Beyond a face on the side of a bus, what else does the SNP stand for?
WhAT does the SNP actually stand for? An odd thing to ask, perhaps, given there is only one issue the party ever seems to talk about. however, the Nationalists’ listless local election campaign thrusts the question past the obvious answer and sticks it front and centre.
In theory, council elections should be about the huge array of decisions taken at local level that affect everything from the quality of education down your local comprehensive to the state of your town’s roads and whether driving on them feels more like tackling a pothole-ridden assault course. Questions of local government funding and the impact of a decade and a half of cuts imposed by holyrood should also be to the fore.
As the incumbent party of government, it is unsurprising that the SNP would rather not engage on these matters. When you launch your local election campaign and ban the Press from the event, it subtly hints that there might be some topics you would rather not discuss.
If that wasn’t already obvious, the SNP has highlighted it with a big yellow bus, complete with a huge image of Nicola Sturgeon’s face and the slogan ‘Send Boris a message’. Neither Sturgeon nor Boris Johnson is standing in the local elections but the SNP wants it to be about the two of them because otherwise it might be about policy and that isn’t the party’s strong suit.
Comical
Perhaps as striking as making Borisbashing the central theme of an election about who sets bin collection schedules in Pittenweem and whether the windows need better insulation at Finzean Primary School is the prominence of Sturgeon herself.
The bus may say ‘Vote SNP’ – and we all know how much stock we can put in things politicians stick on the side of buses – but the underlying message is: ‘We have no policies for your local community but here’s a picture of Nicola. You like her, right?’
The SNP has a problem and it’s actually a wonderful problem to have. They are far and away the most popular party in Scotland, a remarkable position to be in after 15 years in government, a government even some Nationalists admit has failed to make progress on major policy areas like health and education.
Their leader polls among Scottish voters the way John, Paul, George and Ringo might have among owners of first-press copies of the White Album.
Since February 2015, there have been 32 polls on Sturgeon’s job performance as First Minister. Only one, back in June 2018, has shown a majority of voters — and a narrow 51 per cent, at that — disapproving of the job she is doing.
Six months into the pandemic, a crisis she handled as well and as poorly as the Prime Minister, multiple polls showed Sturgeon’s approval rating breaking through the 75 per cent mark.
That’s the wonderful part, if you’re a Nationalist. Now for the problem: after almost eight years running the show, Sturgeon still has not sealed the deal on independence with a majority of Scottish electors. Despite Brexit, Corbyn and english Votes for english laws. Despite Boris, parliamentary chaos and the unlawful prorogation of Westminster. Despite Partygate, the Internal Market Act and the cost of living crisis.
Sturgeon has been handed almost comically favourable circumstances and yet the campaign for independence is not one inch further forward from where Alex Salmond left it in September 2014, something the SNP rank and file doesn’t find quite so comical.
There have been pledges, promises, citizens’ assemblies, growth commissions and grand speeches but what there hasn’t been is a second independence referendum or a credible plan to compel the UK Parliament to grant one.
Far from stepping up the SNP’s efforts, Sturgeon’s pace of travel becomes more leisurely with every fresh excuse she devises. Plans for Indyref2 are constantly on hold and only the justification changes. There’s an election campaign to be fought. Challenging Brexit must be the priority. Managing the pandemic is what matters now. The war in Ukraine has changed the situation.
At some point, SNP members are going to have to reconcile their ardour for independence with the lawyerly caution of the woman they have chosen as their figurehead. It doesn’t matter how gung-ho they are when their leader is gun-shy.
Grassroots Nationalists may be in a hurry but Nicola Sturgeon probably never will be. This is, after all, the SNP leader who said early in her tenure that she would be ‘disappointed’ yet ‘philosophical’ if she didn’t achieve independence but ‘hopefully one day, many years from now, I’ll look back and say, whatever the eventual outcome, I did my best’.
Salmond at times tried to ape the rhetoric of Charles Stewart Parnell. Sturgeon talks about the national struggle in the sappy tones of a minor Sesame Street character. This and the irresistible force of political gravity mean Nationalists need to start thinking about a phrase that will still sound absurd to most: the post-Sturgeon SNP. It may yet be years down the line, but down the line it is.
The SNP is unlike most other parties in that it must manage two movements at once: the traditional political party with all that involves, and the wider campaign for independence. Nicola Sturgeon has done wonders for the former and while she has not shifted the latter onwards, nor has she allowed it to implode.
Merely to maintain this status quo, the SNP will need a successor to Sturgeon who combines the same strategic nous, tactical cunning and factional management skills while inspiring similar levels of voter confidence in the SNP as a party of government and ensuring ongoing unity within the pro-independence movement. Once again, this is the job remit for simply standing still. Achieving all this and eking out some progress towards Indyref2 is an even taller order, one Sturgeon herself has not been able to meet.
Ideologues
There is not exactly a glut of talent in the pipeline either. Finance Secretary Kate Forbes – smart, moderate, likeable – could pose a formidable challenge to the opposition parties, and the Tories in particular. But she will struggle to overcome internal opposition on issues irrelevant to the attainment of independence yet which fixate youthful ideologues who think the SNP’s primary purpose is to champion the latest pathologies of Californian college campuses.
Angus Robertson is thoughtful and an instinctive coalition-builder but he perhaps lacks the common touch that Salmond and Sturgeon have now made synonymous with leadership of the SNP.
When you allow your party to be turned into a personality cult, the personality becomes more important than the party and the party dependent on retaining it. What happens, then, when the personality eventually loses her touch with the electorate or stokes the impatience of a frustrated grassroots or simply decides she’s had enough and wants to go write books or give speeches or run her own foundation? When that day comes the SNP will be left with a gaping hole big enough to drive a whole fleet of election buses through.
What does it fill it with? Another, as yet unidentified, mega-personality? A new wheeze for achieving independence? A new wheeze for not achieving independence? Sometimes a lacklustre local election campaign is just that and sometimes it is a portent of troubles to come.
The SNP has never been in a stronger position while at the same time so bereft of ideas, so frozen in stasis, and so reliant on one strong personality with no obvious successor lined up.
The party’s lack of policies for or apparent interest in local government may be frustrating for voters but it is only a symptom of a much larger problem.
What does the SNP stand for? A face on the side of a bus and, beyond that, who knows.