colleagues are not impressed. Stories of indolence, boozing and behaviour not conducive to a happy family life – real or imagined – abound amongst their Edinburgh counterparts who regard themselves as being on the frontline, having fought the hard yards.

It took the Labour Party a century to get to this kind of animosity between groups but clearly the Nationalists are quick learners. Their MSPs watch the likes of Angus Robertson, Joanna Cherry or Tommy Shepherd on the television and ask why they don’t have similar profiles? To them, MPs are in the secondary parliament after all – Johnnycome-lately glory hunters not deserving of the limelight.

Nicola Sturgeon, not being a Westminster creature, does not know how to manage these relationships. One who should is Alex Salmond, but the hand of friendship he extends to the First Minister seems to come in a boxing glove.

AND then, as if taking a leaf out of the New Labour book of what not to do and adopting it as policy, Miss Sturgeon seems to govern by clique. Recently she met at a Highland retreat with some of the SNP’s greying ‘golden generation’ to discuss their strategy for Indyref 2.

People such as Andrew Wilson, Duncan Hamilton and Kevin Pringle are formidable intellects who think strategy through properly, and they are just about the only thing which can unite the disparate SNP groups at Holyrood and Westminster.

Both groups bitch about Mr Wilson setting out the SNP’s economic vision. They don’t like being excluded from what they see as an impenetrable group of the unelected, dictating to the elected. Yet these old university chums are aware of their own mortality, which is why they want a second referendum.

On the party’s record in government, they don’t believe they can win another Scottish election with enough numbers to call a referendum after 2021. Best to do it now and fail than leave the possibility of glory to another generation of Nats.

And if Theresa May refuses a referendum, what better cloak to cover their failures in government than the faux outrage of being denied one?