Yes, SNP will bag most seats but Ruth will be the winner
WINNERS will be losers in this week’s general election – and the losers could turn out to be the winners. Whatever the oracles examining the entrails of slaughtered goats – or pollsters as they like to call themselves – say, Theresa May is almost certain to be returned as Prime Minister with an increased majority.
That will make her a winner. But she could well end up a loser. It is not the fact she has proved to be a nervous, cold fish that will do for her, or that those painfully contorted lips rarely emit an answer. We knew that. It is the fact she initially sold herself to the nation as a person of unvarnished substance. Surefooted. Someone who prepared and thought things through.
For the Tories at a UK level, this campaign has been insubstantial, ill-thought through and chaotic. It has made them look arrogant. That they just needed to turn up to trounce the idiot of the Westminster village – Jeremy Corbyn.
However well she beats him on Thursday it will not be enough for many Tory MPs who expected a landslide. If she cannot rout him, what would have happened if Labour had a competent leader, they will ask.
IT is fair to say that the next time there are leaders’ debates in a general election, Theresa May will have different reasons for not turning up. She won’t need to be asked. In defeat, the UK Labour leader may well turn out to be a winner – at least in his own terms. Not that he ever intended to resign if he was routed, the fact that Jeremy Corbyn’s party poll share is likely to start with a 3 will be seen as vindication.
The ‘Corbyn surge’ will allow him to stay and purge anyone sensible in the Labour Party. A victory for Corbyn and a defeat for anyone who would like to see a centre-left party getting into government again.
It will be similar in Scotland – although with significant, marked differences.
Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP will win the most seats in Scotland. She will claim to be the victor and have completed the ‘triple lock’ to guarantee a second referendum. But it won’t be Scotland ‘triple locked’ into Indyref2 – it will be her. And that will make her a loser.
She will win in terms of seats but the share of the vote between the Nationalists and the pro-UK parties will show that Scotland is more certain of its place in the UK now than it was in 2014.
But how does she back down now? It has often been said that Ms Sturgeon has marched her supporters to the top of the hill. Now, rather than leading she them, she seems to be meekly holding hands and running off the top of a cliff together.
She has similarities with Theresa May. They started off as assets – now Ms Sturgeon’s image is no longer welcome on the front of her party’s manifesto or on candidate literature. Then there are the U-turns.
Unable to manage the 100,000 disappointed Yes voters who joined her party demanding a replay after 2014, she tossed them the bone of saying she would ask for one if there was a ‘material change’ in Scotland’s constitutional arrangements – or Brexit.
But when she signed off on the 2015 SNP manifesto she didn’t think that the Tories would win a majority. She did not believe that the EU referendum would ever happen. Then it did and the UK voted for Brexit.
Instead of getting herself out of a hole with her membership, she has painted herself into a corner. This Thursday’s ‘triple lock’ will see her standing on her tip-toes in that corner. It is only a matter of time until she falls over onto the wet floor she painted herself.
THE SNP’s ‘lines to take’ for election night are already written – they won and the Tories lost. But Ruth Davidson is likely to be the real winner. She has been the most impressive Conservative politician in the UK in this campaign. The Scots Tories will make gains. If they hit five or six seats that will be a good night. Double figures would be remarkable.
Ms Sturgeon’s line that only the SNP ‘stand up for Scotland’ is insulting and stale. It could well be that, with only a fraction of the seats and fewer votes, it is Ms Davidson who stands up for the majority of Scots who do not want to leave the Union. This is a victory she already has under her belt.
I do not know how either Ms Sturgeon or Ms Davidson attend to their devotions. But this Sunday, the SNP leader is praying that Scots see this as a British election. Scotland versus the ‘evil’ English Tories.
Ms Davidson is hoping her fellow Scots see it as a Scottish election. That she has insured herself against the missteps of Theresa May south of the Border. That this is about Scotland versus the separatists.
That will be Ms Davidson’s victory if she gains seats on Thursday night.
That voting Tory is not an aberration for Scots. That the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party is a distinct Scottish party.