01 June 2017
General Election 2017 – Scottish Version
A view from north of the border.
By Antoninus
It scarcely seems yesterday (it was 12 January – Ed.) that Antoninus wished his Shaw Sheet readers a ‘Happy Hogmanay’ and offered a forecast for Scottish politics for the year ahead, confidently assuming that the call to contribute again, if it ever came, would not arrive until mid-December.
So the old boy was surprised to receive a request to ‘Do something on the general election in Scotland.’ It seemed a high risk editorial strategy. You can have too much Scottish politics, you know.
And yet two remarkable things seem to be happening in our version of the general election that are distinct from the rest of the country. You could be cynical and check back to that January forecast and conclude this is code for ‘stuff he didn’t predict’ (true) but they’re remarkable all the same.
The first is what the election’s all about.
Given (a) that Theresa May called the election to strengthen her hand in the Brexit negotiations to come and (b) Scotland voted to remain in the EU by 63% to 37%, you would surely conclude that the election is being fought on that question. Put simply, our dominant political party, the SNP, wants to remain in the EU and the other three parties are maintaining the same position in Scotland that they are in the rest of the UK – Tories and Labour accepting the referendum verdict and the Lib Dems promising/threatening another referendum on any final deal negotiated. So some stark differences to engage voters.
In fact, Brexit has featured hardly at all and our election campaign has focussed on the SNP’s performance in our devolved government (mediocre at best), and on its overarching ambition – independence. On the first point, the party’s been in power for ten years and like all long-serving governments it is stumbling. On the second, opinion polls show that a majority of Scots voters prefer to remain in the UK (about 55% – the same as in our 2014 referendum) and Mrs May made it crystal-clear she would not agree to the second referendum the SNP want until Brexit is done and dusted.
The SNP are only too well aware of these facts and Nicola Sturgeon has gone out of her way to say that, for her, the election is not about independence – a position somewhat subverted by some of her senior colleagues, notably Alex Salmond who has said, in effect ‘Oh yes it is.’ And he’s right, of course, because everything the SNP does is about independence; it’s the reason they exist.
The second remarkable thing is that the Scottish Conservatives seem to be talking about little but independence (for the same reason that Mrs Sturgeon’s avoiding it). ‘We,’ they say, ‘are the one true guarantor of the union,’ a little disingenuous perhaps since Labour and Lib Dems are also dead set against independence. But in their current enfeebled state they’re hardly heard on the subject and the Tories, under their exceptional and unlikely leader Ruth Davidson (female ex-journalist, gay, educated at a tough state secondary school in Fife), have taken full advantage of the situation.
So much so that the SNP have fallen entirely silent on their previous rallying cry to ‘make Scotland a Tory-free zone’ and, if current polls are to be believed, the Conservatives might even be heading for ten Scottish seats compared to the one they currently hold. The same polls even suggest that the Lib Dems might gain one or two extra seats (they hold one currently).
Any passing SNP activist would point out that these numbers hardly represent a rout and they’d be right. In 2015 the SNP, remarkably, won 56 out of 59 seats and even if the polls turn out to be correct, they’ll still hold 43 after 8th June. But as with many things in politics it’s the trend that is important. Their performance in the 2016 Holyrood elections and our May council elections suggested strongly that we are past ‘peak-SNP’ and the June election will surely confirm that.
Whether any or all of this happens is in the lap of the Gods. As this is being written, campaigning is suspended because of the Manchester atrocity, and who knows how that dreadful event will affect the tone and content of what campaigning remains. There are local factors too that may come into play – the poor performance and ill-judged behaviour of a minority of SNP MPs standing for re-election, and the fact that the party’s commitment to the EU would involve continuation of the Common Fisheries Policy, loathed by fishermen in the coastal communities of North East Scotland that have formed the SNP’s heartland.
The number of seats involved in all this and the UK-wide picture may make Scotland seem a side-show in this election. But remember that any set-back for the SNP is a set-back for their ultimate goal of separation and conversely helps strengthen the continued existence of a United Kingdom.
Yes, the election is different here, after all.
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