AN SNP TIDAL WAVE WHICH WILL SWEEP AWAY THE OLD ORDER OF OUR POLITICS

There is a political tsunami heading for Scotland and it will hit the country at 7am on May 7. That’s the moment polling stations open; the moment when the SNP will change the political landscape of Scotland and the United Kingdom – forever.

For months, opinion polls have found that more than 40 per cent of Scots intend to vote for the Nationalists in the General election. No one can claim they were not warned about the ti dal wave now approaching. In such scenarios, the SNP could win as many as 50 of Scotland’s 59 Westminster seats. Labour would be ruined, the Liberal Democrats all but obliterated and the Conservatives doomed to further irrelevance.

The latest polling conducted by Lord Ashcroft confirms as much. With the possible exception of Alistair Carmichael’s seat in Orkney and Shetland, every other seat in the country is vulnerable to the SNP. every one. even Jim Murphy’s east renfrewshire constituency is menaced by an unprecedented Nationalist surge. Such are the limitations of the first-past-thepost system: the SNP could take more than 90 per cent of Scottish seats despite winning less than 50 per cent of votes cast.

We have witnessed nothing like this in a British election since 1918, when eamon de Valera’s Sinn Fein won 67 of the 73 constituencies in the counties that would, eventually, form the Irish republic. That election changed the United Kingdom forever. This one may do so as well.

For a long time, so-called experts have looked at the SNP’s lead in the polls and muttered that, well, it can’t last, can it? But what if it can? What if it does?

The polling confirms the longstanding suspicion that this election is liable to be a disaster of epic proportions for Unionism. Nothing like this has been seen in Scottish politics before. It is true that the country has successively been a Liberal stronghold, a Conservative fortress and a Labour bastion but at no point in living memory has one party dominated Scottish politics in the fashion the SNP appears poised to do. even when Labour held 50 Scottish seats, the other parties still sent 22 representatives to Westminster.

One in three Scots who voted Labour in 2010 now intend to vote for Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond’s SNP this year. There is an impeccable logic behind their desertion: many of these Left-wing Scots voted Yes in the independence referendum. having done so, why would they vote for a Unionist party in May? LABOUR is snookered and if it s omehow escapes this trap it will only be because the party has enjoyed some extraordinary slice of good fortune. The problem for Labour is that it courts damnation if it agrees to any kind of pact with the SNP but is equally damned if it rejects one. heads it loses and tails it loses, too.

Consider the options: a Labour administration backed by the SNP, even on a case-bycase, unofficial, basis would be hugely unpopular in england. No one there, after all, would have voted for such a government. Prime Minister ed Miliband would be weakened before he’d even begun his term in office and many english voters would surely conclude that his government lacked any real legitimacy to govern for the whole UK.

how, moreover, could Mr Miliband l ead a Unionist government that depended for its life upon a party whose entire reason for existing is based upon severing the very Union he is pledged to defend? It is impossible to envisage circumstances in which Labour would not be held hostage by the SNP.

But unless Mr Miliband is brave enough to countenance a minority government, not doing a deal with the SNP is also fraught with risk. Scottish Labour MPs may be appalled by the thought of a post-election agreement with the Nationalists but by the t i me any deal might be reached there may be precious few Scottish Labour MPs left to influence their party’s leadership. And without SNP support, even on a limited ‘confidence and supply’ basis, Labour might find governing all but impossible.

No wonder leading Scottish Tories believe this is a ‘winwin’ election for the Nationali sts. There i s, however, a difference of opinion between the SNP leadership and the party’s grassroots activists.

Many of the latter, including the 85,000 new members who have rallied to the party’s standard since the referendum, would far prefer Mr Miliband to become Prime Minister. The leadership, however, is playing a longer game.

A weak Labour-led government forced to grovel, cap in hand, for SNP support would be a grand outcome for the Nationalists but the real prize is another term in Downing Street for David Cameron.

Another Tory administration lacking significant support in Scotland would add weight to the SNP suggestion that Scotland and england are two sharply different polities awkwardly bound together in a Union that’s no longer fit for purpose. Yet again, the SNP will argue, Scotland must endure a government f or which it did not vote and one l acking ‘democratic l egiti- macy’ north of the Border. Moreover, since the next UK government is bound to become very unpopular very quickly, even the dimmest political soothsayer can appreciate how a further period of economic austerity could be used by mischievous, opportunistic Nats to foment discord and division.

In such circumstances, even right- of- centre Unionists in Scotland have good reason to suspect that a Labour victory in May might, in terms of the Union, be less damaging and less dangerous than another Tory-led government.

Greater love hath no man than that he lay down his party for his country. If that means putting Mr Miliband into Downing Street then so be it. The alternative – a further weakening of an already rickety Union – might be too grim to contemplate.

The Tory slogan ‘vote SNP, get Labour’ is, in any case, a highly risky strategy. The opinion polls suggest, after all, that it is the most popular of all the possible post-election outcomes. The Tories find themselves i n the curious position of telling Scots they can, in fact, get exactly what they want from this election. Feel f ree to vote f or the Nationalists. You’ll still get a Labour government, not a Tory one!

It is the kind of strategy Yes Minister’s Sir humphrey Appleby would have reckoned ‘brave’ or ‘bold’. That is: foolhardy to the point of reckless l unacy. With f ri ends and defenders like these, in other words, the Union has no need for enemies.

Nor can this election be considered in isolation. It is the precursor to next year’s Scottish parliament elections which will, for once, be just as significant as the Westminster General election. OF course, it should be theoretically impossible f or the SNP to retain its majority at holyrood but it was, again theoretically, supposed to be all but impossible for it to win that majority in the f i rst place. Another SNP majority at holyrood would open a path to another referendum on independence.

The referendum has led to a realignment of Scots politics. It made the national question the defining issue of our times. Beside it, all else pales into insignificance. If you voted Yes because you believed independence offered a path to a better future, why would you now vote for Unionist parties with whom you disagree on the largest, most significant, issue of the day? Labour can neither answer, nor refute, that granite- hewn reality. Which is why it seems doomed in Scotland, overtaken by a new reality and swept away by a Nationalist wave.

We know when and where that wave will hit, all that remains to be discovered is how large it is – and how much damage it causes.