SNP got a bloody nose... from the rebellious Scots
NEVER hate your opponents in politics – it clouds your judgment. That is why, this weekend, despite victory in the local elections, the minds of the SNP leadership are overcast. For many years now, they have seen taking overall control of Glasgow City Council as their equivalent of storming the Bastille. They failed again. Instead, they are likely sitting in a bean café somewhere in the city trying to do a deal with the Greens – not a story of heroic derring-do that will have a national holiday named after it.
Worse for them, the hated Tories have made a comeback. Quite a comeback. This is what is perplexing them most. The SNP had clearly told the people of Scotland the Tories were offlimits – with the subtext they are really ‘English’. Yet a large number of Scots disobeyed – and in the most unusual of places, such as Shettleston, Calton, Ferguslie Park. One of the SNP’s most treasured lines is that Scotland is a victim of Westminster – and one of its examples of that is the closure of the iconic Ravenscraig steel works 25 years ago. The world has moved on and it hasn’t – Ravenscraig now has a Tory councillor.
In Nicola Sturgeon’s head – just like the Queen’s – the world smells of fresh paint. People do as they are told. But Her Majesty the First Minister has a problem previous British monarchs have had to deal with – rebellious Scots.
SHE had planned for – no, relied on – the idea that such is the thrawn nature of Scots we would all be black affronted by Theresa May’s refusal to grant a referendum off the back of a demand for one at Holyrood and vote for our own dear leader, Nicola.
Yet Scots are proving to be thrawn squared. No, we don’t like to be told what to do, particularly by remote leaders who seem to think they are better than us and order us about against our will. That seems to sum up the First Minister.
Instead of moving towards the SNP, people appear to be backing off. Look at Glasgow. It voted for independence in 2014 and the SNP got more than 50 per cent of the vote in the General and Scottish elections in the following years.
Last Thursday, only 40 per cent of Glaswegians supported it. Victory, yes, but on a downward trajectory. The same pattern was repeated throughout Scotland – pro-Union parties won this election across the land.
Theresa May’s referendum refusal didn’t make Scots pick up pitchforks in the cause, they chose a pencil to mark the ballot paper against one.
The SNP has overcome the New Labour playbook for a decade but it seems to be truncating its journey into that party’s decline. In 2007 and 2011 it played to the centre ground, wooed the middle class. It enjoyed success. But the SNP’s journey to complacency has been remarkably short in just one parliament.
It isn’t standing up for Scotland, as its abysmal record on education, health and the economy shows. It thinks it is enough just to say the Tories are evil and the Labour Party is dead. Scots aren’t buying it.
Scots Tory leader Ruth Davidson has gone from riding tanks for photo-ops to parking them on the SNP’s lawn, as her visit to Alex Salmond’s under-threat Gordon constituency showed.
Yet the Nats still don’t get it. Their view of the world is binary, so they cannot respond to rejection. Thus, deputy leader Angus Robertson, in danger of losing his own Moray seat, continued to say yesterday that Tory is a four-letter word.
After the 2014 referendum, Miss Sturgeon said she would reach out the hand of friendship to No voters. To most pro-Union Scots, that hand appears to have only two fingers.
The SNP has created two classes of Scots. Those who support independence are regarded as ‘Scots First Class’. Those of us who support Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom have our Scottishness doubted. We are second rate. It is a kind of Caledonian apartheid.
ONE of the SNP’s General Election candidates is campaigning to ‘kick the last Tory out of Scotland’. Kick Scots out of Scotland? Really? Some Nationalists have called last week’s election results ‘a Tory invasion’. It was Scots who voted for them. How do you invade your own country?
Miss Sturgeon should realise that when your appeal to voters is merely telling people who to hate, it is time to move on. It may be a way off, but the SNP should do some succession planning.
Throughout Mr Salmond’s seven years as First Minister, the country knew who would replace him. The SNP should seek similar clarity now or the bandwagon could be derailed.
Don’t underestimate the SNP leadership’s troubles. As the election results show, Scotland doesn’t want a second independence referendum and, if there is one, will vote No. Yet the SNP membership resolutely demands one. Something has to give – and it could be the leadership.
Miss Sturgeon is becoming as divisive as her predecessor. If she continues on her current trajectory, she could unite all of Scotland – against her. And she’d hate that.