THE VOICE OF SCOTTISH POLITICS An irrelevance... the grass-roots members of SNP
YOU had to listen very carefully to hear it; but it was there, carried on the chill Aberdeenshire wind over the last few days – it was the sound of the SNP dying. That may seem a strange thing to say of a party with 115,000 members, 55 MPs and on course to win next year’s election.
But the SNP as it was – a proper, democratic political party – does appear to be dying. In its place is growing a mass movement where the members are actually further from any real decision-making than in any other UK party.
The SNP used to hold conferences where policy was made. Not only that, it used to delight in seizing the moral high ground, lambasting Labour and Tory alike for turning their conferences into glitzy, yet boring, shop windows for their biggest stars.
The conference was the SNP because it was the one event which allowed the members to take charge and set the direction they wanted the party to go in.
Now the SNP is bigger than ever. It has more MPs than anyone ever imagined possible. It has more money than it knows what to do with. And yet, as this has happened, so the conference has been emasculated. It has become exactly what the SNP used to despise in others. It has become an anodyne, superficial showreel, giving the pretence of democracy while denying exactly that to its own members.
Consider the key decisions facing the SNP. First and foremost is the question of a second independence referendum.
Everyone, absolutely everyone, who travelled to Aberdeen over the last few days had a view on it. Some wanted it as soon as possible. Many others wanted one in the next five years if, as expected, the party wins the Holyrood election next year. Yet there was no discussion about any of this on the conference floor.
There were some, such as East Lothian MP George Kerevan, who warned bravely from the fringes that the SNP had to sort out the mess it made of its position on the currency last year if it was to stand any chance of winning next time.
Mr Kerevan was right. Currency is the gaping wound at the heart of the SNP’s independence vision. This is exactly the sort of issue which the party needs to thrash out now, well ahead of any future referendum – yet there was no discussion of this at the conference either.
There are also more immediate issues facing the party. Usually, this pre-election conference would provide the opportunity for activists to decide party policies, which would form the basis of the party’s manifesto.
That manifesto is going to have to include the SNP’s position on income tax. Is it going to raise taxes to pay for public services or bigger benefits? No one knows; because no one was allowed to discuss it at conference.
Instead, party leaders have been holding a series of secret meetings with so-called ‘Civic Scotland’ – charities, churches, trade unions and the like – and they have been using these to map out the manifesto.
It does seem ironic – but there are people with no direct connection to the SNP, but who hold positions in independent organisations, who have a greater say on party policy than the poor, put-upon delegates who spend hundreds of pounds of their own money to come to conference in the mistaken belief they are actually making a difference.
THIS conference was the biggest in the SNP’s history; yet the more delegates there are, the less the leadership team seems to trust them. It is not hard to see why. On those brief occasions delegates were allowed to debate issues of real interest – land reform and fracking – they tried to force the party into being much more radical than the leaders wanted. The leadership’s answer was to keep those occasions to a minimum then make all the important decisions themselves, in private.
So, despite all the announcements and speeches, this was a conference devoid of real decision-making. There was no debate on a second referendum; no debate on the core principles underlying independence, the reason the SNP exists; and no debate on the fundamental issues which the party will have to tackle in its manifesto next year.
On these and many other issues, the delegates were reduced to bit parts, their role only to act as the audience, caught on camera cheering as their leaders performed on the platform – exactly what the SNP used to despise in its political opponents.
This was more like a 1980s Tory conference or a Labour conference from the 1990s than a proper SNP conference: it was depressingly stage-managed, uncontroversial and bland.
That is why the SNP – the old SNP, the proper, political, democratic SNP – appears to be dying. It has more members than ever, but they are further from real decision-making than they have ever been.
The party has power, lots of it. It is just a pity the members don’t seem to have any of it.