Don’t take your eye off the ball – the SNP is not dead yet
SOMETIMES you can wish for something so much, you imagine it is happening when it isn’t. As a small child in the week of my birthday, I would often wake up believing the great day had come when it hadn’t. In 1978, we as a nation celebrated winning the World Cup before the Scotland team had even left for the tournament. We were home before the postcards arrived, let alone the final.
Then there was Celtic famously parading the re-signing of Maurice Johnston – the day before he signed for Rangers.
So it is today with some pro-Union opinion believing the SNP is dead. It isn’t. Indeed, reports of the party’s death have been exaggerated for more than a decade.
When it first won an election in 2007 – by just one seat – the most common prediction was that it had reached ‘peak Nat’. It was the result of a perfect storm caused by the unpopularity of Tony Blair, the Iraq War and the ‘cash for honours’ scandal.
Alex Salmond’s administration would, at best, last a couple of months, it was said. It remained in government for four years.
Polls showed the Nationalists would be swept from office in 2011 – they won an unprecedented landslide. After defeat in the referendum, they were bound to fall apart. Instead, they won all but three seats in a Westminster election and, while losing their majority at Holyrood, increased their share of the vote.
Former Labour MP Ian Davidson, a year before the 2014 referendum, famously said that the battle was over and that all that remained was to ‘bayonet the wounded’. His political career got bayoneted instead.
So why now is the SNP being pronounced ‘dead’? Losing 21 seats in June’s election is one reason that indeed may put off Indyref2 for now – but only for now.
Nicola Sturgeon is deeply unpopular and the SNP’s both famous and feared discipline appears to be cracking.
Kenny McAskill is suffering from something that afflicts many former ministers – bursts of wisdom and candour that eluded him in office.
This week he attacked the First Minister for ‘control freakery’ for her handling of the case of Michelle Thomson. Then there is the Nationalist fringe – who wouldn’t exist without the SNP – ranting about the failures of leadership because the First Minister hasn’t yet called a referendum she knows she cannot currently win.
Sacked ministers criticising the leadership? Impossiblists saying they are sell-outs? That doesn’t sound like much of a crisis to me. It would just be business as usual in the Conservative and Labour parties.
The sobering truth is that while the SNP is a failed government – its crimes against the education system are the worst in our history – about one in three Scots will continue to vote for them.
If you believe in Scotland’s place in the Union, it is not enough just to wait for the SNP to wither on the vine without doing something to make it happen.
It might be thought that the SNP winning the next Scottish election would defy political gravity but Brexit, Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn suggest those laws no longer apply.
Whether Brexit happens or not, the UK is going to face an existential crisis and the case for the Union needs to be made, not just in Scotland but throughout the UK. Pro-Union Scots might console themselves that the SNP might win the next Scottish election but won’t have enough votes to get a majority at Holyrood for Indyref2. I am not so sure. Political predictions are always flawed and this far out matter little. But imagine that, in line with current polling, it ends up with the SNP, Labour and the Conservatives each getting something around 30 per cent of the vote.
For a stable government, Scottish politics will need to grow up and traditional foes work together.
LABOUR still sees it as a sign of virility to refuse to work with the Tories – and, indeed, falsely blame its alliance with them in Better Together as a reason for their losses. It is not difficult to see Labour going in with the SNP. Deputy First Minister Kez Dugdale would be a possibility.
Considering her ambivalence towards a second independence referendum – it has changed both publicly and privately month by month – and Jeremy Corbyn’s support for one, Scottish Labour might find itself supporting Indyref2, claiming its membership is split on the issue and a vote would clear the air.
While Ruth Davidson is making strides in reinventing Scottish Toryism, her colleagues south of the Border are still a drag on her ticket.
For the Scottish Labour Party, it seems too sensitive an issue to ask whether its unexpected gains in the General Election are proof that Kez Dugdale is a drag on Jeremy Corbyn, or the other way around.
Instead, Labour appears to be following the path of Canutism that it has been on since 2007 – not trying to control the waves but just standing on the beach waiting for the tide to come in.
I do not agree with Nicola Sturgeon’s politics, nor the way she conducts them. But it would be foolish to underestimate a politician who has reinvented herself more often than Dr Who.
She and her party are in difficulty now. But if I were her, while she might have the odd sleepless night, I wouldn’t have nightmares.
Unionists who sleep easy are the foolish ones.