Nicola is the shiny new face of the SNP but nationalism is still ugly – as a pal’s bloody nose proves

An interviewer told nicola Sturgeon last week that he was terrified of ‘ugly, divisive and insular’ nationalism. The First Minister’s response was unequivocal. ‘That’s not Scottish nationalism. I’d be as horrified as you are by that description of nationalism.

‘The nationalism I represent is a civic nationalism: that, if you live in Scotland, regardless of where you come from, regardless of the colour of your skin or the faith you practise, all of us can make it a better country to live in if we have the courage to do that. It’s not in any way divisive.’

‘not Scottish nationalism’. At 6.07pm on Friday my phone pinged with a new text message. It was from a friend who works for Ed Miliband, and read as follows: ‘So we just arrived at the Tollcross Leisure Centre in the East End of Glasgow.

‘As our cars pulled up we had a pack of SnP-ers running after us shouting “Red Tory Scum”. Ed went in and I got out of the car in a more leisurely manner. As I walked in, two of them came up to me and one put his finger in my face shouting “You f***** English ****”.’

‘not Scottish nationalism’. Here, in his own words, is something that happened to an Edinburgh-based acquaintance in Morningside last week.

‘Some SnP folk were out leafleting. The conversation as I recall it started normally – they asked me if I was intending to vote, and I said yes, for Labour, they’ve got a number of policies I like, their local man has been good for the area and I wasn’t keen for further austerity cuts.

‘There was then a disagreement over whether or not the SnP is anti-austerity, which I know is a bit comedic, really. I said, “But they’re not. The IFS says their manifesto is pushing for a longer period of austerity than even the Tories, and SnP MPs abstained over the Tories’ continued austerity plans.”

Disturbed

‘There were three of them. One called me “a f***** sheep” and pushed me. I told them to clear off, then another pushed me against a wall, called me a “negative English ****” and I got a couple of punches to the face. There was a fair bit of blood. I’m fine, really, and have told the police, but I’m disturbed by how easily things come to blows now.’

‘not Scottish nationalism’. I was speaking to a prominent Labour figure at the weekend – a born and bred Scot – who told me that while walking through Glasgow with his young daughter recently he was called a ‘****’ and a ‘traitor’. If you were a no voter in the referendum you may have encountered these terms before.

The new Scotland, 2015. The guid neighbour. An inclusive, civic nationalism that is ‘not in any way divisive’.

I have no doubt Miss Sturgeon thinks she means what she says. She and most senior nationalists are well-meaning, decent people who have evolved their position in the past two decades away from identity politics towards a more technocratic argument. I may have doubts on the motivation for this shift – where the balance l i es between principle and calculation – but the SnP is a better and more reasonable party for it.

Sadly, though, there is more to the cause than hugs and smiling selfies with wee nicola in Buchanan Street. As with all nationalisms based on a perceived grievance and the desire for something that doesn’t currently exist, darkness is always and everywhere close by: violence, abuse, hatred, intimidation, tribalism, racism.

A politics that relies on the stressing of difference and the deliberate engineering of conflict will always lead to division and antagonism. The demonisation of ‘Westmonster’ is ludicrous – it is only a system designed to ensure everyone living on these islands gets a fair crack of the whip.

It is also disproportionately packed with Scots, doing their best for Scotland. Everyone gets that the system has to change, but the bile directed at those who reject the idea that this should involve splitting our little rock for good is a disgrace.

This is what the SnP has brought to Scotland for as long as I have been politically sentient. For all the 20-somethings writing bad poetry and bouncing tiggerishly around ‘Freedom Square’, for all the language of positivity pre-programmed into senior nats by highly paid consultants, there are those who bring more old-fashioned tactics to bear.

I was at the SnP conference in Inverness in 1996 where Alex neil, now the Social Justice Secretary, gave a speech comparing the then shadow Scottish Secretary George Robertson to nazi collaborator Lord Haw-Haw – for which he received a standing ovation.

Alex Salmond’s ‘Team Scotland’ vs ‘Team Westminster’ jibe, which sought to exclude the majority of the population from a claim to our shared nationhood, was the single most inflammatory statement of the referendum campaign. Salmond is a master deployer of the dog whistle – and knows well that the rats hear it too.

Even Miss Sturgeon, who has tried to set a course for more conciliatory ground, falls short.

neil Hay, her candidate for Edinburgh South, was revealed to have posted malicious tweets under a pseudonym, including one comparing no voters to ‘Quislings’ and another saying OAPs were too senile to vote. not only did nicola refuse to take action against Hay, but insisted if she lived in the constituency she would vote for him.

The treatment of the Scottish Labour Party by SnP activists and voters is verging on pathological. That Labour is the author of its own electoral misfortune, I have no doubt. But there is a significant difference between deciding that one party seems fitter to rule than another, or that one has more attractive policies, and th the base hatred at play here.

It is also irrational. This is how the c centrist Financial Times described the Labour leader last week: ‘Mr Miliband is preoccupied with inequality. His prescripti tion is an increase in taxes such as restorin ing the 50p level for high earners and im imposing an ill-conceived mansion tax. He p promised to freeze energy prices… He has st stepped too far away from the new Labour position that markets can be harnessed to progressive outcomes.’

So what is Mr Miliband? Red Tory English scum or, as everyone but the weirdly discombobulated independenistas understands, Labour’s most Left-wing leader since nicola Sturgeon’s hero, Michael Foot?

And in that context, what of the SnP, the self-proclaimed champion of ‘progressive’ politics? Alex Bell, Mr Salmond’s former head of policy, says the party has governed ‘like One nation Tories… They have hardly come up with an original policy in the time they have been in government’.

Myth

Over the past few weeks, John McDermott, a left-of-centre Scottish wonk who works for the FT, has been casting his eye over the nationalists’ record. He has found that although the budget for public services in Scotland has been cut by around four percentage points less than in England over the past five years, spending on health south of the Border is forecast to have increased by 6 per cent in real terms, compared with only 1 per cent in Scotland. Meanwhile, spending on schools in Scotland fell by 5 per cent in real terms, but rose in England.

Then there’s the ‘free university education’ myth. Lucy Hunter Blackburn, a former senior civil servant in the Scottish government, has carried out research that shows Scotland now has the lowest rate of grant in western Europe; that spending on income-related student grants has almost halved in real terms since the SnP took office in 2007; and that Scotland is the only part of the UK where borrowing is highest among students from poorer backgrounds.

For young students in full-time higher education, ‘the net effect of policy decisions over the decade to 2015-16 will be a resource transfer from low income to high income households,’ she says. The same is true of the policy of free prescriptions.

The SnP is going to have a very good election, entrenching the party’s dominance in Scotland and extending its influence across the UK. But let’s be clear: the facts do not support the nationalists’ claim to be a progressive force for unity; the outcomes do not match the rhetoric.

And for all its superficial modern sheen and tactical excellence, Scottish nationalism continues to be what it always has been: ugly, divisive and insular.