I lost my job to save the Union. Would any of today’s MSPs put country before party?

SHOuLD Scots expect, or even want, an antiSNP coalition to replace Nicola Sturgeon’s administration in the future?

Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross raised the prospect when he spoke to journalists at his party’s uK conference in Manchester this week. The idea sounds sensible, a realistic alternative to continued, unbroken nationalist hegemony in the Scottish parliament.

But the tribal nature of Scottish politics and our broken political culture suggests that Mr Ross may be on a hiding to nothing, however sensible his idea.

The Holyrood parliament has been with us for 22 years, and for only eight of them has there been a formal governing coalition between two or more parties.

The first Scottish Executive was a hybrid of Labour and Liberal Democrat MSPs. When that arrangement ran out of steam in 2007, a minority SNP administration took over and governed alone until 2011, when the party won an unexpected overall majority.

When it lost that majority in 2016, Nicola Sturgeon’s party continued to govern alone as the biggest party at Holyrood, and only very recently entered into a formal agreement with the Scottish Greens that cements its overall majority in the chamber.

Yet the founders of the Scottish parliament assumed that coalitions would be a permanent part of political life in devolved Scotland.

The preferred electoral system, a hybrid of first-past-thepost and proportional representation, guaranteed (they thought at the time) that no single party would achieve a majority and would therefore be forced to make deals with political opponents.

It was all part of the new, improved, tolerant, progressive political culture that Donald Dewar and his fellow devolutionists wanted to create.

But things haven’t worked out quite as Donald hoped.

For a start, none of the unionist parties – the Conservatives, Labour and the Lib Dems – wanted anything to do with an SNP administration committed, as its first order of business, to destroying the very fabric of the united Kingdom. Ironically, it was thanks to the support of the Conservatives that Alex Salmond got his first budget through the chamber. A year later all but two MSPs supported Salmond’s next budget.

So cross-party co-operation is nothing new in the chamber. But formal governing pacts – which were supposed to have become the norm – are now rare.

It all comes down to the divisive nature of Scottish politics. The political fissures in the rest of the country between Conservative and Labour are exaggerated; these historic enemies like to pretend the difference between them is a chasm, whereas the policy differences that exist are more ones of emphasis.

Divisive

In Scotland, however, the defining split in public opinion is of far greater moment. Independence, especially since the divisive and bad-tempered referendum of 2014, has torn families, workplaces and social gatherings apart. And it will define our political debate for years to come.

The consequences of that referendum continue to haunt the opposition parties at Holyrood; having made common cause with both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats in the campaign for a No vote, Labour was all but wiped out at the general election that followed.

Lifelong Labour voters who had been persuaded to vote Yes to independence, were no longer prepared to continue to support a party that, more than any other, had secured Scotland’s place in the uK.

I was one of the 40 Scottish Labour MPs whose parliamentary career was cut short by that backlash.

As a supporter of the union, I have no regrets; had I known in advance what the consequences would be for me and my party, I would have delivered just as many leaflets and knocked on just as many doors for the No cause.

As I said in the aftermath of the disastrous 2015 general election, all that had happened was that I had lost my job; if Scotland had voted Yes, I would have lost my country.

After the referendum was over, when all the parties should have been setting aside their differences and encouraging the nation to heal, the SNP chose instead to press its political advantage by rewriting recent history.

The new narrative was that Labour hadn’t been punished just for campaigning against independence, it had been cast aside because it made common cause with the hated Conservatives.

That notion became common currency in Scottish politics. Every time Miss Sturgeon appeared during May’s Holyrood campaigns, she made sure to berate the evil Tories at every opportunity. The label has become their go-to insult which demands no explanation on context.

Meanwhile, Labour has bought into the SNP message wholesale. It’s not difficult to find a Labour MSP who will affect a horrified countenance at the very idea that their party would ever again find common cause – even in a second independence referendum – with their hated enemy.

Of course, it would have suited the SNP and the Yes campaign very well had Labour refused to join with the Conservatives in the Better Together campaign.

Not only did that umbrella organisation make possible much bigger and better targeted spending across the country, it allowed Labour to be seen at the head of a broad coalition of interests and gave former chancellor Alistair Darling the chance to represent the campaign in head-to-head debates with Alex Salmond.

Had Labour insisted on going its own way, then the Conservatives and Lib Dems, plus a smattering of tiny parties, would have been left to carry the torch for the pro-uK campaign. You can see why the nationalists wanted to split Better Together up. All of which is why the notion of a grand pro-union coalition at Holyrood – at least one led by the Scottish Conservatives – is a fantasy, however much sense Douglas Ross speaks about the prospect.

Just as, in the event of an election producing another hung parliament at Westminster, Nationalist MPs would have no choice but to support a minority Labour administration – lest they be accused of enabling the continuance of Conservative government over Scotland – so Labour finds itself stuck on the same wicket. Does Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar really want to be the man who says yes to a new administration at Holyrood led by the Scottish Conservatives?

What hope would he have of winning back crucial seats in its former traditional working class heartlands if he had placed a Conservative first minister in power?

In a normal world, such a calculation wouldn’t matter. Douglas Ross is a decent, moderate family man whose political instincts put him firmly on the left wing of his party. But in modern Scotland such judgments count for little. Labels and rhetoric matter more than substance and Mr Ross is one of those hated Tories: end of story.

Surrender

There is one alternative scenario, however. Assuming (and it’s a big assumption) that the electorate’s love affair with the SNP cools off at some point, it’s conceivable that a pro-uK majority might be put together with the Scottish Labour leader at its head, even if Mr Sarwar’s party had secured fewer seats and votes than Mr Ross’s.

Would the Scottish Conservative leader feel able to surrender his right to the top job if it meant settling for a less important role in government? If it meant seeing the back of Nicola Sturgeon and her party’s obsession with independence?

Lesser politicians than Mr Ross have willingly sacrificed their careers and their jobs for the sake of their country.

The mettle of the man may yet be judged by how willing he is to put country before party and pave the way for a truly broad coalition. It is difficult to see any other way to save Scotland from the divisions of nationalism.