14 January 2016
The Scot Nats in Westminster
by Antoninus
Are you getting used to our group of 56 (but see below) SNP MPs in the Commons? You better had. Barring death or defection they’re going to be there until the next general election in 2020. You may have noticed they’re the third largest political group in parliament. They’re also the biggest group of nationalist MPs at Westminster since Parnell’s Irish Home Rule League won 63 seats in the 1880s. Time I think for a run-down of ‘what like they are’, as we say up here.
Let’s start with some arithmetic. In the last parliament the SNP had six MPs. To win 56 of the 59 Scottish seats in May 2015 was an outstanding achievement by any measure, although it owed a lot to the Scottish collapse of Labour and the UK ditto of the Lib Dems. It was done on the emotional high (for Yes voters) of the 2014 independence referendum and a surge in SNP membership. The first past the post system also helped. They got their 56 seats with a whisker under 50% of total votes cast on a turnout of 75%. To put it another way, 37% of the electorate turned out and voted for the SNP, exactly the same proportion that voted Yes in the referendum. If you hear ‘Scotland demands … ’ (as a nationalist party the SNP are prone to equating themselves with the nation) do remember those percentages.
If their number of MPs seems formidable so can their modus operandi. They were already known for their group discipline in the Scottish parliament. At the party’s 2015 spring conference they agreed a new group standing order requiring MPs to ‘accept that no Member shall, within or outwith Parliament, publicly criticise a Group decision, policy or another member of the Group.’ Visible dissent, let alone abstaining or voting against the party whip, is unlikely. Labour and Tory whips must weep in quiet envy into their late night Speaker’s Whisky and soda.
Arguably, the SNP and their leader Nicola Sturgeon had one major failure in the run-up to the general election. Much of their campaign was posited on the possibility of SNP holding the balance of power between Labour and Tories in the commons. In that position the sky might have seemed the limit. Here would have been the chance to demand devolution way beyond the Smith Commission’s proposals that were already wending their way through parliament. And sometime during the next five years there might have been the chance to get a UK government to agree another independence referendum (but only, of course, if the SNP could be sure of winning it next time).
It was not to be and the party has reverted to a fall-back position. The larger than expected defeat of Labour and its subsequent turmoil has allowed the SNP to claim they are the ‘real’ opposition at Westminster. And while they don’t hold the balance of power routinely, they have identified opportunities to assert themselves on a case by case basis. Last June they overturned their long-held principle of not voting on English-only matters when they discovered a sudden solidarity with the foxes of England and announced they would vote against government proposals to change the hunting laws. The balance of ‘pros’ and ‘antis’ in the other parties meant the government withdrew their proposals. For the SNP it was job done. A marker had been put down.
But what of the ‘56’ who were elected last year?
It would be fair to say they’re a mixed bunch. Six sat in the last parliament and one (Alex Salmond) is an old Westminster hand, having been an MP from 1987-2010. But the rest have scarcely held any previous elected office amongst themselves. Inexperience is the price you pay as a party if you have a sudden surge of popularity and have to find many more electable candidates at short notice than you could have imagined necessary previously.
Of members from the previous parliament, group leader Angus Robertson should of course be noted. Solid and reliable and born in Wimbledon, he represents the constituency of Moray which includes two large UK armed forces bases. This causes him some tension as the leader of a unilateralist political group whose raison d’être is to get out of the UK. He is married but has a relationship with SNP member Jennifer Dempsie, former special adviser to Alex Salmond and once a potential Holyrood candidate. Ms Dempsie had some brief notoriety last year when she lobbied SNP Holyrood minister Fiona Hyslop, successfully, for a £150,000 grant for the commercially successful ‘T in the Park’ festival.
For the first time, because of its increased numbers, the group has acquired two select committee chairs, again held by experienced members. Angus MacNeil, ‘crofter’ MP from the Western Isles, chairs the energy and climate change committee. His national media appearances have included a ‘3 in bed teen sex scandal’ (Scottish Daily Record, 2007) and an unfortunate incident when he locked himself in a toilet after he strayed into the wrong lobby during an EU vote last June. Pete Wishart (he prefers Pete to Peter) chairs the Scottish affairs committee. He was previously a keyboard player in Celtic rock band Runrig and is known for his robust social media presence. Time will tell how well these two chair their respective committees.
Some of the new members are already gaining a profile. Media-friendly figures like Brendan O’Hara (defence spokesperson, and ex-TV producer) and John Nicolson (culture, media and sport spokesperson, ex-TV presenter and London houseowner) can hold their own in the media. Of the others, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh is close to Salmond (she has been his solicitor and, briefly, director of his publishing company); Tommy Shepherd is ex-Labour and owner of an Edinburgh comedy club; and Mhairi Black, at age 20 the youngest MP since the 17th century. There are others, some with interesting back stories, some with none. One, Stewart McDonald, deserves a brief mention because of one or two (very) discreet statements he’s made suggesting he’s not always enamoured of what some of his colleagues do or say. He seems a decent sort. If one member is going to break the group’s ‘no criticism’ standing order it might be him.
The group has already experienced a certain amount of fraying at the edges. Two MPs have resigned/been suspended from the group. Michelle Thomson had some problems with her residential property company, which was alleged to buy houses at below-market valuation from vulnerable owners. She was also a prime mover of a group called Business for Scotland that lobbied for a referendum Yes vote – before she fell out with them. Natalie McGarry was a founding member of lobby group Women for Independence, from which a sum of money said to be as much as £40,000 seems to have disappeared. The facts are not fully known yet but as a result she has also departed the SNP group (curiously, she is also the partner of Glasgow Conservative councillor David Meikle, widely ridiculed as ‘Balustrade Lanyard’ for reasons too obscure to go into but which a Google search will reveal. They share, or shared, an office and Ms McGarry admitted to placing a Post-it note on her filing cabinet telling him to ‘Keep your filthy Tory hands out of my grey drawers’).
If you’re keeping count of the arithmetic, that means the 56 are already, even if only temporarily, down to 54. Two other group members may also have their coats, as the Scots say, on a ‘shoogly peg’ – Phil Boswell, who is being investigated by the parliamentary commissioner for standards over alleged non-declaration of company directorships; and Paul Monaghan, who has had what might kindly be called a patchy career and who has been criticised for employing his brother as communications manager. There may be others too.
The final word must be about Alex Salmond, ‘Eck’ as he’s known in Scotland. The range and depth of his experience exceeds that of any other SNP politician. Even his enemies would concede that as a politician he stands head and shoulders above his Scottish contemporaries. He’s made some spectacular misjudgements (uncritical support for the Royal Bank of Scotland’s disastrous takeover of ABN-AMRO, punting the idea of a ‘Northern arc of prosperity’ including Scotland and, er, Iceland and Ireland, the Scottish referendum even). But he’s sailed mostly unscathed through all of them. Now he’s the group’s spokesperson for international affairs and Europe, giving him the sort of high profile platform he loves, most recently on a visit to Iran where he tried to steal a march on the UK government in the new atmosphere of reconciliation with that nation. He has not taken the option of bowing out of active politics gracefully like many ex-leaders. He may yet prove a significant challenge for Angus Robertson in Westminster and Nicola Sturgeon up the road in Edinburgh.
